Yes, Firefox reached a major milestone this week, surpassing 400 million downloads worldwide. But that's just the good news. There's another story swirling around the famously open source web browser - and it's a little less sunny.Last week, The New York York Times questioned whether the growing popularity of a Firefox extension called AdBlock Plus poses a threat to the ad-driven business models of entertainment, media, and search sites across the web. If enough people install the extension and other ad-killing browser gizmos, The Times asked, could they chip away at the bottom line of companies like CNN, Microsoft, and Google?
With roughly 2.5 million people using AdBlock Plus - and 300,000 to 400,000 more downloading the tool each month, according to its developer - this is certainly a valid question. But there's a second question worth asking, a question looming over the future of Firefox itself.
According to internet rumor, Google provides almost all of the revenue for the Mozilla Corp. - the commercial wing of the Mozilla Foundation, makers of Firefox. You know how it works: Google ponies up the dough, and Mozilla ties Firefox to certain Google tools. Most notably, Firefox uses a customized version of Google.com as its default home page.
The question is: As more and more people install AdBlock Plus, which is officially recommended by Mozilla, will Google continue to fund the browser?
When we asked Google for an answer, the company stayed quiet, as it did when The Times came calling. And we're still awaiting an email from Mozilla on the matter. But it isn't hard to connect the dots.
According to a March 2006 rumor trumpeted by Weblogs founder Jason Calacanis, Mozilla pulled in $72m in 2005, and most of that came from Google. In a subsequent blog post, Mozilla board member Chris Blizzard wouldn't verify the rumor, but he said these figures were "not off by an order of magnitude."
Meanwhile, AdBlock can be downloaded from the Mozilla website, where it's listed as one of the most popular Firefox extensions. And yes, it does a wonderful job of blocking ads on Google's AdSense network - not to mention banners served up by DoubleClick, the company Google's trying so very hard to purchase.
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