Mozilla fires 70 people for delaying services that were supposed to increase sales

Mozilla Corporation laid off about 70 people on Wednesday, Techcrunch reports. The reason is that it is taking longer than anticipated to develop services that should generate more revenue through subscriptions, for example.

This is probably about 7 percent of Mozilla employees, according to figures from Techcrunch. The layoffs are necessary to cut costs now that turnover was disappointing last year and will probably remain below expectations next year, the site claims. Mozilla did not confirm the message itself, but a Mozilla employee also talks about layoffs on Twitter. Techcrunch quotes from an internal memo about the layoffs.

One such service is the VPN service, which users in the US can purchase for $5 a month. There will also be a Firefox Premium option with web storage in addition to VPN, Mozilla said earlier. With the revenue from subscriptions, Mozilla wants to be less dependent on deals with search engines in the future.

The number of layoffs could be even higher, reports Techcrunch. The consequences for the offices in France and the United Kingdom are not yet clear. Director Mitchell Baker says in a memo from which the site quotes that Mozilla wants to be more conservative with its finances in order to keep the company healthy in the long term.