Why Firefox's Future Lies In Google's Hands

Barence writes "Firefox has just turned five, and it now accounts for 25% of the global market, according to figures from Net Applications. Its success has forced rivals to raise their game, and the past two years have seen Microsoft, Apple, and Opera close the features gap significantly. Google is the default homepage when Firefox first opens, and the default search engine when users type something into the 'awesome bar.' The deal, which runs until 2011, was worth $66 million to Mozilla in 2007, accounting for 88% of the foundation's revenues that year (the last year for which it had published accounts). But now that Google is a competitor as well as a partner, is it really wise for Mozilla to be so dependent on Google?"

Comments

Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[elrous0]

This issue has been discussed on /. many times before. Mozilla needs a sponsor. Their revenues are the only thing that lets them stand out from most of the rest of the OSS crowd as a truly professional piece of software. Lose those revenues and it will eventually deteriorate into yet another lame piece of poorly-documented, poorly-maintained piece of abandonware on SourceForge. So, what options does Mozilla have? Well, they could stay with Google or they could defect to Yahoo or Bing. But MS is even more of a browser competitor than Google. And Yahoo isn't in a financial position to be sponsoring anyone right now. Sure, you could maybe come up with some other more complicated solutions, but $66 million worth? Not many companies, or even groups of companies, have that kind of money to throw around for a little advertisement. There just aren't a lot of alternatives.

So, SHOULD they break away from Google? Probably. CAN they break away from them (and maintain their quality)? Probably not. So, like a bad marriage of convenience, Mozilla is probably stuck with Google until the day (possibly) comes when Google themselves decide to break it off.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[jmyers]

Where does the money go? It seems to me that $66 million could fund a lot of development for many years. Put that in the bank and you could easily pay the salary of 10 full time programmers and a decent amount of overhead and never spend a dime of principal and never need additional sponsorship and strings that go with it.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[ZorbaTHut]

And the fact that the source is, you know, open. I feel that's kind of a major point.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[recoiledsnake]

Where does the money go? It seems to me that $66 million could fund a lot of development for many years. Put that in the bank and you could easily pay the salary of 10 full time programmers and a decent amount of overhead and never spend a dime of principal and never need additional sponsorship and strings that go with it.

The money goes to salaries of the executives. A cool half million dollars or more for the CEO to be exact. I wonder how productive should they be to justify such salaries? That money can easily go to hire 5 top notch C++ coders for an entire year to hunt down memory leaks and make the code more efficient. The only reason to give such money should be as a bonus if-and-only-if the executives figure out how to reduce their dependence on Google, it's been 5 years and nothing's being done about it.

Disclaimer: I've seen my university students scrounge their last savings money to pay for the Firefox ad in the NYT 4 years ago, so maybe that makes me sick to the stomach to see Mozilla wasting so much money on administration.

Re:Wise or not, what choice do they really have?

[IICV]

1) it isn't any of your business how much they make

Seriously, this sort of attitude is part of what makes America so divided. It isn't any of my business how much someone else makes? Then how am I supposed to make a rational decision about my line of work? All compensation for all positions for all companies should be freely available, so I know that if I sign on as a developer with shop A I'm getting a worse deal than if I signed on with shop B. I should also be able to see exactly how many zeroes there are in every executive's paycheck, bonuses and stock options so I can make an informed decision about whether or not to invest in a given company.

2) if they didn't deserve it the board wouldn't be giving it

You know why they deserve it? Because CEO 1 is on the board of company 2, so he says that CEO 2 should have a ridiculous salary. CEO 2 is on the board of company 1, so he says that CEO 1 should have a ridiculous salary.

3) if they grab more than they earn the company dies and the code base is free so no real loss

No real loss, except for the opportunity cost of all that extra money going into improving the CEO's bankroll instead of into improving the company.

Re:Lone Wolf

[richlv]

opera has a surprisingly large market share on various embedded devices (as you mentioned) and in included on very large share of mobile devices.

what i found funny in the summary - "past two years have seen Microsoft, Apple, and Opera close the features gap significantly".

if anything, firefox has mighe have been closing the feature gap with opera, which had absolute majority of the features first.

disclaimer - opera user for many years here.

Bias Posting

[Anonymous Coward]

"[Firefox] the past two years have seen ... Opera close the features gap significantly." Are we re-writing documented history? Opera is the longest running GUI Web browser, first to use tabs, sessions, customizable skins, ACID 2 & 3 compliant, download management panel, widget support, and a whole host of other features Mozilla, Apple, Microsoft, and Google have taken and continue to take from Opera ASA. I suppose when your non-Opera Web browser lacks the security track record Opera possesses, delusive jealousy becomes a factor.

Re:What ?

[rubicelli]

Firefox had one critical feature a year before Opera did: It was free. For years, Opera had been "that browser you had to pay for (or get advertising with)". That kind of stigma stays with you.

Re:Choices? Really?

[Junior J. Junior III]

Seriously, who should be the default search provider, payments or not? If I've got a choice, I'm heading to google, not because of some sort of "I love google" sort of thing, but because they have the best search. If firefox defaults to "Bing!" or "aunt martha's internet search and lemon pies", it won't matter as long as I can set it to Google.

It's the ability to choose that I want to protect, not what the default is.

It would be annoying if they switched to a different default, because that would be one more customization step every time I install Firefox.

Sheldon

It does matter. Sure, you can control your own settings, but the aggregate behavior of the masses who leave their settings at default does have an impact.

1. If the search engine profits from its users, then the default search engine makes a great deal of difference. If traffic goes down, the search engine has less income, and therefore less capital to re-invest into innovation.
2. If the search engine decides to skew its search results, a vast majority of users who don't change their default might not ever see whatever it is that the default search engine doesn't want them to see. Imagine if Google censored search engine results according to the whim of some bad government.
3. If you want to collaborate with anyone else, you'll have to take into account when they do a search, their results page will be different from yours, since you're not using the default.
4. Anytime you're using a computer that is not your own, you're going to have to deal with the default search engine, which isn't your preferred one. Sure, you can just browse to google and search from their homepage, but it's an extra step.

Is there a reason for Google to shaft Mozilla?

[qazwart]

I don't see any reason why Google would try to harm Firefox. Granted Google has a browser called Chrome, but what Google really wants is for people to use Google as their search engine. With Firefox the most popular engine after IE (and Microsoft wouldn't do anything, but make Bing IE's default search engine), I don't see why Google wouldn't simply extend their deal with FIrefox. They certainly wouldn't want Firefox to move over to Yahoo or Bing.

The only thing I can see is Google would use their leverage over Firefox to get Firefox to switch from the Gecko to WebKit. That would give Google a unified JavaScript/Web browser engine to run their applications against.

It's not usually a good thing to have another entity control your future like this, but Firefox really doesn't have a choice now.

Re:Lone Wolf

[travisco_nabisco]

In 2000 they released a free Opera, but it was ad-supported, which I for one would never tolerate in a web browser.

You do realize that Firefox is ad-supported as well. There is a reason Google it the default search provider, and why the Google toolbar is distributed with Firefox. You may not like a visible ad, but you certainly have bought into an ad supported browser.