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Mozilla Lays Off a Quarter of Company Staff Due to Pandemic

To increase revenue, the company is going to focus on developing new products outside of Firefox, including a paid VPN service.

Michael Kan
 & Michael Kan Principal Reporter

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Firefox’s developer Mozilla is laying off about 250 company employees, citing the economic impact from COVID-19. 

Going into this year, the company launched a plan to run a leaner operation, including pausing hiring and cutting 70 staffers. But on Tuesday, Mozilla’s CEO Mitchell Baker said a “significant restructuring” was needed to keep the company financially afloat. 

“Economic conditions resulting from the global pandemic have significantly impacted our revenue. As a result, our pre-COVID plan was no longer workable,” she wrote in a blog post.  

Last November, Mozilla reported over 1,000 full-time employees, so the company is cutting about a quarter of its workforce. It’s also decided to close Mozilla’s operations in Taipei, Taiwan while another 60 people will “change teams,” Baker said in an internal message to employees. 

Mozilla generates most of its revenue through the Firefox browser. Although the product is free for consumers, the company has struck royalty deals with Google and Yahoo to feature their search engines in the browser as the default choice. However, money from the deals has been declining. In 2018, the royalties only raked in $429.7 million, down from $539.2 million the year before. 

The company also pulls in revenue from advertising. However, the pandemic has prompted many businesses to stop buying ads.

As a result, Mozilla is going to focus on developing new revenue streams outside of Firefox. “Recognizing that the old model where everything was free has consequences, means we must explore a range of different business opportunities and alternate value exchanges,” Baker said in her internal message. 

Related

One of Mozilla’s newest products includes a paid VPN service, which costs $4.99 a month. The company is also working on a VR-chatroom platform called Hubs, and a news reading app called Pockets, in addition to security and privacy-related products. 

Mozilla is creating a new design and user experience team to support these products. However, the company is cutting some costs around the Firefox browser. “We are reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tooling, and platform feature development, and transitioning adjacent security/privacy products to our New Products and Operations team,” Baker said.

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About Our Expert

Michael Kan

Michael Kan

Principal Reporter

My Experience

I've been a journalist for over 15 years. I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017, where I cover satellite internet services, cybersecurity, PC hardware, and more. I'm currently based in San Francisco, but previously spent over five years in China, covering the country's technology sector.

Since 2020, I've covered the launch and explosive growth of SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet service, writing 600+ stories on availability and feature launches, but also the regulatory battles over the expansion of satellite constellations, fights with rival providers like AST SpaceMobile and Amazon, and the effort to expand into satellite-based mobile service. I've combed through FCC filings for the latest news and driven to remote corners of California to test Starlink's cellular service.

I also cover cyber threats, from ransomware gangs to the emergence of AI-based malware. In 2024 and 2025, the FTC forced Avast to pay consumers $16.5 million for secretly harvesting and selling their personal information to third-party clients, as revealed in my joint investigation with Motherboard.

I also cover the PC graphics card market. Pandemic-era shortages led me to camp out in front of a Best Buy to get an RTX 3000. I'm now following how the AI-driven memory shortage is impacting the entire consumer electronics market. I'm always eager to learn more, so please jump in the comments with feedback and send me tips.

The Best Tech I've Had:

  • My first video game console: a Nintendo Famicom
  • I loved my Sega Saturn despite PlayStation's popularity.
  • The iPod Video I received as a gift in college
  • Xbox 360 FTW
  • The Galaxy Nexus was the first smartphone I was proud to own.
  • The PC desktop I built in 2013, which still works to this day.

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