Mozilla's revenue in 2017 increased by 8% over the year prior but expenses shot up more than twice that, by 17%, during the same period.

Most of the $562 million in revenue for the Mozilla Foundation came from royalty payments, with the bulk of that generated from various deals struck for the default search engine spot in Firefox. Mozilla Foundation is the nonprofit that in turn runs Mozilla Corp., the commercial organization that creates and services the Firefox browser for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android.

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According to Mozilla's 2017 financial statement released on Tuesday, $539 million, or about 96% of all revenue, came from royalty payments. The percentage of revenue derived from royalties has never been under 91% – Mozilla's fortunes have always been tied to Firefox's search contracts – but 2017's portion was slightly lower than 2016's.

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