Mozilla is pleased to announce that the Mozilla Firefox Challenge, powered by CrowdRise, wrapped up last night and raised more than $680,000 by thousands of people around the world for social and humanitarian causes, turning individual action into global impact.

Mozilla builds products, like Firefox, that put users in control of their online experience and shape the future of the Web — not for profit, but for good.  As part of our commitment to make a difference in the world, we set out to get everyone in the spirit of doing good.

We brought together 12 cause-minded celebrities, and started each team with a $5,000 donation and  then invited the world to take part by donating to a celebrity’s cause or fundraising for their own cause.

The cause that raised the most money during the challenge would receive an additional $25,000 donation from Mozilla.

Sophia Bush, actress, director and spokesperson, will be claiming that prize for raising more than $110,000 for F Cancer. F Cancer has set out to educate everyone to recognize crucial early warning signs of cancer and inspire them turn around and spread the word to loved ones who may be at risk.

It was a close challenge and we would also like to  recognize the runners up who include Hilarity for Charity with the support of Seth Rogen, The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust with the support of Edward Norton and Nothing but Nets with the support of Jonah Hill.

Mozilla would like to extend our congratulations and sincere gratitude to all participating individuals and organizations that made the Mozilla Firefox Challenge a major success. Thank you all for helping us do a world of good.

Beyond the obvious, Firefox 4 more profoundly starts the redefinition of the “browser” – from a piece of code traditionally used to simply view, and link to static information, to a trusted environment we live our online lives in, and which we rely on to securely engage with information, applications, friends, colleagues and so much more.

As we do so much more online, we must expect so much more from our browser environment. We should expect it to know who we are, wherever we go. We should expect it to remember such simple things as history, passwords, open tabs, open applications – and remember those on our behalf, wherever we go online, on any device, and without the need to re-enter anything. We should expect it to move at human speed, while being completely customizable and yet so simple and intuitive, anyone can use it. We should expect it to enable us to live in the level of privacy and security WE choose to, everywhere WE go.

In short, we should expect our browser to answer to no one but us!

Mozilla is a community of nearly 50,000 contributors worldwide who come together to build a better Internet that is free, open and accessible to all. If you are one of the more than 400 million users of Firefox already, or if you are brand new to Firefox, welcome to 4, we hope you enjoy the freedom.

Last week Mozilla submitted comments to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in response to their request for comment on a proposal describing a new framework for protecting consumer privacy in both online and offline environments. The FTC sought input on a broad range of of issues from online privacy protections for children to the blending of distinctions between PII and non-PII. More than 400 comments were submitted from a wide array of interests including  individuals, consumer groups, advocacy coalitions, advertisers, social networks and all kinds of service providers. You can see the complete list here. It’s worth reading a few of these to get a sense of the discourse (i.e. Future of Privacy Forum, Facebook, CDT, and US Chamber of Commerce)

In summary, the Mozilla comments recommended:

• Expanding the definition of personal information to data that can be reasonably linked to a specific consumer, computer or device. The emergence of browsing history, geolocation, behavioral advertising data, browser fingerprints and the social graph are examples of personal information that warrant additional consideration to prevent unintended secondary uses.
• Adding industry best practices, standardization and technology tools to Privacy By Design initiatives to help consumers make sense of an array of similar and confusing privacy configurations across the Web.
• Adoption and creation of a uniform and comprehensive choice mechanism through a new Do Not Track (DNT) HTTP header as part of an evolutionary arc of privacy improvements.
• Continued FTC leadership to develop consensus on the scope of DNT as it relates to online behavioral advertising and implementation across the online advertising industry.
• Using contextual notices in conjunction with other enhancements, such as graphical icons, to improve online privacy policies and notices.

We expect the FTC will spend some time evaluating and organizing the feedback they received, and later this year, will issue a follow-up report with suggested next steps.

Thanks to the many, many people who contributed to the comments and in particular, Alex Fowler and Sid Stamm who led the drafting and development process.

For the next three years, we will have the opportunity to engage a huge community, bring people together for trainings and in-person events, and ultimately build software to address the challenges facing news organizations.

We’ll be working with some amazing news partners: the BBC, the Boston Globe, The Guardian, and Zeit Online, who are launching the partnership with us, and many more that we will invite to join the initiative.

More information on the partnership and ways to get involved can be found on the blogs of John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Mozilla project lead Nathaniel James‎ and Philip Smith.

Background on Mozilla and media in recent blog posts from Mark Surman, Executive Director of Mozilla.

Mozilla has just filed its audited financial statements for 2009. This is the perfect time to look at the state of the Mozilla mission, our successes, our opportunities and our challenges. This year we’re trying a different format to better reflect the scope of Mozilla and to make better use of video and visual information. We’re hosting this year’s State of Mozilla at our main website rather than at this blog. Please take a look!

The Mozilla community is excited to celebrate the 6th birthday of Firefox, the Web browser of choice for nearly 400 million people worldwide.

Image Credit: Gen Kanai

Mozilla was established more than 10 years ago as a non-profit organization with a mission to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web. Six years ago, Mozilla released Firefox 1.0 offering people a better Web experience.

Today, Firefox is available in more than 70 languages and offers an easy way for people to enjoy rich Web experiences. Nearly a quarter of Internet users choose Firefox as their trusted ambassador to the Web. More than 150 million people choose Firefox Add-ons to customize their Web experience.

The success of Firefox is due to the passionate and dedicated Mozilla community, comprised of tens of thousands of developers, localizers, testers, ambassadors and campus reps.

This year, to celebrate Firefox and the Mozilla community’s work promoting innovation, choice and openness on the Web, we ask for your help to showcase how people love and use Firefox in your part of the world. Just send us a postcard with your message about Firefox and your FoxCard will be featured in our Mountain View or Paris offices. You can even win Firefox goodies when you send in your FoxCard. Check out our FoxCards page on Facebook or Spread Firefox for more information.

If you want to know what’s next for Firefox, help us test Firefox 4 Beta and send us your feedback.

Patents owned by Open Invention Network are available royalty-free to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System. By joining, Mozilla receives cross-licenses from other OIN licensees, but more importantly, for the long term, it affords us a chance to work with OIN in reducing IP threats to open source development and innovation. This may include a defensive publications program that would make it harder for others to patent work created by Mozilla contributors, sharing defensive tactics, and cooperation to minimize patent threats.

This doesn’t mean we’re suddenly enthused about patents in any way, but OIN is doing some good work, and I believe that any protections that they afford Mozilla are on the whole more positive, and outweigh reservations about the patent the system.

The award honor was announced in a press release issued by Frost & Sullivan, excerpt below:

“Profiled in TIME Magazine among their top 100 Scientists and Thinkers, Mitchell Baker is the visionary behind the Mozilla Project and is responsible for organizing and motivating a massive, worldwide collective of employees and volunteers who are breathing new life into the Internet with the Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla products.

Serving as general manager of the Mozilla project since 1999, Baker shaped the license under which Netscape’s source code was released. In 2003, she became president and founder of the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to openness and innovation on the Internet. As Chairperson of Mozilla, Baker continues her commitment to an open, innovative Web and the infinite possibilities it presents.”

Please join in congratulating Mitchell on this achievement!

But the world is changing. People access the Web from many devices, including their mobile phones. As people move through the day from their home computer to mobile phone to work computer and back again, the rich personalization provided by Firefox is sacrificed.

At the same time, faster networks, cheaper cloud storage, and more powerful hardware, especially on mobile devices, enable new possibilities.

Mozilla launched an exploration (the Weave project) into how multiple devices, connected through the cloud, could make the personal Web experience portable across multiple computers and devices, while providing unprecedented privacy protection. That exploration has resulted in a set of products, features and services that provide great user experiences and begin to create new possibilities for developers:

Firefox Sync (formerly Weave Sync) – Currently packaged as a free Firefox Add-on, Sync will be an integrated (opt-in, of course) feature of Firefox 4. It makes your bookmarks, history, Awesome Bar intelligence, passwords, form-fill data and open tabs accessible from Firefox running on other computers and mobile phones. And unlike cloud services that use your data to track your travels throughout the Web for ad targeting or other purposes, Firefox Sync encrypts all of your data before sending it to the server. This means you do not have to sacrifice any privacy or control while still getting the convenience of ubiquitous access to your data using Firefox Sync.

Firefox Home for iPhone – For users of Firefox Sync (don’t forget to install it on your computer today, so that you’re ready to go when Firefox Home for the iPhone arrives!), Firefox Home gives iPhone owners instant, secure access to the bookmarks and open tabs from Firefox on their computers, as well as a version of the Awesome Bar that quickly gets them to the right website. Firefox Home provides the comfort that comes from knowing you can quickly get to the information you need wherever you are. You’ve already done the work to find what you need on the Web. Why start all over again on your iPhone?

Developer API – Firefox Sync and Firefox Home are built upon open, simple and powerful REST APIs that you can use for your own applications. The User API enables account creation, authentication and other account-related actions. The Sync API handles data storage and retrieval. These APIs work hand-in-hand to provide a complete end-to-end synchronization service. All of our code is open source, including that for the server, which means you can even run your own servers if you want.

We’re building services that make the user experience more personal, portable and privacy-protected while providing developers with a platform and tools that are easy, effective and extensible. Join us by trying Firefox Sync today and by learning more about how to build upon our platform. For more information about Firefox Home, check out our progress, updates and FAQ here.