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Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

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Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#81
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a purely market basis, 400k buys talent comparable to a senior manager / director of the Chrome or Safari team of ~100 people, not a VP or CEO of a company with $100m annual revenue. $400k is what one-trick ponies like doctors and lawyers and traditional industry local small business owners earn.

> $400k is what one-trick ponies like doctors and lawyers and traditional industry local small business owners earn. Or a little under twice that of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ( pop. 60 million ), when summing his MP and Government jobs. The combined ministerial and parliamentary salary of the Prime Minister is £142,500 at April 2013 I'm fairly confident in saying that David Cameron puts in considerably…

Getting to be PM is its own reward.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#82

I'm so sick of this argument about Mozilla. It is like saying a Principal Engineer at Microsoft relies on Microsof because it provides 90% of his income. Last time Mozilla's contract was up for negotiation, they caused bidding war that increased their value over the previous contract...it wasn't Google's generosity. You are a fool if you think Mozilla is beholden to Google.

It is "TheNextWeb" here, so not exactly deep journalism. Its true that if Google declined to support Mozilla that Microsoft could get in there for less than the $300M that Google paid, and it would probably push Bing closer to parity with Google in terms of searches done.

So more accurate reasoning is "Search advertising is the best, Mozilla drives a lot of traffic, any search engine would love to have 'control' over Mozilla's choice of default search provider and how that works to insure they get the traffic from Mozilla customers."

So no, Mozilla doesn't need a 'backup' plan unless Bing goes away.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#83
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft wasn't interested in paying anything near that much, nor was Yahoo, that's why talks collapsed during the negotiations. Google does consider the search engine placement valuable but it is probably also funding Mozilla as a hedge against anti-trust lawsuits.

Also, with Yahoo's search results now coming from Bing, this does mean that the biggest potential sources of funding are all linked to companies who compete directly with Mozilla's biggest product - Google and Microsoft have their own browsers. It's certainly not an ideal position for Mozilla.

There are other search engines that may be interested in something like this. While strange bedfellows for geopolitical reasons, I could see Yandex or Baidu doing a default search deal in order to break into the English speaking market a little more.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#84
The sentiment below is correct, there should not be a real concern here for Mozilla. Here's how you should think about it from a business perspective. Most (but not all) companies should be concerned about their bargaining power with customers when revenue is highly concentrated. This concern comes from the fact that customers can threaten to leave, which will significantly decrease revenue and be difficult to replace. Consequently, many companies will lower prices under the logic that retaining 90% of that revenue is better than the results from trying to replace it with smaller revenue opportunities.

However, this is far from the case for Mozilla. Google pays Mozilla in order to be the DEFAULT search engine (which is valuable on the theory of consumer inertia). The default position is a limited commodity; there is only one default position and, therefore, by doing business with Google they are passing on other business. If Google left then Mozilla would be able to sell that default position to someone else (probably Yahoo or Microsoft) and would be able to replace most of that revenue with comparable revenue very quickly.

I would argue Google is in the more difficult position here. Google has a some (not a lot) concentration of their acquired traffic from Mozilla (I think ~10%), and that is not a limited commodity. If there were other comparable traffic acquisition opportunities available, Google would pursue them. Google is not necessarily passing on other business because of their business with Mozilla (while, as explained above, Mozilla is passing on other business because of their Google deal). So presumably if Mozilla and Google part ways, that Google business (revenue, profit etc.) would be lost (at least for now) and take some time / effort to replace. While Mozilla’s power over Google is definitely small, I would say with certainty Mozilla should not be concerned about their Google concentration in this scenario.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going after the enterprise market wouldn't earn Mozilla any tangible amount of revenue.

I do not understand your remark : enterprise market is traditionally viewed as very lucrative. RedHat, Jboss , SpringFramework folks are doing remarkably well in the enterprise market though they had roots in free and opensource software movement.

Browsers are a unique market. IE is free and most enterprises would prefer to use it anyway. Mozilla would have to pay most enterprises to switch to Firefox.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#86

I'm so sick of this argument about Mozilla. It is like saying a Principal Engineer at Microsoft relies on Microsof because it provides 90% of his income. Last time Mozilla's contract was up for negotiation, they caused bidding war that increased their value over the previous contract...it wasn't Google's generosity. You are a fool if you think Mozilla is beholden to Google.

It is "TheNextWeb" here, so not exactly deep journalism. Its true that if Google declined to support Mozilla that Microsoft could get in there for less than the $300M that Google paid, and it would probably push Bing closer to parity with Google in terms of searches done. So more accurate reasoning is "Search advertising is the best, Mozilla drives a lot of traffic, any search engine would love to have 'control' over…

Or their marketshare becomes irrelevant. Could happen if there are competitors with big marketing budgets, valuable screen estate and packaging deals.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#87
post #38
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a better argument is that Mozilla needs to diversify its revenue sources. Chrome is taking away marketshare from Firefox thanks to advertising and paying a lot to be bundled with Java, Flash, Acrobat etc. updates or just being shipped as default by the PC OEMs. It makes sense for Google because then they needn't pay out so much to Mozilla. For many non tech folks where I had replaced IE with Firefox, I now se…

I wish I could find a "market share over time" chart but I can't. Anyways, IIRC I don't believe Chrome is still taking (much) aware from Firefox. They did for a long time but then flattened. Recently Chrome has dipped a little and Firefox is up: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/11/01/ie11-takes-1-49-mar...

w3schools is relatively small but their stats are good:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

And there's also Google trends.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#88
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a purely market basis, 400k buys talent comparable to a senior manager / director of the Chrome or Safari team of ~100 people, not a VP or CEO of a company with $100m annual revenue. $400k is what one-trick ponies like doctors and lawyers and traditional industry local small business owners earn.

> $400k is what one-trick ponies like doctors and lawyers and traditional industry local small business owners earn. Or a little under twice that of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ( pop. 60 million ), when summing his MP and Government jobs. The combined ministerial and parliamentary salary of the Prime Minister is £142,500 at April 2013 I'm fairly confident in saying that David Cameron puts in considerably…

Politicians often pull this sort of "I'm not here for the money and I'm proving it" trick. Please don't compare them with corporations.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#89
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a purely market basis, 400k buys talent comparable to a senior manager / director of the Chrome or Safari team of ~100 people, not a VP or CEO of a company with $100m annual revenue. $400k is what one-trick ponies like doctors and lawyers and traditional industry local small business owners earn.

> $400k is what one-trick ponies like doctors and lawyers and traditional industry local small business owners earn. Or a little under twice that of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ( pop. 60 million ), when summing his MP and Government jobs. The combined ministerial and parliamentary salary of the Prime Minister is £142,500 at April 2013 I'm fairly confident in saying that David Cameron puts in considerably…

No one goes into a political office because they want the salary. Any one who can get there is usually already rich enough that the salary doesn't make much difference. If you consider the amount of money they spend campaigning, they effectively end up paying to have the job. They take the job because of the power that comes with the job, not because of the salary.

Re: Mozilla’s reliance on Google is increasing: 90% of 2012 revenue

#90
post #79

Where is the evidence that the revenue is coming from Google ? If you look at the actual report[1], Google is never mentioned. From that all we can conclude is that Mozilla has made more revenue on Royalties. Mozilla has diversified it's income stream with FirefoxOS and it's entry into the mobile market. Couldn't some of the royalties come from Telephonica and other mobile operators ? [1]: https://static.mozilla.com/…

"Concentrations of Risk: Mozilla entered into a contract with a search engine provider for royalties which expires November 2014. The previous contract term expired in November 2011. Approximately 90% and 85% of royalty revenue for 2012 and 2011, respectively, was derived from this contract. The receivable from this search engine provider represented 69% and 77% of the December 31, 2012 and 2011 outstanding receivables, respectively."
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