[Foundation-l] Fundraising banner ad

Tue Oct 23 18:21:51 UTC 2007

Anthony wrote:
> On 10/23/07, Brion Vibber <brion at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> For comparison, see the Mozilla Foundation's update on their finances:
>> http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/mitchell/archives/2007/10/beyond_sustainability.html
>>
>> Their expenditures are much higher than ours, with a different balance
>> (more people, less hosting), and their revenue is much, *much* bigger --
>> and almost all from a single partnership with Google.
>>
> That's a combination of Mozilla Foundation *and* Mozilla Corporation,
> which makes it incredibly misleading.

Not particularly misleading, since Mozilla Corporation was spun out for
financial reasons. In a similar situation (receiving most money from a
commercial source), we might well do something similar.

>> It's cool that they're riding high on the Google wave, but it's also a
>> precarious position; if Google pulled out, they'd lose almost all their
>> revenue.
> 
> If Google pulled out, they'd find someone else to pay big bucks to be
> the default search in Firefox.  And it's not like they'd lose revenue
> while looking for someone new - surely they renegotiate these
> contracts months before they expire.
> 
> You seem to be implying that this revenue from Google is a donation.
> It's not.  It's Google paying Mozilla Corporation (not Mozilla
> Foundation) to get tons of traffic by being the default search
> provider.

You seem to be implying that no lessons can be learned from looking at
other organizations. :)

-- brion