To lead, we need to evolve.

To lead the charge of changing the culture of the internet, we need to do more to develop the direct relationships that make the Firefox and Mozilla experiences fully responsive to the needs of consumers today. It is no longer enough to build great products, package them up and put them out there for people to use.

Over the coming years, we will become the leading provider of user agency and online privacy by developing long-term trusted relationships with "conscious choosers" with a focus on helping people navigate their connected lives.

In 2018, we began taking the steps to soon be able to offer a fully connected and integrated Firefox experience directly to the people who use our products and services. Some of these efforts have also been designed to enable Mozilla to support revenue diversification and growth. By growing additional sources of revenue in addition to our successful search engine partnerships, we can continue to independently provide the products and services users want, and fuel the Mozilla Foundation’s movement building and advocacy work.

We have undertaken this new work, while still remaining true to our roots and the transparent open source tradition in which we started.

Continuously building our core to fuel growth

Mozilla Corporation creates products, advances public policy and explores new technology that give people more control over their lives online, and shapes the future of the internet platform for the public good.

Building on the success of Firefox Quantum, Mozilla Corporation has a renewed focus on better enabling people to take control of their internet-connected lives as their trusted personal agent. In 2018, this has driven a focus on continuing the evolution of the Firefox browsers while we explore new products, technology and business models to better serve our users and advance our agenda for a healthier internet.

With the relaunch of the Firefox Quantum desktop web browser in 2017, the focus has been on testing and introducing a variety of new web-based products and services.

Millions of people have relied upon Mozilla products as their trusted resource for desktop and mobile web browsing. Billions benefit from the open web platform we have championed.

The internet now permeates everyday life. People connect across multiple devices. Personal data is now the source of power and influence over individuals, outside of their control and to the benefit of bad actors and the world’s largest companies. People are outclassed and the user agents of the past are no longer sufficient to deliver upon our vision of the future.

We have led a cultural shift with a growing and influential market of consumers waking up and demanding more. We expect this shift to accelerate, and now is our opportunity to evolve to become the leading provider of user agency and privacy online.

The overhaul of our core browser has given Mozilla Corporation the ability to begin the exploration of new user engagement and revenue models derived from Firefox to meet these ambitious goals. Specifically in 2018 we began testing in Firefox a new paid virtual private network (VPN) service and a password manager called Lockwise which is currently being offered for free. Over time, with deep engagement with our users, we expect to offer premium solutions.

For instance, our market tests drove our decision to integrate Pocket recommendations and sponsored content into the Firefox new tab experience.

In 2018 we also launched Firefox Monitor, a free service which allows people to check whether their email address has been a part of a recent security breach. We’ve integrated this notification feature into the Firefox desktop and mobile browsers so users know if sites they are visiting have been recently breached. The Monitor service is now offered in 20 languages worldwide.

Additionally, given the scope of our ambition to change the culture of the internet, the Mozilla Corporation has also evolved its partnership model so we can work in concert with like-minded technology providers to test and develop new security-focused protocols like DNS over HTTPS and Encrypted Server Name Indication - both of which we’ve partnered with Cloudflare to test in the U.S. market.

We’ve applied our new partnership model to marketing efforts as well, developing unique collaborations with partners from ProPublica to artist collectives to bring information and product experiences to consumers in surprising ways like the Glass Room in London, the Firefox Election Bundle and the Data Leeks awareness campaign, as well as an award-winning podcast IRL.

Our exploration of these new arenas and partnerships is a good complement to our ongoing focus on making Firefox the most performant web browser available. To that end, we have begun rolling out a new approach to limit online tracking called Content Blocking that protects user privacy while still enabling publishers and advertisers to reach their intended audiences and users to access and discover relevant worthwhile content.

We are also looking to the future, identifying the smart bets that will enable Mozilla to stay at the leading edge of innovation.

In 2017 we launched Firefox Rocket in Indonesia, a lightweight browser designed specifically to meet the needs of consumers in this emerging market. Based on user feedback, Rocket was rebranded as Firefox Lite in 2018 and updated to include a feature that allows users to save web pages for offline reading.

Mozilla’s growth isn’t limited by geography. In 2018, the mixed reality team at Mozilla Corporation brought Firefox to another dimension with the launch of a new web browser that has been designed from the ground up to work on stand-alone virtual and augmented reality (or mixed reality) headsets. Firefox Reality is available in the Viveport, Oculus, and Daydream app stores. Our Common Voice project is crowdsourcing global voice data to protect the ability for many to contribute to the development of speech-enabled products and services, instead of just a handful of large companies.

Mozilla Corporation’s global efforts are not limited to production development and innovation either. Sitting at the nexus of product and policy, Mozilla is a trusted, independent voice in the development of legislation, business practices and industry standards that shape the web internationally.

As an example, Mozilla Corporation’s policy team has been instrumental in highlighting the need for strong data protection measures in India as a way to protect personal information collected by Aadhaar, India’s biometric identification system that has seen several high-profile security lapses. We’ve also been working on privacy and data protection globally, including in the United States, Brazil, the European Union, and Kenya.

As the internet grows more and more centralized, Mozilla is working to establish interoperability as a key piece of competition online, engaging with policymakers in the United States and the European Union.

Disinformation and misinformation online are undermining stability and democracy around the world, and the road ahead is long. Working with industry allies in Brussels, Mozilla is leading the way to identify practices and principles that will make a real difference, including examining responses to fake news.

Mozilla continues its leadership on net neutrality through litigation and legislative advocacy in the United States and India.

Mozilla led the industry and civil society coalition that produced a new government vulnerabilities equities process charter, improving transparency and due process in how the U.S. government handles security vulnerabilities it discovers - and then we took that agenda to Europe, and are continuing our advocacy in Brussels.

With the European Union nearing the end of a lengthy copyright reform process, and moving to adopt dangerous restrictive proposals that would harm creativity and innovation online - Mozilla continues our years-long fight to improve the outcome as best we can.