Firefox Premium is very real and will arrive in October

Firefox Premium is a new Mozilla project that will offer added services in the search for a new source of funding for the web browser and thereby reduce the enormous financial dependence of Google.

In an interview with the German magazine T3N, the CEO of Mozilla, Chris Beard, confirmed that the project is in the final stages of planning. The forecasts are for a launch in October.

How will Firefox Premium be?

As rumors said, it will be a new subscription service that will offer a set of premium services such as online storage and a VPN to increase the security and privacy of customers on the Internet.

This new version of the browser will be paid, but will also offer a "free level" including some of its features. Neither the prices nor the "level" of the free version have been specified. Recall the association of Mozilla with ProtonVPN to use the network of the Swiss provider in a virtual private network in Firefox.

We assume that Mozilla could offer limited bandwidth for the free and extended version in the paid version. The same with online storage. The standard version will remain as free and free (distributed as open source) as we know so far. Let's clarify that "free" does not necessarily mean "free". There is no payment for the use of software, but for added services, something very common in Open Source developments for companies.

The motivation of Firefox Premium is clear: Mozilla says it is "working to balance its revenue sources" and monetize its developments, the main one, its web browser. The paid version of the browser would be linked to the Search and Content (Pocket).

Recall that searches account for 90% of all revenue from Mozilla and most of them come from Google in a huge dependence that any company (even a nonprofit organization like this) should reduce. That is the goal. And it will not be easy. Yahoo! is dead and buried and Microsoft's Bing - even with advances - is light years ahead of Google Search in positioning and the previous agreement between Microsoft and Mozilla ended badly and some sources see it as one of the causes of the fall of Firefox in market share.

So we ask you to comment on the million dollar question. Would you be willing to pay for a premium version of Firefox? Can Firefox survive in a world monopolized by Google, more than ever after Microsoft's decision to use Chromium in Edge?