Image: Mozilla, ZDNet, Jason Leung
Mozilla is expected to expand its virtual private network (VPN) offering in Germany and France by the end of Q1 2021, marking the service’s first expansion inside the EU.
The move comes after the browser maker formally launched the Mozilla VPN service last summer in the US, the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and Malaysia.
The Mozilla VPN service, which initially launched as a Firefox extension named Firefox Private Network, has currently expanded into a full-device VPN client, available for Windows 10, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS devices.
The service, which is built around the WireGuard protocol, uses servers provided by Mullvad and is currently priced at $5/month.
Mozilla says the VPN service currently runs on top of more than 280 servers across more than 30 countries across the globe, with “no logging” and “no bandwidth restriction” policies.
Since its informal announcement in 2019 and after its official launch in 2020, the VPN service has been one of the most highly-anticipated VPN offerings on the market, primarily due to Mozilla’s privacy-first reputation.
The browser maker is currently running a waitlist where users can sign up and be notified when the VPN service launches in their country.
The VPN service is also Mozilla’s first fully commercial product as part of a new business strategy the browser maker adopted last year. In August 2020, Mozilla fired more than 250 employees and moved away from several open-source and non-revenue-generating products to focus on developing its own revenue streams, as an alternative to its Google search deal that has usually accounted for most of the organization’s budget in the previous decade.
