Firefox’s market share has cratered while Mozilla’s dependence on Google and executive pay have soared. We look at what John Solomon is really walking into.
Mozilla announced on Thursday that it’s hired John Solomon as its new Chief Marketing Officer. He’ll be replacing Lindsey Shepard O’Brien, who announced earlier this year that she’d be leaving because “it’s time for something new.”
Details of his employment — such as the size of his paycheck — haven’t been disclosed, which is OK, since we don’t know how much O’Brien made either. I’m guessing, however, that he’ll be making more than Mozilla can afford, given what we know about the organization’s history when it comes to executive pay. Mitchell Baker’s pay during her last four-year stint as Mozilla’s CEO (she served twice: from 2005 to 2008, and from 2019 to 2024) totaled something like $20-$30 million, based on what we know about her pay during the first two years of that period.
I should note that when Mitchell took over as CEO in 2019, Firefox’s share of the browser market was in the 5%-6% range. By 2024, that number had dropped to about 3%. That’s important when you consider that a substantial part of Mozilla’s income comes from money paid by Google in exchange for Firefox making Google its default search engine.
Google’s been paying plenty. Last year, Mozilla took in roughly $570 million, with its CFO telling The Verge that roughly 85% of that came from the Google search deal.
Ironically, when Baker ended her first stint as CEO in 2008 — at about the same time that Google released its Chrome browser — Firefox’s share of the browser market was on the rise and passed 20% for the first time. Despite Firefox’s much higher use, however, its take for sending traffic to Google search was much lower, although still high by any measure. That year Mozilla’s total revenue was about $79 million, with roughly 85%-90% of that coming from Google.
That being said, when you look at the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars that Firefox is getting from Google with practically nothing expected in return, it’s easy to see why the organization can’t see its way to developing a competitive browser.
The trouble for Mozilla is that its deal with Google is certainly going to drastically change soon. After losing an antitrust case in September, a judge ruled that Google can no longer enter into “exclusive” browser deals, which will certainly mean it will be cutting back on the amount it spends to have Firefox direct search its way.
It could’ve been worse. Prosecutors were asking for Google to no longer be able to enter into such deals at all.
Looking for Alternatives in a ‘Free’ Environment
What this means, of course, is that if Mozilla execs want to maintain their lifestyles, Solomon has his work cut out for him, considering that Firefox and its standalone email client/calendar counterpart Thunderbird are free products.
The most obvious move, now that Mozilla won’t be bound by an exclusive contract, would be to bring some other search engines on board to fill the opening left by Google’s non-exclusivity. However, Mozilla’s history indicates that might create additional problems that the browser can ill afford as it struggles to maintain a 3% user share.
Towards the end of 2014, Mozilla dropped Google and signed a five‑year deal with Yahoo, making it the default search engine in the US, which proved to be problematic. Even though users could easily change search engines — with Google available on a drop-down list — when Firefox 34 shipped in December 2014 with Yahoo as default, a large number of users found the forced move jarring and unwelcome.
Mozilla’s support forums filled with complaints, with many long‑time users threatening to stop using Firefox if “forced” to use Yahoo. Guides to restore Google as default quickly became some of the browser’s the most‑trafficked help pages. Later legal filings by Mozilla note that Firefox usage declined during the Yahoo period, with users being unhappy with Yahoo’s search quality and its ad load.
The deal, reportedly worth about $375 million a year, was contracted to run through 2019, but after Yahoo’s sale to Verizon, Mozilla invoked a termination clause and returned to Google as its default search in 2017. This led to a “sue you/sue me” episode: Yahoo’s new owner, Oath/Verizon, sued Mozilla for the early termination and Mozilla sued back, claiming Yahoo failed to deliver a competitive search product, which harmed Firefox by driving users away.
Solomon’s Resume
Solomon comes to the table with a strong resume. He spent nearly 7 1/2 years at Apple, leaving in 2021 after a nearly four-year stint as the company’s director of global marketing and communications. After that he spent nearly 4 1/2 years as the chief marketing officer at Therabody, a wellness‑tech company that’s best known as the maker of Theragun percussion massage devices.
At Mozilla, he comes on board without talking about the actions he will take to keep his new employer afloat financially, but with a statement that waxes poetic about Mozilla and Firefox on a more abstract level:
“As I think about the world my son will grow up in, I want it to be one where he can explore, learn, and create safely,” he said. “Mozilla is already doing the work that will make that future possible, and I’m honored to help tell those stories — not just for my son, but for people everywhere.”
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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