// A Non-Profitβ’ Production
Mozzarella gives you the feeling of privacy, the illusion of control, and the very real weight of a browser that's basically Chrome now. Sponsored with love by Google.
* Free as in "free to browse, pay with data." Offer valid where surveillance capitalism exists. | Formerly: a good browser
Every year, Google β the advertising surveillance mega-corp we claim to protect you from β pays Mozzarella roughly $500,000,000 to remain the default search engine. This constitutes approximately 85β90% of our total revenue. We use this money to write strongly-worded blog posts about Big Tech.
Think of it as a protection racket, but reversed: the people doing the things we warn you about are funding our warnings. Circle of life.
We block some third-party trackers while our own telemetry pipeline quietly phones home. You get a little shield icon that says "14 trackers blocked." You feel great. Everyone wins.
* Does not include Firefox Suggest, sponsored shortcuts, Pocket recommendations, or our own analytics. Those are "different."
Unlike Chrome, we let you install extensions! We've only removed Manifest V3 parity... some of the time. Some extensions might break. Don't worry about it. The address bar is still customizable.
* Deep about:config options available for people who enjoy suffering. Mainstream settings progressively simplified since 2015.
We started as a lean alternative to Internet Explorer. We are now a pocket ecosystem containing a VPN upsell, a built-in PDF editor, Pocket (a read-later service we acquired), and a crypto wallet we eventually killed.
* Firefox Relay, Firefox Monitor, Firefox Lockwise, Firefox Send (also killed). We name things and sometimes remember to maintain them.
We acquired Pocket in 2017 and baked it into every browser install by default. Pocket tracks your reading habits, interests, and browsing patterns. It's integrated into your New Tab page unless you know to remove it.
* Pocket's privacy policy is not Mozilla's privacy policy. Technically separate. Conveniently bundled.
Out of the box, Firefox sends us technical and interaction data, crash reports, and usage statistics. You can turn this off! The option is in Preferences β Privacy & Security β scroll a lot β uncheck things with vague names.
* We are not selling your data. We are using it to "improve the product." This is a different sentence.
We added sponsored suggestions to the address bar. You type something, we show you ads from partners. It's contextual! It's helpful! It's absolutely fine. You can turn it off. We will not make it easy.
* Contextual Suggestions powered by AdMarketplace. Sponsored shortcuts powered by revenue. We're a non-profit, remember?
We started as the lean, mean alternative to Internet Explorer 6. That was a different time.
Here is a simplified version of what Firefox collects, partners with, and enables by default. Don't worry. We have a fox logo. Foxes are trustworthy.
| Feature / Behavior | Enabled by Default? | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Telemetry & Usage Data | ON by default | Sends interaction data, performance metrics, and feature usage to Mozilla. Opt-out buried in Privacy settings. |
| Crash Reporter | ON by default | Sends crash dumps to Mozilla. May include URLs and open tab info at time of crash. |
| Firefox Suggest (Sponsored URL Bar) | ON by default | Sends keystrokes to Mozilla servers as you type to serve "contextually relevant" sponsored results. |
| Pocket (third-party reading service) | Bundled in browser | Separate privacy policy. Tracks saves, interests, reading behavior. New Tab page shows sponsored content. |
| Google as default search | ON by default | Every search goes to Google. Google pays us for this. We publicly position against Google. Very normal. |
| DoH (DNS over HTTPS via Cloudflare) | US: ON by default | Routes DNS queries through Cloudflare instead of your ISP. Different entity sees your DNS. Upgrade? |
| Blocking trackers from actual advertisers | Partial | Enhanced Tracking Protection blocks many, but a list-based approach with known gaps and exceptions. |
From 2013 to 2016, Mozilla redirected enormous resources β funded substantially by your donations β into building a smartphone operating system called Firefox OS. The goal was to bring "the open web" to mobile.
It launched on low-end devices in developing markets. It was slow. App support was minimal. Developers didn't adopt the web-app model. It was killed in 2016. The assets were open-sourced. The phones were largely forgotten. The lessons were not visibly applied.
"Using Firefox feels like you're doing something good." β Every Firefox User, Who Then Checked Their RAM Usage
* This comparison is satirical. Both browsers have trade-offs. Firefox IS meaningfully better than Chrome in several ways. It's also funded by Chrome's maker. That is a real thing that is really true.