The Google antitrust ruling could be an existential threat to the future of Firefox | Financials show 86% of Mozilla's revenue came from the agreement keeping Google as Firefox's default search engine
The Google antitrust ruling could be an existential threat to the future of Firefox | Financials show 86% of Mozilla's revenue came from the agreement keeping Google as Firefox's default search engine
United States District Judge Amit Mehta found Google guilty of building a monopolistic position in web search. The Mountain View corporation spent billions of dollars becoming the...
Mozilla has a close relationship with Google, as most of Firefox's revenue comes from the agreement keeping Google as the browser's default search engine. However, the search giant is now officially a monopoly, and a future court decision could have an unprecedented impact on Mozilla's ability to keep things "business as usual."
United States District Judge Amit Mehta found Google guilty of building a monopolistic position in web search. The Mountain View corporation spent billions of dollars becoming the leading search provider for computing platforms and web browsers on PC and mobile devices.
Most of the $21 billion spent went to Apple in exchange for setting Google as the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems. The judge will now need to decide on a penalty for the company's actions, including the potential of forcing Google to stop payments to its search "partners completely," which could have dire consequences for smaller companies like Mozilla.
Its most recent financials show Mozilla gets $510 million out of its $593 million in total revenue from its Google partnership. This precarious financial position is a side effect of its deal with Alphabet, which made Google the search engine default for newer Firefox installations.
The open-source web browser has experienced a steady market share decline over the past few years. Meanwhile, Mozilla management was paid millions to develop a new "vision" of a theoretical future with AI chatbots. Mozilla Corporation, the wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation managing Firefox development, could find itself in a severe struggle for revenue if Google's money suddenly dried up.
So instead of fucking over google with an antitrust ruling like they very much deserve, we're going to fearmonger about how much it might hurt the ✨ sole saviors of the web ✨ Mozilla, who's finances are apparently entirely dependent on the company primarily responsible for ruining the web. Looks like a narrative, smells like narrative, to get the public to turn against the antitrust ruling.
Honestly, I'd like if the browser could become truly independent from google ad money. Then mozilla devs would have to focus on the browser and come up with a donation program like thunderbird for example instead. I'd prefer to pay and know how the money is used. I absolutely hate the google dependence
Nobody donates to these things.
Yeah. 99% of users click nag screens off right away. I do too, unless I use that application/service extensively.
You should read Thunderbird donation statement.
They got 6 million USD of donation back in 2022.
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/05/thunderbird-is-thriving-our-2022-financial-report/
There might not be any devs without that sweet google funding.
Wasn't it open source at one point?
Both Firefox and thunderbird are
Mozilla corp is trash and deserves to fail. The non-profit Mozilla however, can remain and steward Firefox and friends just fine.
I support the things that the Mozilla Foundation puts on its website, even their manifesto. Even, begrudgingly, the insistence that we must balance the needs of human beings against the needs of corporations.
Even if those things contradict what Mozilla Corporation is doing with their browser.
But the Foundation is just a thin wrapper for the Corporation, so I'm not sure how that would work.
balance the needs of human beings against the needs of corporations.
I support this if it is a 1:1 scale.
Corporation can be human, but each corporation only counts as 1.
We can balance 9,000,000,000 people against a few thousand corps no big deal.
TIL. Super disappointing. Thanks for the additional info. I've changed my mind. Mozilla can just go poof completely.
Why would the foundation have members? It's not a coop, after all. It's not the Linux Foundation model, either, which is "bunch of companies get together and decide on how to spend their money". It's much closer to the Bosch or Zeiss model, "We're doing business but are owned by noone and instead of handing out dividends we throw money at some charitable stuff" -- though Mozilla is way more charitable than either of them.
The board is bound to the Foundation's statutes, and it can't just change them. They're required to steer the foundation such that its actions benefit the free and open web, if you think they're doing something else, sue them. Or get oversight bureaucrats to investigate or however that works in the US.
Paid for by what money?
Not all software needs to be backed by money. Money helps, of course, and I would support a non-profit financially that is focused purely on browser development. Right now, the only game in town doing that is Ladybird. But honestly, I think building upon a firefox fork makes more sense than starting from scratch.
Isn't it open source?
Won't random Devs that care about Firefox just keep working on it?
Yes and no, if Firefox org falls, open source community will continue to develop necessary features like security updates, but features will drag behind. Eventually a new player will emerge and we will bury it out back with Netscape, ie and aol explorer.
Mozilla org isn’t the concern. Mozilla Corp, the for profit company, makes Firefox and has to worry about things like revenue for the most part. Mozilla org used to develop it and could fold it back in if it went really bad, it would definitely hamper development but being the premier browser is more of a Corp goal than an org one. Most likely the corp will just find a different search partner again (Google hasn’t always been default).
I'm not to worried about Firefox if Devs take over, it has tons of support behind it to add new features.
lol yes... if we don't let google to keep its monopoly they will take FF from us
taking down a 90% monopoly will have side effects? impossible.
86% of Mozilla's revenue came from the agreement keeping Google as Firefox's default search engine
That explains a lot. I've only recently switched back to Firefox after Chrome took the throne years ago. I still use Google's services for now, so wanted their home page as my new tab page.
The only way I could find to do that was by using an extension, but every so often I get a warning from FF that my new tab page has been changed, and it gets reset. I looked up a way to stop the warnings, and found a Mozilla blog post with comments from staff claiming that it's a security feature.
Apparently the only reason that you might not want to start with the FF start page is because you've been hacked 🙄
I have one of those anti-capitalist takes where if taking down one company takes down another company, then the system is probably broken.
Which we know it is, but not enough know it is.
That isn't really a anticapitalist take. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that the tech industry isn't super healthy.
In fact we probably need more competition
We need much more competition on every front. The VPN market is the only place where competition exists, even though it is narrowed with fake competitions.
Things could change if Linux distro becomes the majority system in PC, notebook and mobile markets. The PC market is shifting thanks to Windows 11 system requirements. The mobile market tho.
I doubt the judge will want to kill Chromes only alternative. They aren't going to make the monopoly stronger
They probably "only" need to break the deal with Apple. I think that's the big one being a problem.
Mozilla could be overlooked in the grant scheme of things, and Google would want to get as many users as possible.