Mozilla's record 2016 revenue funded its Firefox Quantum browser
Mozilla last week announced that revenue in 2016 exceeded $500 million, the first time it broke the half-billion-dollar bar, while development costs climbed 6% as the organization worked up Firefox Quantum, the revamped browser it shipped in November.
The bulk of the $520 million in revenue for the Mozilla Foundation came from royalty payments, with most of that coming, as usual, from deals struck for the default search engine spot in Firefox. Mozilla Foundation is the nonprofit that in turn runs Mozilla Corp., the commercial organization that creates and services Firefox for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android.
According to Mozilla's just-released financial statement for 2016, $504 million, or 97% of all revenue, came from royalty payments. The percentage of revenue derived from royalties has never dipped below 91% - Mozilla's fortunes have always been tied to Firefox's search contracts - but 2016's portion was lower than the 99% record set in 2015.