It’s not time for celebration at Mozilla. On Saturday, its Internet browser Firefox celebrated its twentieth anniversary. But the non-profit foundation which oversees the project announced, three days earlier, a social plan affecting almost a third of its workforce, or around 40 people. In February, it was the commercial company that cut its teams, letting go of around sixty employees. Job cuts justified by the abandonment of several diversification projects. Since the peaks reached in 2009, Firefox has continued to lose market share, supplanted by Google’s Chrome. If its financial situation remains solid, the browser could well be a collateral victim of the search engine’s recent condemnation. And thus lose all or part of its financial resources.
New standards – Firefox was officially launched in November 2004. The browser was born from the ashes of Netscape, one of the pioneers of the sector, sunk in the late 90s by the arrival of Internet Explorer from Microsoft. Installed by default on all Windows computers, it then occupies a quasi-monopolistic position. Faced with this ogre, Mozilla relies on its open source community to renew the user experience. More modern, faster, more intuitive and more secure, Firefox also creates new standards, such as the possibility of opening several tabs, the search bar and automatic detection of pop-up (windows that open automatically) advertising. The browser multiplies updates. And also benefits from the apathy of Microsoft, not quick enough to innovate.
Sudden fall – In November 2009, five years after its launch, Firefox reached its peak. Its market share peaks at 32%, according to data from Statcounter. His fall, however, will be brutal. This coincides with the immense success of Chrome, launched a year earlier. And which will quickly establish itself as the new dominant player in the sector. But Mozilla is also falling behind on mobile media, whose weight in Internet traffic has continued to increase. The company first launched on Android in 2011, without ever succeeding in breaking through with default browsers, then with Chrome. It only arrived in 2015 on iOS, after having refused for years the limitations imposed by Apple. Its market share has since fallen below 3%. It is only 0.5% on smartphones.
Survival threatened? – Paradoxically, the Mozilla Foundation has never been in better financial shape. Its 2022 accounts, the latest published to date, show a surplus of $143 million. Its cash flow now stands at 1.2 billion. This performance can be explained by an agreement signed with Google, which pays it around 500 million each year to be Firefox’s default search engine. In 2022, this represented 85% of its revenue. But this financial windfall is now under threat. In August, the Mountain View giant was found guilty of abuse of a dominant position by the American courts. A judge must still decide on corrective measures. It could choose to prohibit or limit this type of partnership. A hypothesis that would ultimately threaten the survival of Mozilla.
To go further:
– Apple, Samsung and Mozilla have a lot to lose after Google’s conviction
– Google (again) postpones the end of third-party cookies
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