Mozilla employs 250 people, about a quarter of its workforce, and plans to refocus some teams on projects designed to make money. The company will have roughly 750 employees ahead, a spokesman confirmed.
The coronavirus pandemic “affects our revenue,” Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker wrote this morning in a blog post. “As a result, our pre-COVID plan was no longer working.”
Mozilla’s operations in Taipei will be shut down as a result of the dismissals. The company did not say otherwise which teams will be affected. Mozilla fired earlier in January 70, accusing the slow launch of new revenue products, according to TechCrunch.
As part of the layoffs, Baker proposed a series of new focal points for Mozilla to set a stronger course for the company. This includes focusing on building community, building new products that “limit harm” and using “that people love and want”, and crucially, to build new revenue streams.
Mozilla makes most of its money from companies that pay to make their search engine the default in Firefox. This includes deals with Baidu in China, Yandex in Russia, and most notably, Google in the US and most of the rest of the world. The company also makes money from royalties, subscriptions and advertisements, but those searches still represent the “majority” of its turnover.
Baker says Mozilla will initially focus on products such as Pocket, its VPN service, its VR chatroom hubs, and new “security and privacy” tools. The company began launching paid consumer services last year, offering a news subscription and accessing a VPN directly from within Firefox.
Firefox is also gaining a stronger focus on user growth “through differentiated user experiences.” However, that means reducing investment in other areas, such as building developer tools.
Mozilla has had a rough decade as Firefox’s market share slumped and attempts at larger projects – such as a Firefox phone with Firefox OS – fell apart. Baker seems to recognize that Mozilla needs to meet people wherever they are, and build products that people want to use on the platforms they already use. She became CEO in April and was appointed interim CEO in December 2019; Baker has been the President of the Mozilla Foundation since 2003.
“I desperately wish there was another way to set Mozilla up for long-term success in building a better Internet,” Baker wrote in her blog post. “But to move forward, we need to be organized to think about another world.”
