Sporkman
November 12th, 2007, 04:04 PM
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/technology/12link.html?ei=5087&em=&en=62648b1122b35704&ex=1195016400&pagewanted=print
Will Success, or All That Money From Google, Spoil Firefox?
By NOAM COHEN
Only a couple of years ago, Firefox was the little browser that could — an open-source program created by thousands of contributors around the world without the benefit of a giant company like Microsoft to finance it.
Since then, Firefox, which has prospered under the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, has grown to be the largest rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, with 15 to 20 percent of the browser market worldwide and higher percentages in Europe and among technology devotees. It is the most popular alternative browser since Netscape, with about three times as many users as Apple’s Safari.
Part of Firefox’s appeal was its origins as a nonprofit venture, a people-powered revolution involving the most basic Internet technology, the Web browser. Also, because the core code was open, Firefox could tap into developers’ creativity; they are encouraged to soup up the browser, whether by blocking ads from commercial Web sites, a popular add-on, or by creating “skins” to customize the browser’s appearance.
But in trying to build on this success, the Mozilla Foundation has come to resemble an investor-backed Silicon Valley start-up more than a scrappy collaborative underdog. Siobhan O’Mahony, an assistant professor at the School of Management of the University of California, Davis, calls Mozilla “the first corporate open-source project.”
The foundation has used a for-profit subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation, to collect tens of millions of dollars in royalties from search engine companies that want prominent placement on the browser. And by collecting that money as a war chest to compete against giants like Microsoft and Apple, the foundation has, at least temporarily, moved away from the typical activities of a nonprofit organization.
“The Mozilla community has been a bit hybrid in terms of integrating public and private investment all along — its history is fairly unique in this respect,” Professor O’Mahony said.
So far, the many contributors to Firefox seem pleased with its financial success. The bigger question is what Mozilla will do with all its money.
According to Mozilla’s 2006 financial records, which were recently released, the foundation had $74 million in assets, the bulk invested in mutual funds and the like, and last year it collected $66 million in revenue. Eighty-five percent of that revenue came from a single source — Google, which has a royalty contract with Firefox.
Despite that ample revenue, the Mozilla Foundation gave away less than $100,000 in grants (according to the audited statement), or $285,000 (according to Mozilla itself), in 2006. In the same year, it paid the corporation’s chief executive, Mitchell Baker, more than $500,000 in salary and benefits. (She is also chairwoman of the foundation.)
Ms. Baker, a lawyer who has worked for Silicon Valley companies since the mid-1990s, said her compensation “is yet another example of Mozilla as a hybrid,” adding that it made her “a poor stepchild, not even,” compared to the leaders of other equally influential Silicon Valley companies.
Ms. Baker says it was the community, not Google’s money, that made Firefox a player in the field. “Mozilla is successful because we have this giant set of people who care about it,” she said. “The fundamental infrastructure piece that keeps Mozilla independent from even a single source of income like Google is the diverse set of people.”
She added: “No amount of money would have allowed us to be as successful as we are.” Then, referring to Microsoft, she said, “We cannot outspend them.”
The rise of Firefox can be seen as an extension of the Netscape-Microsoft battle of the mid-1990s. After Microsoft largely wrested control of the market, Netscape decided in 1998 to release its code to the public, and immediately developers took up the challenge.
By 2003, AOL, which had acquired Netscape, released the browser code to the newly created Mozilla Foundation, and by November 2004, the first version of Firefox was released. At the time, it was promoted as pursuing the goals of being user-friendly, able to work on different operating systems and more secure. The corporation was created in 2005.
The browser’s other, unstated advantage, shared with other open-source projects, was A.B.M: Anybody but Microsoft.
“Firefox is able to tap many different audiences. Not everyone cares about keeping Web standards open, but a significant part of the contributing population fears that if Firefox loses share, then Web standards could become the purview of Microsoft alone,” Professor O’Mahony wrote in an e-mail message.
Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s general manager for Internet Explorer, noted that the market still showed a marked preference for Explorer, but he did concede that Microsoft, for structural reasons, could not show the enthusiasm Firefox developers have.
“We are much more reserved about thinking out loud as we make the browser better,” he said. “I can go through and talk about all the innovations we have made, but we don’t talk about them until they are done. People make very important decisions based on what Microsoft says; we have a responsibility about what we say out loud.”
Looming over Mozilla’s future, however, is its close connection with Google, which has been writing most of the checks that finance the Firefox project through its royalty contract.
When the connection with Google was revealed more than a year ago, the question on popular tech Web sites like Slashdot.org was whether Mozilla was acting as a proxy in Google’s larger war with Microsoft and others.
The foundation went so far as to directly address the issue, writing recently, “We do not vet our initiatives with Google,” and adding that it made sure that Google “understood the separation between a search relationship and the rest of our activities.”
Yet lately, the concern among Firefox users and developers about the Mozilla-Google relationship focuses more on what would happen if Google were to walk away, create its own browser or back another, like Safari. This discussion of life after Google represents an unexpected twist: the fear is that instead of being a proxy for Google, Mozilla may have become dangerously reliant on it.
Wladimir Palant, a longtime contributor to Firefox and developer of the popular Adblock Plus add-on that removes ads from Web pages, said he was pleased that the foundation had so much money saved up. And while he rattled off a number of priorities that he was glad the foundation had been pursuing, including improving the infrastructure and hiring more staff, he said No. 1 was, “Save some of the money for later.”
He said, “This will keep them independent of market tendencies and companies like Google.” If Google were to make an unreasonable demand, he said, “Mozilla will still have enough time to look for alternative money sources.”
Ms. Baker said that while she tried “to stay away from” that kind of speculation, “I take the view that we are doing something fundamentally important, and as that becomes clear, there could be other entrants.” She added: “Google is on everyone’s mind, but it could come from China, who knows?”
A Google spokeswoman would not comment on any of the issues raised by the Google-Mozilla relationship, but issued a statement: “Mozilla is a valued business partner because many users utilize Firefox to access Google products and services. We will continue to work with a variety of technology providers, including Mozilla, to ensure our mutual users have the best experience possible with our products and services.”
To an outside observer like Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia who focuses on the Internet, the alliance still makes a lot of sense.
“We’re living in a cold war between open and closed systems, and Google is happy to lend support to entities that it sees as allies,” he said.
While acknowledging that he does not know the secret terms of their contract, he said, by way of analogy, “No one is surprised that Turkey would get aid from the U.S. during the cold war.”
Will Success, or All That Money From Google, Spoil Firefox?
By NOAM COHEN
Only a couple of years ago, Firefox was the little browser that could — an open-source program created by thousands of contributors around the world without the benefit of a giant company like Microsoft to finance it.
Since then, Firefox, which has prospered under the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, has grown to be the largest rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, with 15 to 20 percent of the browser market worldwide and higher percentages in Europe and among technology devotees. It is the most popular alternative browser since Netscape, with about three times as many users as Apple’s Safari.
Part of Firefox’s appeal was its origins as a nonprofit venture, a people-powered revolution involving the most basic Internet technology, the Web browser. Also, because the core code was open, Firefox could tap into developers’ creativity; they are encouraged to soup up the browser, whether by blocking ads from commercial Web sites, a popular add-on, or by creating “skins” to customize the browser’s appearance.
But in trying to build on this success, the Mozilla Foundation has come to resemble an investor-backed Silicon Valley start-up more than a scrappy collaborative underdog. Siobhan O’Mahony, an assistant professor at the School of Management of the University of California, Davis, calls Mozilla “the first corporate open-source project.”
The foundation has used a for-profit subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation, to collect tens of millions of dollars in royalties from search engine companies that want prominent placement on the browser. And by collecting that money as a war chest to compete against giants like Microsoft and Apple, the foundation has, at least temporarily, moved away from the typical activities of a nonprofit organization.
“The Mozilla community has been a bit hybrid in terms of integrating public and private investment all along — its history is fairly unique in this respect,” Professor O’Mahony said.
So far, the many contributors to Firefox seem pleased with its financial success. The bigger question is what Mozilla will do with all its money.
According to Mozilla’s 2006 financial records, which were recently released, the foundation had $74 million in assets, the bulk invested in mutual funds and the like, and last year it collected $66 million in revenue. Eighty-five percent of that revenue came from a single source — Google, which has a royalty contract with Firefox.
Despite that ample revenue, the Mozilla Foundation gave away less than $100,000 in grants (according to the audited statement), or $285,000 (according to Mozilla itself), in 2006. In the same year, it paid the corporation’s chief executive, Mitchell Baker, more than $500,000 in salary and benefits. (She is also chairwoman of the foundation.)
Ms. Baker, a lawyer who has worked for Silicon Valley companies since the mid-1990s, said her compensation “is yet another example of Mozilla as a hybrid,” adding that it made her “a poor stepchild, not even,” compared to the leaders of other equally influential Silicon Valley companies.
Ms. Baker says it was the community, not Google’s money, that made Firefox a player in the field. “Mozilla is successful because we have this giant set of people who care about it,” she said. “The fundamental infrastructure piece that keeps Mozilla independent from even a single source of income like Google is the diverse set of people.”
She added: “No amount of money would have allowed us to be as successful as we are.” Then, referring to Microsoft, she said, “We cannot outspend them.”
The rise of Firefox can be seen as an extension of the Netscape-Microsoft battle of the mid-1990s. After Microsoft largely wrested control of the market, Netscape decided in 1998 to release its code to the public, and immediately developers took up the challenge.
By 2003, AOL, which had acquired Netscape, released the browser code to the newly created Mozilla Foundation, and by November 2004, the first version of Firefox was released. At the time, it was promoted as pursuing the goals of being user-friendly, able to work on different operating systems and more secure. The corporation was created in 2005.
The browser’s other, unstated advantage, shared with other open-source projects, was A.B.M: Anybody but Microsoft.
“Firefox is able to tap many different audiences. Not everyone cares about keeping Web standards open, but a significant part of the contributing population fears that if Firefox loses share, then Web standards could become the purview of Microsoft alone,” Professor O’Mahony wrote in an e-mail message.
Dean Hachamovitch, Microsoft’s general manager for Internet Explorer, noted that the market still showed a marked preference for Explorer, but he did concede that Microsoft, for structural reasons, could not show the enthusiasm Firefox developers have.
“We are much more reserved about thinking out loud as we make the browser better,” he said. “I can go through and talk about all the innovations we have made, but we don’t talk about them until they are done. People make very important decisions based on what Microsoft says; we have a responsibility about what we say out loud.”
Looming over Mozilla’s future, however, is its close connection with Google, which has been writing most of the checks that finance the Firefox project through its royalty contract.
When the connection with Google was revealed more than a year ago, the question on popular tech Web sites like Slashdot.org was whether Mozilla was acting as a proxy in Google’s larger war with Microsoft and others.
The foundation went so far as to directly address the issue, writing recently, “We do not vet our initiatives with Google,” and adding that it made sure that Google “understood the separation between a search relationship and the rest of our activities.”
Yet lately, the concern among Firefox users and developers about the Mozilla-Google relationship focuses more on what would happen if Google were to walk away, create its own browser or back another, like Safari. This discussion of life after Google represents an unexpected twist: the fear is that instead of being a proxy for Google, Mozilla may have become dangerously reliant on it.
Wladimir Palant, a longtime contributor to Firefox and developer of the popular Adblock Plus add-on that removes ads from Web pages, said he was pleased that the foundation had so much money saved up. And while he rattled off a number of priorities that he was glad the foundation had been pursuing, including improving the infrastructure and hiring more staff, he said No. 1 was, “Save some of the money for later.”
He said, “This will keep them independent of market tendencies and companies like Google.” If Google were to make an unreasonable demand, he said, “Mozilla will still have enough time to look for alternative money sources.”
Ms. Baker said that while she tried “to stay away from” that kind of speculation, “I take the view that we are doing something fundamentally important, and as that becomes clear, there could be other entrants.” She added: “Google is on everyone’s mind, but it could come from China, who knows?”
A Google spokeswoman would not comment on any of the issues raised by the Google-Mozilla relationship, but issued a statement: “Mozilla is a valued business partner because many users utilize Firefox to access Google products and services. We will continue to work with a variety of technology providers, including Mozilla, to ensure our mutual users have the best experience possible with our products and services.”
To an outside observer like Tim Wu, a law professor at Columbia who focuses on the Internet, the alliance still makes a lot of sense.
“We’re living in a cold war between open and closed systems, and Google is happy to lend support to entities that it sees as allies,” he said.
While acknowledging that he does not know the secret terms of their contract, he said, by way of analogy, “No one is surprised that Turkey would get aid from the U.S. during the cold war.”