Mozilla: Meet Sarbanes-Oxley (and Henry Blodget)
The insufferable Henry Blodget, the disgraced securities analyst who is barred from working in the securities industry (he met up with Eliot Spitzer), is back to his usual chatter. He's pushing for Mozilla to go public. He even recommends that Mozilla buy the Netscape brand and change the company's name to Netscape. Mozilla COO John Lilly responds by saying that Firefox/Mozilla is *not* going to IPO. CEO Mitchell Baker states that "For the foreseeable future, browsers are a fundamental part of Internet life. Firefox is a key component of keeping the web open, interoperable and participatory. Thus the importance of its public benefit nature."
In the end, these two gentlemen got it exactly right: Mozilla should not go public.
Blodget argues that Mozilla could be worth a lot on the public market and may go public this year or next. While acknowledging the perils of going public– primarily Sarbanes-Oxley costs–Blodget says that Mozilla could build a nice business simply by slapping an ad or two on the default landing page. And for good measure Blodget says that Firefox should buy the Netscape brand and rename the company.
Hmmm. Is Blodget having dot-com boom fantasies again? Maybe not–although renaming a company after a dead brand like Netscape doesn’t make sense. Dead brands rarely come back. WordPerfect? Pan-Am?
...As a public company it would be distracted and the product would suffer. You think Firefox can be weighty now? Just wait until Mozilla would have to monetize it.
...I’d love to be more optimistic, but Netscape got creamed. Opera isn’t exactly knocking the ball out of the park. And Firefox going public would only accomplish one thing: Providing a market price so Google could buy it.
Why not cash out? Mozilla the movement is hard for Microsoft to defend against. Mozilla the public company is outgunned on every level.
Comments (7)
And lets not forget that Mozilla isn't exactly cash-poor right now...
They make TONS of money from the search fields in their browsers and on their default landing page. They get a cut from google ads every time you do a google search from the search field.
I've seen estimates that Mozilla is making around $80 million a year... and that was a year or two ago.
Published: January 7, 2008 10:25 PM
I love how these idiots keep thinking if Mozilla went public, they would somehow achieve more success. Mozilla, a private company, is making Microsoft shake in their boots with a vastly superior product (firefox & co.). MS should focus their attention to that idiot Balmer (i.e. fire him), and hope their lucky stars that their XBOX division doesn't end up carrying the company in the future (somewhat how Playstation is for Sony). I'm relieved to hear such common sense from their COO; it would be a shame for Mozilla to fade out like that before they get few problems with their browser ironed out (which should be in the upcoming 3.0 version).
In any case, nice to see some internet/web design news at mises!
Published: January 8, 2008 12:17 AM
Really makes you wonder how far we've gone when a private group makes a product that is markedly superior to a commercial one with vastly greater resources, yet can't go "public" due to tremendously expensive legal concerns. when government regulations determine whether a browser can go public, makes you wonder how many other innovations and products we're not ever going to see.
actually, it doesn't, come to think of it.
Published: January 8, 2008 1:35 AM
A bit off topic, but I would like to point out that Firefox 3 beta 2 is really nice. Good to see that Mozilla isn't going away anytime soon.
Published: January 8, 2008 6:21 AM
"Really makes you wonder how far we've gone when a private group makes a product that is markedly superior to a commercial one with vastly greater resources"
That's the beauty of software. It's all about ideas. Money plays a role, but superior ideas and talent usually wins in the end.
Without that dynamic, we wouldn't have all these startups and the industry would look more like the car industry (small incremental changes, only a few huge players).
Just look at how Google rocketed to the top in the past 10 years and left all the other giants in the dust.
Published: January 8, 2008 11:01 AM
It may not be as big as Mozilla, but SAS is a privately owned company with annual rev of over $1 billion. SAS makes statistical analysis software.
There must be a huge financial advantage to being private else the private equity market wouldn't be booming.
Published: January 8, 2008 2:38 PM
Karen, what do you think are the chances that we'll see any SOX reform in the next few years?
Published: January 9, 2008 6:24 AM