Why Chrome doesn't dazzle Mozilla's chairman

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Stephen Shankland CNET News

Published: 20 Nov 2008 16:01 GMT

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Things have become a lot more complicated in recent months for Mitchell Baker, the Mozilla Foundation's chairman and 'chief lizard wrangler'.

Gone are the days when Microsoft's Internet Explorer was the sole rival for Mozilla's Firefox. A new open-source browser, Google Chrome, has come to town, and it's from the company that provided $66m (£45m) of the Mozilla Foundation's $75m in 2007 revenue.

There are other browser alternatives — Opera and Safari, for example — but Chrome is likely to catch on with the same techno-savvy, early-adopter, Google-proficient crowd that's been so passionate about Firefox. Baker, though, isn't worried.

For one thing, she argues, Mozilla gets its Google revenue from shared advertising revenue generated when people use Mozilla's built-in Google search abilities. In other words, Mozilla is just another advertising partner — a status Google was willing to extend to a far greater competitor, Yahoo, though Google backed away from that deal when threatened with a US Justice Department antitrust lawsuit.

For another, she doesn't feel threatened by Chrome's market share. That's not to say she's complacent about it, though. ZDNet UK's sister site, CNET News.com, caught up with Baker on Tuesday, and asked her opinion about Google, Chrome, the new HTML version 5, the future of the web, and other matters.

Q: Mozilla pulled in $75m in 2007. How significant is that figure?
A: It's a significant number to us. It's about what we expected. We're happy with it. It's an amount of money that allows us to be sustainable, plus has some savings. And it's generated in way that allows us flexibility and freedom.

It's only a 12 percent increase over Mozilla's 2006 revenue, which had grown faster. Surely, there are more users doing more searches. Why is the growth rate tapering off?
As in many cases, there's [effectively] a discount with bulk and volume. With volume, you often get paid less per unit. The revenue per-search isn't linear.

Mozilla gets paid by Google for the browser search box and the start page, both of which default to Google, correct?
That's correct. But the one thing most people forget is, we have an arrangement not just with Google but also with Yahoo. The combination of Google's market share and the default piece means the vast majority [of Mozilla revenue] comes from Google. We also get a small amount of revenue from Amazon.

Is the revenue based on Firefox downloads? Search queries?
It's analogous to what you see on websites with Google AdSense (in which other sites show Google ads, and Google shares the resulting revenue when people click on those ads). It's a mechanism for ad distribution.

So Mozilla is funded by ad revenue?
That's right. It's not the AdSense programme, but it's from ad revenue.

Are you concerned the revenue will dry up, now Google has Chrome?
We're careful, and we watch. But are we particularly worried? No. We expect Chrome to have some amount of market share, but we don't expect it to balloon. Our market share continues to grow, and we expect it to be healthy. The relationship between Google and Mozilla is good, in a business sense, for both organisations.

What effect has Chrome had on Firefox development?
It hasn't changed the way we work — our open-source and community way. Google is full of very smart people and more resources than the rest of us could imagine. We expect to see…

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