Most readers probably already know about the incredible, and encouraging, success of Mozilla’s open-source Firefox web browser.

For the benefit of those who don’t:

Only a couple of years ago, Firefox was the little browser that could — an open-source program created by thousands of contributors around the world without the benefit of a giant company like Microsoft to finance it.

Since then, Firefox, which has prospered under the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, has grown to be the largest rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, with 15 to 20 percent of the browser market worldwide and higher percentages in Europe and among technology devotees. It is the most popular alternative browser since Netscape, with about three times as many users as Apple’s Safari.

The above paragraphs are an excerpt from an article in yesterday’s New York Times examining the success story of Firefox and contemplating just what that success is likely to mean a few years down the road.

It’s an article we’d recommend to anyone who likes to keep our eye on the developments in the web world and who enjoy success stories (especially when they come in the form of underdog open-source software platforms).

But it’s also interesting from a larger perspective of what Firefox’s success means to the Internet as a whole, and just what role Google has played in all of this. After all, Firefox’s incredible rags-to-riches story seems a little less amazing when you consider that they have a special partnership with Google, the biggest of the Internet players.

According to Mozilla’s 2006 financial records, which were recently released, the foundation had $74 million in assets, the bulk invested in mutual funds and the like, and last year it collected $66 million in revenue. Eighty-five percent of that revenue came from a single source — Google, which has a royalty contract with Firefox.

… When the connection with Google was revealed more than a year ago, the question on popular tech Web sites like Slashdot.org was whether Mozilla was acting as a proxy in Google’s larger war with Microsoft and others.

… A Google spokeswoman would not comment on any of the issues raised by the Google-Mozilla relationship, but issued a statement: “Mozilla is a valued business partner because many users utilize Firefox to access Google products and services. We will continue to work with a variety of technology providers, including Mozilla, to ensure our mutual users have the best experience possible with our products and services.”

Of course, without that special relationship with Google, how would an upstart company have ever been able to compete with Microsoft—that other gorilla in the room?

Ms. [Mitchell] Baker {Chief executive of Firefox and chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation} says it was the community, not Google’s money, that made Firefox a player in the field. “Mozilla is successful because we have this giant set of people who care about it,” she said. “The fundamental infrastructure piece that keeps Mozilla independent from even a single source of income like Google is the diverse set of people.”

She added: “No amount of money would have allowed us to be as successful as we are.” Then, referring to Microsoft, she said, “We cannot outspend them.”

The rise of Firefox can be seen as an extension of the Netscape-Microsoft battle of the mid-1990s. After Microsoft largely wrested control of the market, Netscape decided in 1998 to release its code to the public, and immediately developers took up the challenge.

By 2003, AOL, which had acquired Netscape, released the browser code to the newly created Mozilla Foundation, and by November 2004, the first version of Firefox was released. At the time, it was promoted as pursuing the goals of being user-friendly, able to work on different operating systems and more secure. The corporation was created in 2005.

The browser’s other, unstated advantage, shared with other open-source projects, was A.B.M: Anybody but Microsoft.

The original article, by the Noam Cohen, is not only an informative rundown of the Firefox story but also an interesting peak into the Microsoft/Google dynamic that fuels so much of the computer and Internet industries. Read it here.