The Mozilla Foundation has released their latest annual report -- covering the time up through December of 2022 (Mozilla's reporting always lags by one year) -- and something peculiar leaps out of the data:
- The compensation of the Mozilla CEO has skyrocketed (by millions)
- While the Mozilla revenue drops
- And the Firefox Marketshare takes a nosedive
While, at first, this seems ridiculously lopsided... perhaps it actually makes sense.
Perhaps the decreasing Firefox marketshare is a good thing, from the Mozilla point of view.
Mozilla CEO gets a raise
Let's start by looking at the pay of the Mozilla CEO.
That's right. Your eyes do not deceive you. The Mozilla CEO earned $6,903,089 in 2022. Just shy of $7 Million.
The year prior (2021), the CEO earned $5.6 Million. A raise of $1.3 Million dollars. Not a bad year-on-year increase!
Now let's take a look at the core performance of Mozilla: The overall revenue, and the marketshare of their core product (Firefox) during that same period.
If a CEO gets a $1.3 Million dollar raise, surely those numbers will be excellent! ... Right?
Turns out... the revenue for Mozilla actually dropped between 2021 and 2022.
To be fair, not a huge drop. Revenue went from $600 Million in 2021 to $593 Million in 2022. Roughly $7 Million lower. A small decrease, percentage wise... but a decrease just the same.
The Firefox Nosedive
Now let's look at the marketshare of Mozilla's primary product: Firefox.
From the end of 2021 to the end of 2022 (the period during which the Mozilla CEO received a $1.3 Million Dollar raise), Firefox marketshare took a massive tumble.
Going from (an already declining) 3.79%... down to 3.04%.
It's almost as if there is an inverse relationship between Firefox Marketshare and Mozilla CEO compensation -- as marketshare goes down... CEO pay goes up by a similar percentage.
Absolutely wild.
Something doesn't add up... or does it?
So. What can we learn from all of this?
Well, for starters, it is clear that Mozilla CEO compensation is not tied to either the success of the Firefox web browser (their current primary product) or to the overall revenue of Mozilla.
So what, exactly, could be the justification for that massive pay raise?
Turns out there are two big, measurable goals that Mozilla appears to have... and, at those goals, it is performing exceptionally well:
- Continued increases to overall corporate financial assets.
- Transitioning Mozilla away from Firefox.
That first goal is rather obvious. Let's be honest, what company doesn't want to have a massive pile of financial assets?
In 2022, the Mozilla war-chest (total assets) grew to a staggering $1.3 Billion Dollars -- up $157 Million from the year prior. A huge increase to their financial assets.
With over half a Billion Dollars in cash alone. That's a lot of cheddar.
But that's only part of the story.
The De-Firefox-ification of Mozilla
Let's take another look at the 2022 revenue breakdown.
Note that revenue from "Royalties" is down substantially -- a decrease of $17 Million. Those "Royalties" are, in large part, made up of default search engine placement, within Firefox, for one single customer... Google. This decrease makes sense considering the signficant decline in Firefox marketshare.
But then look at the second row: "Subscription and advertising revenue".
What is that, exactly? That line item includes some of the more recently launched subscription services -- "Pocket Premium" and "Mozilla VPN" (plus some advertising placement). And, you'll note, that revenue jumped from $56 Million to $75 Million in 2022.
While that may be a drop in the bucket of the overall Mozilla revenue and war-chest... it's a critical strategy for Mozilla to diversify their revenue stream away from Firefox.
As it turns out, moving away from Firefox is exactly Mozilla's plan.
Earlier this year, Mozilla laid out their vision for the future of their organization -- and it did not include Firefox. The focus for the future of Mozilla -- according to Mozilla -- is primarily based around Artificial Intelligence services.
In fact, Mozilla leadership stated, quite plainly, that they intend to take Mozilla "in a different direction."
When you consider the goals of Mozilla... the decreasing Firefox marketshare is no longer much of a concern. In fact, moving revenue away from Firefox, while investing in A.I. systems (and other subscription services) becomes the primary goal.
And, at that, the Mozilla CEO is excelling.
The future of Mozilla
What does all of this mean for the future of Mozilla? What have we learned from Mozilla statements coupled with their financial reports?
- Mozilla rewards executives who oversee a decreasing success and reliance upon Firefox -- so we can expect more of that.
- In turn, that likely means reduced investment in Firefox development and promotion over the coming years.
- Mozilla intends to focus on A.I. -- so we can expect more A.I. investment, and possible A.I. services, in the year ahead.
- If all of that holds true, we can likely expect the Mozilla CEO to receive additional raises in the next annual reports.
If you are a fan of Firefox... none of that points to a particularly bright future.
That said... if you are the CEO at Mozilla... you might bring in enough income to buy your own island fortress pretty soon. And who doesn't want an island fortress?
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