Mountain View, CA, and Munich, Germany; 23 August 2016: Mozilla today announced a strategic investment in Cliqz GmbH to enable innovation of privacy-focused search experiences. Cliqz is headquartered in Munich and is majority-owned by international media and technology company Hubert Burda Media. Mozilla is headquartered in Mountain View, CA and is the creator of the Firefox web browser.
The Cliqz for Firefox Add-on is already available as a free download. It adds to Firefox an innovative quick search engine as well as privacy and safety enhancements such as anti-tracking. Cliqz quick search is optimized for German language and shows website suggestions, news and information to enable users to search and get to what they want more quickly. In case users need more or different website suggestions, they can easily redirect their search to another search engine. Cliqz’s privacy-by-design architecture technology guarantees that no personal data or personally identifiable information is transmitted or saved on its servers.
Jean-Paul Schmetz, Founder and Managing Director, Cliqz: “Mozilla is the ideal company for Cliqz to work with because we both believe in an open Internet where people have control over their data. Data and search are our core competencies and it makes us proud to contribute our search and privacy technologies to the Mozilla ecosystem.“
Mark Mayo, Senior Vice President, Mozilla Firefox said, “Mozilla is excited to work with Cliqz because we see how their products align with the Mozilla mission. We are proud to help advance the privacy-focused innovation from Cliqz through this strategic investment in their company.”
In addition to the Firefox Add-on, Cliqz quick search is available in Cliqz’s own browsers for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS. Cliqz is the first browser with a built-in quick search. The Cliqz desktop and iOS versions are built on Mozilla Firefox open source technology and offers built-in privacy and safety features: Cliqz anti-tracking and anti-phishing, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s HTTPS Everywhere.
About Mozilla
Mozilla is a pioneer and advocate for the Open Web for more than 15 years. We create and promote open standards that enable innovation and advance the Web as a platform for all. Today, hundreds of millions of people worldwide use Mozilla Firefox to experience the Web on computers, tablets and mobile devices. For more information, visit www.mozilla.org.
About Cliqz
The mission of the German startup Cliqz is to redesign the Internet for the user by combining the power of data, browser, and search. In Munich, approximately 100 experts from 30 different countries develop browsers and browser extensions with integrated search engines to bring users to their destination in the most direct way while protecting their privacy. Jean-Paul Schmetz founded Cliqz GmbH in 2008. Since May 2013, Cliqz GmbH has been majority-owned by Hubert Burda Media, one of Europe’s leading media and tech companies. In August 2016, Mozilla joined as a strategic minority investor. With CLIQZ for Firefox launched in June 2014, the concept of searching quickly via the browser gained traction fast with more than a million daily active users in just a few months. The CLIQZ browser for Mac and Windows with integrated anti-tracking launched in March 2016. The CLIQZ browser with built in quick search engine is also available for iOS and Android.
About Hubert Burda Media
Hubert Burda Media, headquartered in Munich, is an international technology and media company with over 540 brands and products that are oriented to the needs of consumers. Burda has 175 million users and approximately 60 million paying consumers. Its commercial success is driven by over 10,000 employees around the world: Burda is active in 19 markets, above all in Germany – where it is one of the country’s largest media groups – in Europe, the United States and Asia. Innovation is the driving force behind the organization, which builds on its original roots and values as a family-owned company. Burda has been a pioneer in adopting digital technology and is a trusted partner for the long-term success of digital business. Examples include etsy.com (invested since 2006) or Xing (invested since 2009). With DLD (Digital, Life, Design) Hubert Burda Media has established a global network on innovation, digitization, science and culture with conferences around the world.
Press contacts:
press-de@mozilla.com
Thomas Konrad
Cliqz GmbH
Arabellastraße 23
81925 München
Fon: +49 (0) 89 9250 1833
press@cliqz.com
Dorothee Stommel
Hubert Burda Media
dorothee.stommel@burda.com
Fon: +49 (0) 89 9250 2065
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Please find Cliqz’s press release here.