Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. A Net Applications survey put Firefox at 25% of the recorded usage share of web browsers as of November 2009, making it the second most popular browser in terms of current use worldwide after Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

To display web pages, Firefox uses the Geckolayout engine, which implements most currentweb standards in addition to several features which are intended to anticipate likely additions to the standards.

Latest Firefox features include tabbed browsing, spell checking, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, private browsing, location-aware browsing (aka "geolocation") based exclusively on a Googleservice and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through add-ons, created by third-party developers, of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.

Relationship with Google:

The Mozilla Corporation's relationship with Google has been noted in the media, especially with regard to their paid referral agreement. The release of the anti-phishing protection in Firefox 2 in particular raised considerable controversy: anti-phishing protection enabled by default is based on a list updated by twice-hourly downloads to the user's computer from Google's server. The user cannot change the data provider within the GUI, and is not informed who the default data provider is. The browser also sends Google's cookie with each update request. Some^[ Internet privacy advocacy groups have expressed concerns surrounding Google's possible uses of this data, especially that Firefox's privacy policy states that Google may share information gathered with "safebrowsing" service with third parties, including business partners. Google also promoted Mozilla Firefox throughYouTube until the release of Google Chrome. Recently, Mozilla Security assisted the search giant by pointing out a security flaw in Google's Chrome browser.

In 2005, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of US$52.9 million, with approximately 95 percent derived from search engine royalties. In 2006, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of US$66.9 million, with approximately 90 percent derived from search engine royalties. In 2007, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of US$75 million, with 88 percent of this sum (US$66 million) from Google.In 2008, both Mozilla organizations had a combined revenue of US$78.6 million, with 91 percent coming from Google. Mozilla Foundation and Corporation are being audited by the IRS and some believe its non-profit status may be called into question.