Mozilla's revenue in 2022 will reach US$600 million. Although the market share of the Firefox browser has reached new lows, the company behind it has not only not collapsed, but has developed vigorously, and its cooperation with Google is indispensable. Of course, the company will still face challenges ahead.
Mozilla released its 2022 financial report, and they are not hanging on. The company behind the Firefox browser is making serious money, $593 million to be specific. While it's down slightly compared to 2021's numbers, it's still a leap compared to 2020.
If you're wondering where the money comes from, it's mainly from Google, the developer of Chrome, Firefox's biggest competitor. Google's search engine deal is Mozilla's golden goose, bringing Mozilla a huge revenue of $510 million last year. While the Google deal brought in slightly less revenue than the previous year, it remains a cornerstone of Mozilla's revenue stream. There are many reasons for revenue declines, including potential loss of user base or other market dynamics.
Mozilla's subscription and advertising revenue has also grown significantly, rising to $75 million in 2022. The company has developed new revenue streams, including services such as FirefoxMonitor, MozillaVPN and FirefoxRelay.
The acquisition of review checking service FakeSpot, as well as the continued growth of Pocket, acquired in 2017, also contributed to revenue diversification.
Mozilla, on the other hand, is also spending the cash, with spending soaring to $425 million in 2022. This growth was primarily driven by investments in software development, branding, marketing and administrative costs. These investments are critical to Mozilla's long-term strategy and staying competitive.
Despite the increase in spending, Mozilla's net worth has grown by nearly $150 million, now totaling $1.19 billion. In 2022, Mozilla renewed its three-year search agreement with Google. Although Mozilla's survival still depends on search engine transactions, other revenue sources show that Mozilla's strategy is diversified to some extent.
While Mozilla is making moves, CEO Mitchell Baker's salary has also made headlines. In 2022, she earned $6.9 million, an increase of $2 million from the previous year, while the Firefox browser has seen a decline in users, losing about 30 million users since 2020.
On a related note, we saw an interesting article this week discussing a guideline from the United States Web Design System (USWDS) that could accelerate the decline of Firefox browser usage. USWDS sets standards for U.S. government websites and adopts the "2% rule", which means they only support browsers with a usage rate of more than 2%, according to analytics.usa.gov.
According to estimates, the current market share of the Firefox browser is 2.2%, which is very close to this threshold. The concern is that once Firefox's market share drops below 2%, government websites will no longer be required to support it. This change is likely to impact the wider web development community and enterprise IT departments, causing them to also drop support for Firefox to reduce development costs and time. This could create a domino effect, further eroding Firefox's relevance.