Read more.Firefox creator signs lucrative deal with Google.
Read more.Firefox creator signs lucrative deal with Google.
Works out as good value for Google - especially with the number of eyeballs and return visitors it brings.
However, 85 percent of the total revenue in 2012 is said to have been made through Google’s search engine.
Apologies if this is a business thing/to do with financial years working differently, but is this a typo that is meant to be 2011 or is it predicted income (and so shouldn't be in the past tense)?
acidrainy (21-12-2011)
Mozilla is a not for profit, what happens to all this money anyway? Do they have staff costs etc?
I realise the deal is mutually beneficial, but if I were the guys at Mozilla, I would be deeply uncomfortable about 6/7ths of my income coming straight from my biggest competitor, who could pull the plug at any time Mozilla gets on its nerves and consign Firefox to oblivion.
Think about it - staff costs, hardware costs, admin costs, etc.
Chivarly in the digital age, how poetic, lol, but in any case, I think it IS prudent to be weary of the big companies; EA used to be a decent company once upon a time, now look at them, same could be said of the likes of Activision.
I know at the moment Google haven't done anything particularly unsavoury in recent times but its that very same lackadaisical attitude from the mainstream that big companies depend on when they deem the time to become morally dubious is at hand and they do so with relish.
Irrespective of whether Google has behaved well so far, relying so heavily on your primary competitor for funding just isn't sensible. But where else is Mozilla's money going to come from other than the big search companies? They are in a bit of a corner. They're lucky Google doesn't really perceive them as a threat.
What this is saying is that a humongous amount of searches comes from firefox users using the default mozilla home / omnibar / search page. So if google don't want to do it for competitive reasons (chrome), mozilla will just say fine - you'll lose your precious mozilla search share to a competitor eg bing or yahoo. So it is mutually beneficial - google wouldn't pay over $100m if they weren't making more from it than that... Apple don't want to support gmail app or google maps? Fine, it will drive people to android. Google don't want to support a hotmail app on android? Fine, those hotmail die hards will get Win Phone 7 next time... These people can't afford not to support each other's ecosystems..
That would be my thought too. Firefox may have seen a recent loss of users compared with Chrome, but should Google cut off the lifeline to Mozilla I can readily see a partnership with Microsoft.
If you then look at the market share that could potentially give Bing (say IE plus Firefox minus those who change their search provider from the default) it would signify a big jump, and renewed competition for Google.
MS? From being at the mercy of one giant corporation, to being at the mercy of another giant corporation which will never win any prizes for fair business practices. Talk about from the frying pan into the fire...
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