Firefox is no longer the Internet Explorer/Edge alternative that it used to be for most people. Instead, Google was able to power through the browser market with Chrome thanks in part to Android as well as the Google home page. Mozilla hasn't been slouching though, the company's web browser still has a lot of fans but they have to look for ways to earn additional income to grow. One way Mozilla has done this in the past by getting paid by search engines to be the default option in Firefox and a new way looks to be a paid subscription service for its user base.

This is an interesting move from Mozilla as we don't see this from companies like Google or Microsoft. At least not in a way that is leveraged so heavily within the company's browser. This information about the Mozilla's new paid subscription service comes to us thanks to an interview from Mozilla CEO Chris Beard with t3n. Sadly, we weren't given much information about the paid service in the actual interview, but we did learn that they plan to launch it sometime within the month of October.

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Now, we've seen a number of new things Mozilla has launched as of late. Beyond the improvements they've made to Firefox, Mozilla has been hard at work launching completely new services for the company. Firefox Lockbox is its own in-house password manager, Firefox Send is its in-house file sharing service, and Firefox Reality is its VR web browser for platforms including Oculus, Vive, and Daydream. Mozilla even began testing a VPN subscription service last fall thanks to a partnership with ProtonVPN.

So it's easy to see how Mozilla could come up with a number of premium tier versions of these apps and services for its upcoming subscription plan. Sadly, this is nothing more than an educated guess on my part. So far, the only solid piece of information about the services of this subscription plan is Chris Beard telling us it would include a VPN service and some sort of cloud storage.


Via: The Verge | Source: t3n