Two points:

Mozilla is pumping out mostly user facing open source software, which will probably attract less money than, say, Red Hat.

Also, it's not that no company except Google is backing them. It's that they get a huge amount of money from their search box - currently paid by Google. Microsoft might well be happy to become the default and pay just as much.

Microsoft wasn't interested in paying anything near that much, nor was Yahoo, that's why talks collapsed during the negotiations.

Google does consider the search engine placement valuable but it is probably also funding Mozilla as a hedge against anti-trust lawsuits.

That's probably because it's not worth nearly as much to MS or Yahoo. I'm sure a non-trivial percentage of users would change the default search away from Bing.

Also, with Yahoo's search results now coming from Bing, this does mean that the biggest potential sources of funding are all linked to companies who compete directly with Mozilla's biggest product - Google and Microsoft have their own browsers. It's certainly not an ideal position for Mozilla.

There are other search engines that may be interested in something like this. While strange bedfellows for geopolitical reasons, I could see Yandex or Baidu doing a default search deal in order to break into the English speaking market a little more.

Mozilla works on some services too.

For instance, Mozilla Persona is a simple sign-in solution for the web. Learn more at https://www.mozilla.org/persona/

Edit 3: Fixed link for international readers

Oh, for sure. That's why I said "mostly". But the majority mindshare/publicity is for their user-facing stuff.

Google isn't backing them with $300M/year because Mozilla is pumping out good open source software. They are doing it to maintain their dominance in search and keep Bing, DDG, Blekko at bay. For example, they have a similar deal with the closed source(till recently) Opera browser.

I wish Mozilla would stick to its principles and switch the default to a privacy conscious search engine like DuckDuckGo and give it a much needed boost in keyword relevance data.

Mozilla cares a lot more about happy users than about your principles. They're not going to switch to dramatically worse search results just to appease the tin hat crowd.

> They're not going to switch to dramatically worse search results just to appease the tin hat crowd.

Calling them the "tin hat" crowd would suggest that they are delusion when, in fact, the U.S. government has repeatedly admitted that they are spying everybody and they don't understand why anyone should complain.

Just because they are out to get you doesn’t mean you aren’t paranoid.

Mozilla is a nonprofit with its own principles in is charter. It isn't just a business.

An incorrect albeit widespread misconception. Mozilla is _both_ the Mozilla Corporation, an ordinary business, _and_ the Mozilla Foundation, a not-for-profit organization.

True, but not in contradiction with my earlier statement.

The corporation's charter is to support the Foundation's goals through market activities not allowed for nonprofits, not to generate profit as a traditional joint-stock corporation.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

> I wish Mozilla would stick to its principles and switch the default to a privacy conscious search engine like DuckDuckGo

Which of Mozilla's principles (rather than yours) would this be "sticking with"?

privacy? isnt the point of persona?