The company didn't break out exactly what fueled the increase, merely noting that a, "majority of Mozilla revenue continues to be generated from the search functionality included in Mozilla's Firefox product from organizations such as Google, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, eBay and a handful of others."
Google, for example, pays Mozilla a fraction of its search advertising revenue to Mozilla in exchange for Mozilla slapping a search box straight to Google within the browser itself. The company's business relationship with Google has existed since 2004 and, under its current contract, will remain in place until 2011.
"Our mission and development process, however, are completely unrelated to the revenue we earn from Google's search activity," says a page on Mozilla's site. "Our open development process is governed by Mozilla's mission and our commitment to improving the Web. We do not vet our initiatives with Google."
The semi-recent economic downturn cost Mozilla $104,000 in lost investments between 2008 and 2009. However, that number represents a huge upswing from the loss the foundation experienced between 2007 and 2008—a cut of $7.8 million.
"Our status as a mission-driven, nonprofit organization fundamentally affects our approach. It liberates us and allows us to focus, and take a long-term view on building a better Internet and developing a vibrant, creative community, rather than on traditional market concerns such as stock value," writes Mozilla.
"Growth in revenue and market share are simply indicators of the great things built by the Mozilla project rather than being objectives in themselves," the company adds.
There are more than 400 million users currently running Firefox, with more than 140 million of these actively using the browser on a daily basis.
By: David Murphy
