At this level, the perfect factor Mozilla Corp. has going for it’s that it’s not a publicly traded firm, as a result of if it was, its inventory could be getting slaughtered. The corporate’s CEO, Mitchell Baker, just lately departed, and up to date experiences put its share of the browser market within the low single digits.

However Mozilla isn’t any stranger to challenges. It was born into adversity, launched after the collapse of Netscape Communications in 2003. As one in every of its final acts, Netscape open-sourced the code for its eponymous browser. The Mozilla Basis was fashioned to take up the undertaking deserted by Netscape and create a brand new, trendy browser. And it did so with Microsoft proudly owning just about the whole browser house by that time.

Mozilla launched the Firefox browser in 2004 as the one viable different to Microsoft’s Web Explorer. Quick and nimble, Firefox ran circles across the growing older, bloated IE. Mozilla’s browser noticed a gradual achieve in market share, peaking in mid-2010 at 34%. However it will be all downhill from there as Google Chrome’s star rose all through the following decade. With Google placing its full weight behind Chrome, each Mozilla and Microsoft noticed important lack of market share.

Firefox got here so late to the cellular house that it by no means had any floor to lose. For iPhone customers there was Safari, constructed on WebKit, Apple’s open-source browser engine. On the Android aspect of issues, Chrome was preinstalled.

Squeezed on all sides, Mozilla has tried lately to place Firefox as a privacy-focused browser, however to no avail: Firefox’s market share has dwindled to just 3.3% whereas Chrome instructions 68.8%, in response to W3Counter. The federal authorities’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which screens visitors to authorities web sites for the previous 90 days, places Firefox at solely 2.2% of the market. 

“Shoppers and enterprise customers undertake what works finest for them, and they’re free to vary browsers on a whim or to attempt the most recent and newest options,” mentioned Todd R. Weiss, an impartial guide.

“And not using a price ticket or dedication for browsers, it’s exhausting to develop model loyalty, particularly because the merchandise, their safety, options, enhancements, and reputations change continuously over time,” he mentioned. “That’s what occurred to Firefox, because it occurred to Netscape Navigator, Microsoft Web Explorer, and different beforehand fashionable browsers during the last a number of many years.”

A part of the issue is Mozilla’s enterprise mannequin. Mozilla Corp., which manages Firefox, is an entirely owned subsidiary of the nonprofit Mozilla Basis, and all income are reinvested within the basis’s open-source tasks. It’s exhausting to monetize “free,” which is why there has by no means been an open-source firm the dimensions of Microsoft, Oracle, or SAP.

“Mozilla principally lives off donations. They don’t have any advertising funds. In the event that they wish to survive, they should discover a path to revenue so that they change into self-sustaining and might afford to compete with the merchandise they provide,” mentioned Rob Enderle, president of the Enderle Group.

“They want some out-of-the-box-thinking and a concentrate on making a income stream that can maintain them. With out that, they’re on a path to company loss of life, with the one query being after they’ll must prove the lights,” he added.

Mozilla doesn’t look like in any hazard of closing up store simply but. In keeping with its most up-to-date annual report for calendar 12 months 2022, the corporate is sitting on greater than $1 billion in money, equivalents, and short-term investments. Its debt is minimal.

However it is usually wholly depending on Google. Of the $593 million in income for 2022, $510 million of that was royalties paid by Google. These royalties come from making Google the default search engine within the Firefox browser. Subscriptions and advert income had been simply $75 million.

Mozilla has tried to interrupt its Google dependency by diversifying its merchandise, providing every thing from an encrypted e-mail service to a VR-focused browser. However critics say it has unfold itself too skinny, with too many tasks taking sources from Firefox. The departure of CEO Baker final month, appointment of an interim CEO by the top of the 12 months, and subsequent round of layoffs have carried out little to instill confidence in Firefox’s future.

“The shakeup on the prime is normally not signal,” mentioned Joe Karasin, president of digital advertising agency Karasin PPC. “I think that there are additional issues on the horizon, as Firefox hasn’t actually innovated something new prior to now few years, they usually allowed DuckDuckGo to actually personal the ‘non-public browser’ messaging and house.”

Mozilla declined our request for remark.

One other drawback exacerbating the difficulty has been Google and Microsoft urgent the accelerator on AI instruments, whereas Firefox has not included AI on any actual stage and is just simply now starting to pivot toward AI integration.

“As the larger manufacturers proceed to innovate, firms like Mozilla will finally be among the many lengthy checklist of also-rans within the browser market,” mentioned Karasin. “Because the world has trended towards cellular shopping, iPhones have built-in Safari browsers, and Androids clearly have Google Chrome. Firefox has been downloaded over 100 million instances from the Google Play Retailer, however what number of month-to-month and day by day lively customers it has is anybody’s guess.”

However Weiss holds out hope for a turnaround for Firefox. “I’m undecided if Firefox can do something to reverse these traits, nevertheless it is attainable in the event that they add extra options that customers love from browsers equivalent to Chrome and even Safari,” he mentioned. “Perhaps the Firefox group must be listening higher.”

It’s price noting that Firefox is the one mainstream browser constructed on an impartial, open-source browser engine whose roots don’t return to Apple’s WebKit engine. Google based mostly its Blink engine on WebKit, and Blink powers each Chrome and Chromium, the open-source browser upon which most different trendy browsers are constructed, together with Opera, Courageous, and Microsoft Edge. Persevering with to develop Firefox’s Gecko engine — and thus stopping a browser monoculture — is necessary for the well being of the online, say open-web advocates.

“Firefox is price sustaining and attempting to develop once more,” Weiss mentioned. “It has good bones.”

One glimmer of hope for Firefox and different different browsers has appeared within the wake of Apple’s latest rollout of iOS 17.4 to adjust to the Eurpean Union’s Digital Markets Act. When iPhone customers within the EU open Safari, they see a spash display screen that lets them select a default browser. Each Firefox and Brave have reported spikes in iOS installations amongst EU customers because the rollout.

“When customers get a transparent selection of iOS browsers, they’re selecting options to Safari. Perhaps that’s why Google nonetheless hasn’t applied a browser selection display screen on Android,” Brave posted on X. Absent such a display screen, Android customers should actively search out and obtain different browsers from the Google Play Retailer.

So Google has gained for now, however let’s not overlook that Microsoft gained this crown as soon as as effectively, and Google took it from them. Nevertheless, Google has a search service tied to Chrome, one thing Web Explorer didn’t have till Bing launched in 2009. That makes Google much less prone to repeat Microsoft’s mistake and pull growth sources from Chrome.

And there are many options to Chrome along with Firefox — Edge, Opera, Safari, Courageous, and Vivaldi amongst them — none of which have but to make a measurable dent in Chrome’s hegemony. For now, at the very least, Chrome guidelines the roost.