Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement For Default Search

An anonymous reader writes "It appears Google will not cut their default search arrangement with Mozilla. From the official blog post: 'We're pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.'"

Comments

Not a huge surprise...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While Firefox's marketshare has been suffering slightly, I can't imagine that the per-seat value of being the default search engine has changed particularly, and FF is probably the competitor from which Google gains the most: FF reliably agrees with them on most major issues, has no significant strength to threaten Google's actually profitable ventures, and no(well, almost no, you could build FF-only XUL webapps; but nobody does) competing application environment.

Microsoft has a browser, a search engine, win32, and silverlight, so they aren't exactly somebody that Google wants gaining ground, Apple has impressive control of certain high margin markets, and an iron grip on their mobile devices. Firefox has a browser. Unless Google has some aesthetic reason to crush anything it can, and risk the wrath of the antitrust guys, Firefox's existence is somewhere between 'harmless' and 'downright convenient'.

Re:Not a huge surprise...

[Anonymous Coward]

FF is probably the competitor from which Google gains the most

Google doesn't consider FF a competitor.

Nor Safari. Nor Opera. Nor even IE. Well, maybe older versions of IE which are arguably harmful to the web. Google doesn't make Chrome to take over the browser market, Google makes Chrome to spur innovation in browsers and, more specifically, to push that innovation in directions which Google feels are helpful to make the web a first-class computing platform, because that's Google's platform. If web apps become the dominant form of application software, then Google no longer has to worry about Microsoft or Apple exploiting their OS platform to lock Google out.

Google made all this pretty clear when Chrome was first released. The whole purpose of Chrome at the beginning was to make a browser that had a really fast Javascript engine, in order to make all of the other browsers invest in speeding up their Javascript engines -- so Google's apps would run better and could do more. Subsidiary goals were to make the overall browser experience faster and more stable, and to remove as much cruft as possible from the browser interface so that web apps had more real estate and less OS-based stuff around them.

Now, Chrome has moved to pushing HTML5 implementation quality and performance, and Google is beginning to experiment with using it to push new web technologies, like Dart, NaCl and SPDY -- not to lock people into Chrome, but, again, to make the web a better platform. That's why Google is publishing specs and talking to other browser makers about adopting these technologies into their browsers (with little success so far), because Google wants to be able to use this stuff on all browsers.

What Google wants to achieve is a world where it doesn't matter what device, or OS, or browser you're using, web apps -- especially but not only Google's -- can at least as well as any platform-specific app. Many find it hard to believe that Google would invest so much money in Chrome and Android purely as a way of breaking potential lock-ins and walled gardens by other players in the market, but that's really what those are all about. Googlers are confident (arrogant may be a better word) that given a level playing field, Google will win, because they're just that good. So, it's worth doing some pretty big things just to keep anyone from being able to lock up the computing platforms again.

So Google's patronage of Firefox is about two things: Maintaining browser diversity to make it even harder for MS to engage in lock-in tactics and revenue. Probably not in that order. Google's agreement with Mozilla buys Google a lot of search page views on which to sell ads. It's undoubtedly a net profit-maker for Google, and one that furthers Google's larger goals for the web platform ecosystem as well.

The only surprising thing about this move was that MS didn't outbid Google -- but then I could see the Mozilla folks being a little leery of MS, so it may not have been a straight bidding war.

Re:How does this benefit Google long-term?

[Millennium]

Google is coming under increasing scrutiny from the antitrust folks, and funding an open-source competitor in the browser space makes it look better. A better image can be worth quite a lot of money when lawyers are involved.

Re:how are the terms able to stay secret?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to be dense, but as someone who has used Firefox and even Thunderbird Sunbird/Lightning at times, what else do they do? The About us link I just looked at doesn't spoon feed it to me, so I don't even know what Drumbeat is after reading a hundred words...

A real question, even if I am an AC.

I'd like to think that Mozilla is there to fight the good fight of freedom and openness on the web.

Apart from FF/TB and whatnot, it would perhaps include doing some R&D and also lobbying/marketing for Freedom(TM) and Openness(TM)...

Re:How does this benefit Google long-term?

[djh2400]

A commenter on a previous "Google might kill Firefox/Mozilla by not renewing default search agreement" provided a link to the following article, which I found to be an interesting read, and I would also recommend it:

http://www.extremetech.com/internet/92558-how-browsers-make-money-or-why-google-needs-firefox

In short, if Google stopped giving Mozilla the relatively small (relative to their annual profits) amount of money for each period, do you really think Microsoft would wait more than 5 seconds to snatch up such an opportunity to fill in the gap by paying an equal amount? Microsoft would love to get the current Firefox "default search" volume which is directed at Google and instead have it directed toward Bing. If Google stopped paying Mozilla, it seems reasonable to expect some other company like Microsoft to take over the cost in the blink of an eye.

Re:How does this benefit Google long-term?

[Daetrin]

Why would Google want to kill Firefox? They don't make a profit directly from Chrome, they make money off of people using Chrome to go to Google pages where they'll be served ads. If people are using Firefox instead but still going to Google pages Google still makes just as much money. If they were somehow able to kill Firefox then some of the ex-Firefox users would move to Chrome, but some would move to IE or Safari or who knows what else.

Re:how are the terms able to stay secret?

[icebike]

I would be happier if Moz was far less dependent on the add-click.

Here is a way to make your self very happy: https://donate.mozilla.org/

Come on, now, that PayPal account has a few bucks you don't need for the holidays.
Money > Mouth.