If you have a question about where Mozilla receives money and most importantly how much money, all you have to do is read its balance sheet for 2020.
The Mozilla Foundation published the financial report today for the year 2020, revealing that for the financial year 2020 it earned $ 496 million. The Foundation raised $ 828 million in 2019, but $ 338 million came from litigation with former Yahoo search engine provider.
So if you subtract the court profits of $ 338 million, then its revenue for 2020 increased by about $ 6 million compared to 2019.
Income
If you look at the sources of revenue, you will notice that the revenue from exploitation rights still make up the bulk of Mozilla's revenue. It dropped from about $ 451 million to $ 441 and includes all search engine offerings. That is, most of its revenue comes from search engines (Google, Amazon, Bing, etc.) that has integrated them into its program. It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post.
Mozilla also invested heavily in subscription-based products, and subscription revenue increased from $ 14 million in 2019 to $ 24 million in 2020. It remains a low percentage of total revenue. Mozilla has released new products, including Firefox Relay Premium and mozilla-vpn, which will generate additional revenue.
Mozilla VPN was released in mid-2020 in a few countries, but the service is now available in additional areas, which will certainly be reflected in revenue for 2021. Pocket bookmark service is still the main revenue stream according to the Mozilla report.
Cost reduction
Mozilla managed to significantly reduce total costs in 2020. The foundation had $ 495 million in costs in 2019 and managed to reduce costs to $ 439 million in 2020. Software development costs fell from $ 303 million in 2019 to $ 242 million in 2020. Other program services as well as marketing expenses also decreased in 2020. Overhead and administrative expenses increased to $ 137 million from $ 124 million the previous year.
Mozilla laid off 320 employees in 2020, reducing the total number of employees from 1000 or less to less than 800. At the same time, Mozilla managed to increase its assets from $ 787 million in 2019 to $ 843 million in 2020.
Prospects for 2021
In 2020, Mozilla renewed its agreement with Google for the second search engine for another three years. Both parties have not revealed the new deal and it remains to be seen how it will affect Mozilla revenue in 2021 and beyond.
Revenue from subscription-based services is likely to be higher in 2021 compared to 2020, but it seems unlikely that Mozilla will reduce its reliance on search engine offerings in the coming years. Mozilla needs revenue more than ever and it will be interesting to see if (and how) the deal with Google changes.
