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Why Google Needs Firefox
MrSeb writes "Almost the entirety of Mozilla's income — 97% of $104 million — arrives in the form of royalties from the Firefox search box, and the lion's share (86%, $85 million) of those royalties are paid by the default search engine: Google. In November 2011, however, Mozilla's contract with Google will expire. Will Google renew it? A better question to ask, though, is whether Mozilla wants Google as its primary search engine."
Hey, if by this time you haven't realized that articles starring with the word "why" on the title are very poor and read them with care or just ignore them, you need to keep "learning slashdot".
Mozilla is not a competitor. Google does not sell browsers, it sells ads, and mozilla is one more channel.
Why wouldn't it be MS? Have you read the article? It makes a pretty good case for why it would be Microsoft.
I read the article but I didn't see it make any case at all. There seemed to be a vague implication that Microsoft might think that even though users of Internet Explorer (still the browser with the largest market share) overwhelmingly use Google rather than its default of Bing, that users of Firefox would blindly use whatever the default is and that therefore Microsoft would shovel money at Firefox to get that default status. But there was no explanation at all of why Firefox users wouldn't just keep using Google, just as internet Explorer users do.
Folks: Google is the new evil empire. Microsoft is a weak old underdog with rabies.
Fixed.
but to simply have an independent entity that develops standards and pushes the envelope.
You mean Opera?
Cutting off funding could be the best thing for Firefox. They would have to get rid of all the UI designers and tech evangelists who are slowly destroying Firefox. It would go back to being community driven with a focus on producing a really good app instead of playing buzzword bingo and copying Chrome.
Fingers crossed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"It is speculated, mostly by tech pundits, that considering the sheer amount of effort that itâ(TM)s putting into shoving Chrome down our throats, it would not be in Googleâ(TM)s best interests to re-sign with Mozilla."
Most of Google's revenue comes from advertising, not Chrome. To ensure that revenue, they need to remain the number one search engine. To that end, it is in Google's best interest to remain the default search engine on Firefox as long as Firefox has any significant market share, regardless of Chrome's market share.
If we're at the point where the internet is "whatever Webkit renders", we've done something wrong.