Mozilla to bring paid subscription to Firefox

Mozilla, the maker of Open Source browser Firefox, is planning to offer a subscription service within Firefox that would offer users access to "premium" features like a Virtual Private Network (VPN) service and Cloud storage.

In an interview, Chris Beard, CEO, Mozilla mentioned that the company intends to begin offering the subscriptions starting October, The Verge reported on Monday.

As of now, it remains unclear if this would be a single subscription service offering multiple features, or if these will be separate subscription services.

With this plan, Mozilla aims to develop "diverse sources of revenue" to avoid being heavily reliant on capital that comes from search companies that pay to be featured in the Firefox browser.

The company said it would not charge for any existing Firefox features as part of its shift to offering subscription services.

In October 2018, Mozilla started testing a VPN subscription service that was made available to only a small group of users who were allowed to subscribe through Firefox, paying $10 per month for access to ProtonVPN.

"A high-performing, free and private-by-default Firefox browser will continue to be central to our core service offerings," the report quoted Dave Camp, Senior Vice President of Firefox, as saying.