Mozilla making millions from Google search deal

Steve Safran January 4th, 2007

Google ads are even making money for browsers. ClickZ reports that Mozilla made $53 million in 2005 from a deal that sent traffic from the Firefox browser search box to Google’s search. Searchers don’t even have to click on a single ad for Mozilla to get money - it’s strictly a traffic-for-cash deal. Check out this jump: the deal netted the not-for-profit Mozilla Foundation $2.4 million in ‘03 and $5.8 million in ‘04 before making that nearly tenfold jump in ‘05. Of course, the jump is also related to the Firefox release in November of ‘04. (Mozilla says there have been 279 million browser downloads.) Can’t wait to see the 2006 numbers…