Did Microsoft Make Google Pay Triple Rate To Mozilla?

SharkLaser writes "Last week it was announced that Google has renewed their search deal with Mozilla. The amount Google paid to Mozilla was surprising: $300 million per year, despite the slightly falling market share of Firefox. Many took this as charity, and for the purpose of advancing the web. Now sources in the bidding process have revealed that Google's main rival in the bid was Microsoft's Bing, along with Yahoo. This bidding war was costly to Google, which is now paying 300% of what they used to, just to be Firefox's default search provider. Mozilla veteran Asa Dotzler is also giving insight into the deal between Google and Mozilla. 'Google started out as a search company. But that's not what they are today. Google's primary business is advertising. Google brought in $9.7B in revenues in Q3'11. 96% of that revenue was from ad sales. Not all traffic to Google ads is 'organic' though. To help drive ad sales, Google pays for traffic to their ads. They paid out $2.21 billion, or 24% of their ad revenues in 'Traffic Acquisition Costs.' That money goes to revenue shares with their AdSense partners and to 'distribution partners' — presumably browser makers, PC OEMs, and mobile OEMs and operators.' Google also pays shareware and freeware distributors to bundle Chrome and Google toolbar with their programs and games."

Comments

To avoid antitrust

[bonch]

Many took this as charity, and for the purpose of advancing the web.

Which is absurd. Chrome and Firefox are competing for the same users. Chrome helps Google display ads by directing users to Google services, such as with searches in the address bar. Google and Mozilla are competitors. Remember, you are the product, and advertisers are Google's customers.

David Ulevitch, founder of OpenDNS, had a more likely hypothesis, which is that Google is protecting itself from increased antitrust scrutiny. Remember that they often display a message on Google.com trying to convince people to download Chrome. Along with Android, Google needs to appear like it's not too dominant.

Peter Kasting at Google posted a response, but it focused on claims about Google killing Firefox and didn't actually contradict Ulevitch's thesis on why they paid so much to be Firefox's default search provider. Firefox usage is falling because of Chrome, so it's not like Mozilla (a non-profit) is best pals with Google (a for-profit, multibillion-dollar advertising megacorp). And Mozilla has questioned Google's motives in the past over their refusal to implement Do Not Track in Chrome when all the other major browsers committed to it.

It's like how Microsoft keeps releasing Office for Mac and various other utilities to make sure the Mac is out there just enough to keep antitrust regulators off its back.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[iluvcapra]

David Ulevitch, founder of OpenDNS, had a more likely hypothesis, which is that Google is protecting itself from increased antitrust scrutiny.

Are you sure that gets them off the hook? It keeps their market share of the web browser segment under control, but if there was ever any evidence that Firefox coordinated its revenue deal with Google, or that Firefox offered its search box as a private-label product to Google, that would be sufficiently illegal at this point, given Google's utter command of the search referral market segment.

The problem with the current arrangement is that Firefox is really only an independent organization in name only; while Google may not own it, it decides its bottom line. This goes quite a bit beyond MS propping up Apple in the good old days: at least back then Apple actually made money from physical products it actually sold. Apple wasn't a pass-thru affiliate for Windows, deriving it's total operating income from them, year over year.

I don't think antitrust regulators are doing much with anybody right now. Google just didn't want to lose eyeballs to Bing.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is absurd. Chrome and Firefox are competing for the same users. Chrome helps Google display ads by directing users to Google services, such as with searches in the address bar. Google and Mozilla are competitors. Remember, you are the product, and advertisers are Google's customers.

I don't see how that means Chrome and Firefox are competitors. The search is what matters. Google obviously has Chrome locked in. Microsoft obviously has IE locked in. But Firefox, representing about ~30% of the web, could swing either way. Google had to stop them from going to Bing, because if 80% of Firefox's users leave the default settings alone, that represents a huge boost for Bing.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Overly Critical Guy]

I don't think antitrust regulators are doing much with anybody right now. Google just didn't want to lose eyeballs to Bing.

Really?

Re:To avoid antitrust

[larry bagina]

It is absurd. Because nobody mistook it for charity. Before the deal was announced, there was speculation that Microsoft/Bing would try to make a deal. When the deal was announced, the price tag was kept secret and most speculation was that it was less than it was previously. A couple days later when the $300 million/year number was revealed, it was also revealed that Microsoft (and yahoo, straggly enough) had also made bids.

Avoiding anti-trust issues make no sense at all since Microsoft and Yahoo both made bids. Even worse, if $300 million/year isn't profitable for Google, that's anticompetitive (supra competitive pricing).

Re:To avoid antitrust

[jd]

Don't know who marked you as overrated - your points seem entirely valid and interesting.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Overly Critical Guy]

Wow, Galestar, not only do you anonymously troll every post even remotely critical of Google, but then you use your main account to mod yourself Underrated. Speaking of shills.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[NicknameOne]

Overly Critical Guy supporting bonch again

I'm shocked!

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Bucky24]

Chrome helps Google display ads by directing users to Google services, such as with searches in the address bar.

And thanks to this deal, Firefox does as well. Chrome and Firefox are competitors, but Google only created Chrome for pushing ads. They don't care if the user seeing the ad is using Chrome, Firefox, IE, or Safari. The user seeing the ad and clicking the ad is all that matters to them. So really they aren't very serious competitors of Mozilla (not saying the competition isn't a serious deal, but that Google doesn't want to seriously compete against them).

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Overly Critical Guy]

Well, according to your profile, you have a history of angrily accusing people of being shills and astroturfers (in fact, it seems to be your favorite topic), so I guess I'm joining the elite ranks of the accused.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[jd]

Who is the post supposed to be a shill for? How is pointing out that Microsoft's support for rival OS' is more likely to be for regulatory purposes than interest in users in any way dubious? Most here know the history of MS Office on the Mac, of MS support within OS/2 being deliberately broken by changes in Windows 3.11? Of sabotage against DR-DOS and other rival systems? Why should we believe Microsoft supports Mac OS/X for anything but blatantly self-serving reasons, when the customers have been trodden on time and again?

Google's policy of "Do No Evil" is, at best, dubious. I like Google a lot but I would never claim that they are above reproach. Nor should anyone. They have grown at a fantastic rate, to the point where their share price has been known to dip whenever they exceed official revenue expectations by a smaller factor than usual. I'm willing to accept that their initial growth was merely through cost-effective engineering, but their applications have a high degree of tie-in and Google certainly leverages one to get traction with another. The chances of there being anti-trust potential should not be ignored and the chances that they're covering themselves (rather than their users) are not insignificant. We should take the possibility seriously.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[sglewis100]

Why should we believe Microsoft supports Mac OS/X for anything but blatantly self-serving reasons, when the customers have been trodden on time and again?

Oh come on. Even Apple only supports OS/X for blatantly self serving purposes.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[similar_name]

Chrome has been gaining share at Firefox's expense,

Really?

Re:To avoid antitrust

[marcosdumay]

Google and Firefox are not competitors. Competitors don't go buying each-other products. They are partners, recently Firefox tought they weren't getting enough from the partneship, so they used some negotiation skills, and got more. Google was happy to pay more (but they were even happier to pay less), so they agreed on some terms.

But yeah, calling it charity is ridiculous.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Daniel Phillips]

...Google only created Chrome for pushing ads.

Absolutely true, and with a secondary goal of breaking the power of a GPL code base over which they do not have complete control. Now, Google finds itself in a position of paying $300/million to support a GPL code base, over which they do not have complete control (restated for emphasis). What an excellent situation: mandatory doing of non-evil. It's actually better for Google, and better for us, when Google does non-evil like this. I fear greatly a scenario where Google has complete control of the non-copyleft code base of the dominant web browser. In that situation, I do not believe that Google would be able to resist the temptation to do evil, perhaps just minor evil at first, and later, not minor at all.

That said, I wish that Mozilla foundation would take, say, one of those $300 millions and spend it on replacing Gecko by webkit, putting its own fork of webkit under GPL. As far as I can see, that simple strategy alone would ensure Mozilla never becomes irrelevant, and that neither Apple nor Google can effectively take webkit private, which is a clear and present danger at the moment.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[asa]

No "number was revealed. "What you're referring to is speculation from a well respected reporter based on what she heard from her sources. Neither Google nor Mozilla have confirmed it.

Mozilla is open about pretty much everything you can imagine. The only two areas where we are not totally transparent are some employment issues and business dealings where our partners would not partner with us if we tried to force transparency on them.

Mozilla does release financials every year so you can see what revenue we generated and where we spent it. That makes it sort of possible to see what specific deals look like in broad terms but no matter how much we'd like to, we simply can't force transparency on other companies.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[HarrySquatter]

As far as I can see, that simple strategy alone would ensure Mozilla never becomes irrelevant, and that neither Apple nor Google can effectively take webkit private, which is a clear and present danger at the moment.

Since WebKit is mostly LGPL unless they plan on violating the license how exactly are they going to take it private?

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding.

I bet they also think that some politicians are less evil because of the letter next to their name.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[DragonWriter]

Which is absurd. Chrome and Firefox are competing for the same users.

As long as Google is the primary search provider in Firefox, and as long as Mozilla is actually pursuing its statement mission of advancing the open web, Chrome and Firefox are both places where Google is spending money to an getting the same basic thing for the money:
1) Direct promotion of google's search advertisement revenue through placement as the default search provider, and
2) Indirect promotion of the market for a wide range of Google's for-pay services (including search and non-search advertisement, application hosting through App Engine, and others) by making open web technologies a more attractive application platform and the web a place where users spend more time.

David Ulevitch, founder of OpenDNS, had a more likely hypothesis, which is that Google is protecting itself from increased antitrust scrutiny.

A whole lot more plausible of a hypothesis is that Google is spending money in the search deal to advance is direct and immediate revenue stream from search advertisements, and that the indirect benefits to its strategic interests in its other revenue sources are a reason that Google is willing to spend more for that advertising revenue than other bidders, particular Microsoft, who don't share Google's other interests in Mozilla.

Antitrust concerns are a pretty ridiculous hypothesis for Google investment in Mozilla, since Mozilla doesn't compete with Google anywhere where Google is dominant.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Chuck Chunder]

Google and Mozilla are competitors. Remember, you are the product, and advertisers are Google's customers.

They could be competitors. Clearly they aren't when they are cooperating to deliver users to Google.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[jd]

You sure? I thought it was research into novel torture techniques.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[ilguido]

David Ulevitch, founder of OpenDNS, had a more likely hypothesis, which is that Google is protecting itself from increased antitrust scrutiny. Remember that they often display a message on Google.com trying to convince people to download Chrome. Along with Android, Google needs to appear like it's not too dominant.

So, in your opinion, Google is paying Mozilla to strengthen its search engine market share (85%) at the expense of its web browser market share (25%) because they fear the antitrust scrutiny. Just to point out, an antitrust investigation on Chrome is just impossible: it is not by any means in the same position as IE was, the only browser bundled with a monopolistic OS.

It's like how Microsoft keeps releasing Office for Mac and various other utilities to make sure the Mac is out there just enough to keep antitrust regulators off its back.

No. MS keeps releasing Office for Mac because: it makes money (1), it secures the Office lock-in by spreading the OOXML format (2). The second point is extremely important to MS, they want to spread their inextricable file formats everywhere so to secure their monopoly. See? All the contrary to what you said.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

s/accused/pathetic

Re:To avoid antitrust

[DragonWriter]

Chrome and Firefox are competitors, but Google only created Chrome for pushing ads.

I doubt that. Most likely, Google created Chrome and its specific features to push the browser market in a direction that favored web-based replacements for desktop application -- you'll note that, in addition to advertisements, Google sells both its own web-based services and a hosting platform for third-party web-based services, and has consistently used Chrome to push technologies designed to address barriers to web services displacing traditional desktop apps (and also on enabling new kinds of web apps besides areas where desktop apps are popular.) JavaScript performance was the big area that was a focus when Chrome was launched, though the focus has moved somewhat from JavaScript performance as such to support for a broader range of APIs that push into non-traditional web roles (e.g., WebGL) and non-JavaScript application options (particularly Native Client), but still largely focus on browser-as-app platform.

Google created Chrome to push Google's (current and planned) revenue-generating services, but that's more than just advertising, and I would say that Chrome exists disproportionately to push Google's non-advertising services (though, of course, it doesn't miss the easy opportunity to directly push Google advertising, either.)

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Daniel Phillips]

As far as I can see, that simple strategy alone would ensure Mozilla never becomes irrelevant, and that neither Apple nor Google can effectively take webkit private, which is a clear and present danger at the moment.

Since WebKit is mostly LGPL unless they plan on violating the license how exactly are they going to take it private?

Most of Webkit is under BSD license. Mozilla foundation (or anybody else, including your or me) could easily re-license all the BSD parts of Webkit under (L)GPL. Of course, making this stick depends on having a good stream of contributions including bug fixes and new features into the (L)GPL code base. Which tends to just happen given that a significant number of developers prefer to contribute to a copyleft code base over non-copyleft, other things being equal, and given that any contribution to the BSD-licensed code base can be merged to the GPL-codebase without legal issues, whereas the the reverse is not true.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Dishevel]

Google is doing this simply because it drives more traffic to Google.
Google makes money if they are used on Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera, IE, SeaFuckingMonkey or any other browser.
Google wants money. Sometimes they have to spend it to make more. Rest assured Google thinks that the $300 mil a year to Firefox is going to generate more than that in advertising revenue.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Chuck Chunder]

but their applications have a high degree of tie-in

Can you explain this? As far as I can see you can use Google apps form pretty much any vaguely modern browser. I can install Google software on my iPhone (in fact it comes with Google Maps).

It seems to me that Google has the opposite approach than tie in. It's not so much "you must use our stuff" as "you can use whichever bits of our stuff you want from anyone elses stuff".

Re:To avoid antitrust

[517714]

It's "don't be evil."

Re:To avoid antitrust

[icebike]

At the prior funding level, (100 million per year) Google accounted for nearly 100% or Mozilla.org's budget.

This story is about Google getting suckered in a bidding war to the the default (but NOT the only) search engine in the top-bar. Anyone can change the default at any time. The agreement is performance based, capped at 300 mil. If Firefox search hits falls they won't make the full 300 mil.

So if prior agreement paid 100% of development costs, and if Firefox can keep its market share up, they should have three times their development budget to add astounding new features, fix up their physical infrastructure and harden their browser and plugins. They now can afford the manpower. The ball is in their court.

I'm pretty sure Google isn't worried about Chrome market share here. They get the advertising dollars either way.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

GP is an Apple shill, not a Microsoft shill. Put blame where it's due.

(I'm the Microsoft shill)

Re:To avoid antitrust

[shutdown -p now]

According to Wikipedia, JavaScriptCore and WebCore are under LGPL. I don't know if that makes "most of WebKit" or not, but it strikes me that those (WebCore in particular) certainly are the most important part of it.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[kangsterizer]

Actually Google created Chrome to push Google technologies.

Pushing Google technologies make sure people keep using Google websites and thus keep getting their ads (and Google to get people's data - remember, you're the product now).

So while the conclusion is what you said, I think it's important to decompose the steps. Specially because pushing Google technologies may go against Mozilla/Firefox sometimes, as all technologies are not made for the "open, standard, etc. web" and Mozilla would actively refuse those (like NaCl or Dart).

Re:To avoid antitrust

[InterestingFella]

Google and Firefox are not competitors. Competitors don't go buying each-other products.

Yes they do. The most obvious example being mobile phone and tech world. There are only a few companies in the world that own fabs so all companies are buying parts from them. Even when they have competing products overally, ie. they both sell smart phones. For example Samsung owns fabs that do parts for Apple, even while they both also sell phones.

It's business, it's not a bitter relationship with an ex-gf. Competing businesses can do business when it suits them while still competing in slightly relevant area without personal feeling getting in the way.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, really. Your link confirms that.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, yes. Can't you read the chart. Oh, oh... hold on, I get it. Yet another common Slashtard can't understand that just because 100% of Chrome's user share isn't gained from Firefox doesn't mean that Firefox isn't losing user share to Chrome. Why is this such a hard concept for you retards to grasp?
 
You fucks need everything to be an all-or-nothing situation or you're lost. It's pathetic how much you bitches have such a lack of logic.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try, Asa, but you're being manipulative and witholding the whole truth, again. It's the Mozilla Foundation that discloses numbers, not the Mozilla Corporation - and even the former does it because it's required to, by law. If you really were about transparency, you'd also publish the corporation's number. Now I'm not telling you should - just please don't lie right into our face. Even though I still have to read a single comment from you where you don't.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[jbeaupre]

From Mozilla's perspective, Chrome and Firefox are competitors. Mozilla's goal is to spread the Firefox browser, but Chrome hinders that.

From Google's perspective, Chrome and Firefox are cooperative ... under the current agreement. Google's goal is to maximize traffic to Google. By having 2 significant competitors to IE, they can (assuming browser parity) capture 2/3 of traffic instead of 50% (Chrome, but Mozilla is neutral) or 1/3 (Chrome, but Mozilla goes with MS).

Of course they could have not bothered to create Chrome and let Mozilla drive 50% of traffic for free. But that extra traffic is worth far more than what they are paying for Chrome development and Mozilla loyalty. Revenue today and years to come.

Google is using game theory to protect revenue.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Chuck Chunder]

Competitors don't go buying each-other products

Samsung, Apple?

Re:To avoid antitrust

[InterestingFella]

Chrome has been gaining share at Firefox's expense,

Really?

Your own link clearly shows it is the case. Just because other browsers are also losing market share doesn't mean Firefox isn't losing.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. But "don't be evil" implies "do no evil", so although you are of course correct, the distinction is unimportant.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[hairyfeet]

Lets not forget the check MSFT cut to Apple. Sure it wasn't much but the main thing it did along with promising to keep writing software for Apple was it calmed spooked investors who said "Well if Microsoft thinks there is money to be made there, maybe they know something we don't?" but in the end it was as you say an excuse to keep from painting a big bullseye on its back. Just as i have no doubt if AMD wouldn't have started picking up and selling out of chips Intel would have found some way to keep them afloat as a low cost CPU vendor if nothing else to also keep from getting branded a monopoly.

But on the Google deal i think you are wrong and here is why: To improve their services Bing needs two things 1.- Lots of data from searches so they can tweak their search algorithms and 2.-plenty of eyeballs giving them feedback and using their product so they can learn what works and what don't. Now Google don't want MSFT getting that from Firefox if they can help it and even with their lowering by the quarters numbers there is a HELL of a lot of eyeballs using FF, so they paid through the nose rather than let a competitor have it. This is the same reason why MSFT paid for the rights to yahoo's search as a huge amount of the public users Yahoo portal as their home page and use yahoo mail and that gives them more eyeballs to use their engine and to sell ads to.

In the end it was just a good business decision, nothing more. I just wish they would have had the balls to cut the "making the web a better place" crap and just said "We make money from searches, Firefox brings us users, what's to understand?" and left it at that. Personally I'd be more likely to use their search instead of yahoo if they would have just been honest about it.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[rtb61]

That really matters, not one bit at all. Mozzila can auction off the search box in any way it chooses and good on it. What counts now is how it is going to spend the money.

Lets see that Thunderbird open source mail and calender server. It is time to take M$ Lookout, head on, time to smash the till of exchange server.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Daniel Phillips]

According to Wikipedia, JavaScriptCore and WebCore are under LGPL. I don't know if that makes "most of WebKit" or not, but it strikes me that those (WebCore in particular) certainly are the most important part of it.

I agree, "most of" was the wrong term. More like "a significant part of". This does not change the point: Mozilla.org is perfectly free (as are you and I) to put those significant, BSD licensed parts under (L)GPL. It would be a good move. Apple and Google will naturally hate this proposal, but in the end they would probably both benefit in terms of improved code quality, while being gently dissuaded from evildoing of the sort that is all too tempting when source code may be kept secret.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...I don't know where you got your data but your post is incorrect. OS/2 wasn't broken by win 3.X it was simply the fact that as part of the original deal IBM had the right to Win16 and when Win32 came along they refused to pay the license fee for it and thus was trapped in a dead end. I mean seriously who thought that 16 bit was gonna last as long as 8 bit did with the clones and the rapidly dropping price of chips? IBM thought they could sell it just by having the name IBM on it, just as they thought they could stick by the cheaper 286 chip and charge full price which left a door as wide as Texas for Compaq to roll out 386 clones and slaughter them.

As for "do no evil" frankly it amazes the shit out of me how otherwise rational geeks actually believed that horseshit. Do they think apple "thinks different" as well? its a slogan folks, its marketing. Google does WHAT'S BEST FOR GOOGLE and if that fits your definition of good fine and dandy, if it don't? tough shit. I don't see them opening up GoogleFS or big Tables or anything else that might give a competitor an advantage nor did I see anyone but an eye when one of the Android developers tweeted "Android is open (for the OEMs)" implying quite clearly that whether its open for the users or not is not a big concern.

In the end these companies are neither "good" nor "evil" (Well Halliburton and Goldman Sachs notwithstanding of course) as they are just creations to maximise shareholder value and make money. if that fits someone's model of good or evil more power to 'em but I doubt VERY seriously you'd see Google throw away a multibillion dollar deal because it didn't fit their little slogan.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no need to look for ulterior motives (like antitrust) for supporting Mac - all you have to do is look at SEC filings to see that the Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is quite profitable as a standalone entity. That's plenty of direct motive to keep supporting the platform.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

> no matter how much we'd like to, we simply can't force transparency on other companies.

Indeed, but you could walk away from such companies.

It'd mean you wouldn't be able to buy a new Lexus this year, though.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Kjella]

So if prior agreement paid 100% of development costs, and if Firefox can keep its market share up, they should have three times their development budget

And Google has three times the incentive to convert a Firefox user into a Chrome user. Those go hand in hand, the more money they have to pay Mozilla the more business sense developing and advertising Chrome makes and the more they can justify paying for applications to bundle Chrome. So far they've mostly been busy slaughtering IE, but with it dropping to less than 40% they are going to start looking at taking users from each other. Even for Google $300 million isn't slump change.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless the ends justify the means.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[icebike]

Did you mean chump change?

Re:To avoid antitrust

[red crab]

Just curious about this, will Mozilla get paid for any search made directly from the google.com homepage opened from Firefox (that is, by not using the Google/Firefox start page or by selecting Google from the search engine list)?

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously? Looking at the link, Internet Explorer lost a staggering 30% market share since the launch of chrome and firefox is at the same market share within like a 3-4% margin. And your conclusion is that chrome is eating firefox's market share? Whatever makes you sleep well dude. :p

Re:To avoid antitrust

[GNious]

Google and Mozilla are competitors.

Eh, no, Google's business is ads, Mozilla's business isn't ads.

Remember that they often display a message on Google.com trying to convince people to download Chrome.

I've only ever seen this message when using Internet Explorer.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[makomk]

I'm not sure how much of JavaScriptCore Google actually uses in Chrome now that they've got their own BSD-licensed V8 javascript engine. That leaves WebCore, which basically corresponds to the parts that originally came from KHTML - both Apple and Google have licensed as little as possible under the LGPL.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[makomk]

Most likely, Google created Chrome and its specific features to push the browser market in a direction that favored web-based replacements for desktop application

Not just that, but they've been pushing web-based replacements for desktop applications that are Chrome-only, like the HTML5 version of Angry Birds and pretty much the entirety of NaCl.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[BenoitRen]

That said, I wish that Mozilla foundation would take, say, one of those $300 millions and spend it on replacing Gecko by webkit, putting its own fork of webkit under GPL.

You want them to throw away all the work they did on Gecko for more than a decade? That's insane.

Not only would it be a waste of work, but it'd mean Mozilla would lose its most powerful technologies: XUL and XPCOM. Their web browser and the entire extension system are based on it.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[asa]

The Mozilla Foundation discloses all of the revenue and spending that's done by both the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation.

Perhaps next time you take anonymous swipes, you'll actually do some research.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[BitZtream]

Mozilla is dual licensed almost everywhere. Tri-licensed for a good portion of thing and I'm not aware of anything inside Gecko itself that is GPL only. Some firefox bits are.

People used to embed Gecko in several proprietary apps. Go look at their list. Plenty of 100% closed source apps on their own pages so you don't even have to bother finding the licenses.

No one can 'take it private'. Of course, thats true with any open source code. You CAN NOT take open source code private ever, unless you invent a time machine maybe. You can not release no code under the existing license, but you can't exactly take it back once you put it out there, so your point here is non-existent. Oh, and one more thing ... its fucking LGPL already for the most part. Your a GPL zealot too stupid to know what uses GPL.

Where you really get stupid is when you start talking about making a GPL fork of Webkit. Great so you have a small camp of GPL zealots using a webkit fork, and the rest of the world sharing in Webkit proper. So while Mozilla will releases weekly builds with new version numbers and still not actually add new features or fix bugs, likely just introducing more to their fork. All because you don't want the potential for someone to make money off of code that you have 0 involvement with and aren't paying a dime to support ... you want to cut off the guys who feed the ridiculously overpaid incompetent Mozilla developers and management using money they provided.

And this last point my friends, is why companies hate GPL and its supporters. You guys are obnoxious to deal with and will do anything you can to stab yourselves in the eye. Why do you think anyone would want to play with you guys, if you can't have it your way you don't want it to exist. You guys apparently didn't socialize enough in school to realize that no one likes to play with that asshole.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[BitZtream]

Irony: Firefox fan supporting XPCOM ... who probably rants about ActiveX.

XUL and XPCOM are both bad knock offs of existing technologies.

The fact that their entire browser and extension system are based on it is due to bad design, not something they want to keep around. These two 'features' are in fact some of Gecko's biggest performance problems, that coupled with the idea that it was smart to write most everything in JavaScript.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Pigskin-Referee]

Oh come on. Even Apple only supports OS/X for blatantly self serving purposes.

True, but you will never get anyone here on Slashdot to publicly state that.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[BitZtream]

You fail to understand how a company like Samsung works. It is an Asian conglomerate corporation.

The component manufacturing side probably isn't really the same company that sells tablets.

Grandpa started samsung, then little nephew tommy wanted to start a consumer devices business so gradpa funded him a bit, takes a cut off the top, and lets him ride on his existing name.

Okay, so a Korean named Tommy is unlikely, but the point remains.

When you say 'Sony' or 'Honda' or 'Mitsubishi' or 'Samsung' or any of the thousands of other conglomerates you're really not specifying a single company but a group of companies that just don't sue each other over names and probably share board members or other management. They really are entirely different companies however.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Pigskin-Referee]

There's no need to look for ulterior motives (like antitrust) for supporting Mac - all you have to do is look at SEC filings to see that the Microsoft's Mac Business Unit is quite profitable as a standalone entity. That's plenty of direct motive to keep supporting the platform.

Considering that they really have no competition, unless you are so foolish as to actually believe that OpenOffice or it latest sibling LibreOffice is actually any real competition, they cannot be anything but profitable. Perhaps if MS Office were still stuck at Office97 that might be true but certainly not today.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but I didn't feel the need to mention a condition that is never fulfilled.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Charging supracompetitive rates is anticompetive behaviour. By Mozilla Corporation.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[hobarrera]

WHAT? Why would we want mozilla doing an email/calendar SERVER? There are plenty of open source alternatives out there that work perfectly (personally I use dovecot/opensmptd/radicale).

I'd like to see contact syncronization of ANY kind on thunderbird, and why not build-in lightning instead of keeping it an addon?

And really, exchange is only used by really-big-corps that use 100% MS anyway, so doesn't matter if mozilla makes YET ANOTHER fancy alternative.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Runaway1956]

Why would you want to torture a novel? What could you hope to gain from it? Can you make the story end to your personal liking if you kick the book around for awhile?

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Runaway1956]

Good people have done evil things. Evil people have done good things. Oftentimes, it's accidental. Sometimes, it's intentional, done in the belief that it's for the greater good. So, no, the distinction is NOT unimportant. Oftentimes in life, one has to pay attention to exactly what is said, and what is not said, to properly understand the message.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Runaway1956]

Do you really think that 80% of FireFox users just leave default settings on anything? Firefox' major selling point is, it is the most CUSTOMIZABLE browser on the web. People download it because they want to play with it. Kinda like Linux users.

Which reminds me of a great pic -
https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/102342595285863325267/albums/posts/5675640915223683682

If you're like me, or if you have a small desktop, you may have to zoom it to read it. ;^)

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

I did not realize that my post inferred that Google was worried about their market share.
In fact I thought it was fairly clear how I came down on this issue. But thanks for setting me straight.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[tibit]

Gee whiz. For $300M a year Firefox should be something else than it currently is. That's a whole lot of money. If their developers cost $300k per year in salary and benefits, that'd cover what -- perhaps 500 developers, with the other $150M going towards overheads, hosting costs, etc. I think that Mozilla is quite complacent and inefficient with how they spend their money.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[tibit]

This completely fails to take into account Jobs's deals with MS. Guess what: MS is a money making software development house. Apple used to have deals with them, this had nothing to do with any antitrust poseurship.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[hesaigo999ca]

I agree with you on this one, I know their browser market share has gone up , and now surpasses FF.
So this will definitely help them in the long run, either pay now, or pay later, and maybe more money...

Re:To avoid antitrust

[flurp]

Half of slashdot thinks you actually are bonch. Please settle this for us now - are you bonch?

Re:To avoid antitrust

[raddan]

Wrong on many counts. Firstly, you can only change a license if you own the copyright. I just checked out a copy of WebKit from their svn repo. Copyrights are all over the place-- some belong to Apple, some belong to Google, and many little pieces here and there belong to private individuals. Getting everyone to reassign their copyrights would be a nightmare. This is why many GNU projects require copyright assignment statements before you contribute patches.

Secondly, Apple put all of their original contributions under the (L)GPL. The original codebase, KHTML, was contributed by Qt, and that was BSD-licensed.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

So Apple isn't using Microsoft's Azure for its cloud computing offering?

Re:To avoid antitrust

[BenoitRen]

Irony: Firefox fan supporting XPCOM ... who probably rants about ActiveX.

I'm not a Firefox fan; I use SeaMonkey. I haven't ranted about ActiveX either. You can stop your stereotyping now.

The fact that their entire browser and extension system are based on it is due to bad design, not something they want to keep around.

You're wrong. They exist to make cross-platform development easier. It's much better than maintaining a different version of the GUI for every platform. Just write XUL and use XPCOM to make it run.

Plus, due to its nature, it's easy to overlay and hook into, which is what allows the extensions to be as useful as they are. That's the reason why XUL-based web browsers, after all these years, still outmatch every other web browser in terms of extensibility and customisability.

These two 'features' are in fact some of Gecko's biggest performance problems, that coupled with the idea that it was smart to write most everything in JavaScript.

[citation needed]

Re:To avoid antitrust

[jd]

Kicking books doesn't really do it. I recommend waterboarding or electro-shocks. In the case of novelizations of TV adaptions of novels (yes, that happens), both should be applied simultaneously.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[jd]

I'm guessing the revised term reflects the current economy.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Mia'cova]

Well, if you choose to use chrome rather than firefox, google doesn't have to spend money setting your default search provider. So that's more profit. There are also other benefits to their platform control. Doesn't AdBlock Plus for Chrome contain a checkbox in the installer to exclude google ads from being blocked? When you own the platform, you can control the extension developers. As new forms of advertising are developed, say inside google chrome apps, they are in a position to decide on a case-by-case basis what they allow to be blocked. Also, they gather so much extra data with the type-ahead URLs and such. There are many reasons why google would want to kill firefox and keep the code to themselves.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Daniel Phillips]

Wrong on many counts. Firstly, you can only change a license if you own the copyright. I just checked out a copy of WebKit from their svn repo. Copyrights are all over the place-- some belong to Apple, some belong to Google, and many little pieces here and there belong to private individuals. Getting everyone to reassign their copyrights would be a nightmare. This is why many GNU projects require copyright assignment statements before you contribute patches.

Sorry, it is you who are wrong. It depends on the license. The terms of BSD license are entirely compatible with relicencing under (L)GPL, and you do not need to be the copyright owner to do so. The BSD license gives you that right.

As far as Apple is concerned, they had no choice but to continue to licence webkit under LGPL, because it was already under LGPL. And they did not get KHTML from "Qt" as you put it (perhaps you meant Trolltech) it was created by the KDE community of volunteers. KHTML was licensed under LGPL from the start, not BSD as you claim, but feel free to correct me if you can do it factually.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[rtb61]

Well, there you go, that;s the beauty of open source, they don't have to do a thunderbird server from scratch.

Why should they do one, obvious, to create another interpretation, to tweak the GUI, to put their own unique stamp on it.

With IPv6 slowly gaining ground the idea of an easy to use, easy to administer mail and calender server for residential fixed IP addresses becomes for more important. I personally would like to see what the Firefox crew can come up with.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Anonymous Coward]

Theoretically Apple's iWork competes with Microsoft Office. At least, it's a more credible competitor than OpenOffice.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Pigskin-Referee]

A pen and paper are more credible than OpenOffice. Seriously, I would be embarrassed to admit that I developed or used that piece of useless garbage. Only die-hard MS haters actually use it and even some of those are really closet "MS Office" users.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Kalriath]

Precisely. They don't care how you access it, they only care that you use it - and see the ads on it (the exception of course being Apps, which doesn't have ads when a fee is stumped up).

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Kalriath]

Samsung Electronics is the company responsible for producing both Samsung phones and LCD panels for Apple phones. It really is the same company.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Daniel Phillips]

I'm not sure how much of JavaScriptCore Google actually uses in Chrome now that they've got their own BSD-licensed V8 javascript engine. That leaves WebCore, which basically corresponds to the parts that originally came from KHTML - both Apple and Google have licensed as little as possible under the LGPL.

And the only possible reason is to distribute binaries built from secret source code. In other words, both reserve the right to do evil, whether or not they are actually doing it today.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Daniel Phillips]

Plus, due to its nature, it's easy to overlay and hook into, which is what allows the extensions to be as useful as they are. That's the reason why XUL-based web browsers, after all these years, still outmatch every other web browser in terms of extensibility and customisability.

Agreed, Firefox extensions are its biggest strength. So you say it's impossible to implement XUL and XPCOM on top of Webkit/KHTML? I haven't analyzed that, so I'm relying on you :-)

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Daniel Phillips]

Excuse me, but are your seriously trying to call other people obnoxious?

You CAN NOT take open source code private ever

Way wrong. If the license permits it, you just add a bunch of features (including evil features like "now works with this device that has a secret API") and keep the source for the new features secret. Or add malware, same idea. How would a user know?

Taking Apache or BSD licensed software private is easy and done all the time. That is why developers who have the choice tend to prefer licenses that guarantee their work can never be taken private.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[BenoitRen]

I'm not saying it's impossible to implement XUL and XPCOM on top of Webkit, but if you're throwing out Gecko you're almost starting over from scratch.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Daniel Phillips]

I'm not saying it's impossible to implement XUL and XPCOM on top of Webkit, but if you're throwing out Gecko you're almost starting over from scratch.

Not even close. You are starting with a working HTML engine and wrapping it to present an already existing API. A standard software engineering project, and the best chance in the world for a major housecleaning without a complete rewrite.

Now, if I may present a counterargument: what if Gecko fades away, do we then get a browser engine monoculture, increasing the effectiveness of malware attacks or possibly having a bad effect on the evolution of standards? And I will answer my own argument: keeping to the current course, Gecko is likely to die anyway, plus Firefox and the Mozilla foundation along with it. The only way for Mozilla foundation to survive is to preside over the code base with the most developers, and my crystal ball says the developer community is already well down the path of walking away from Gecko holding its collective nose. Not plugin developers so far, but core developers. And one day the plugin developers will go too.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[Overly Critical Guy]

You really created a new account just to post this? "Half of Slashdot" doesn't mean your puppet accounts.

Re:To avoid antitrust

[raddan]

I stand corrected re: original license of KHTML.
Have you read the BSD license? It is incredibly short and says nothing of the sort re: re-licensing. In fact, it implies precisely the opposite. I'll give you the sprawling 3-clause version:
------

Copyright (c) YEAR, OWNER

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the ORGANIZATION nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

-------
More here:
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/75436/relicense-bsd-2-3-clause-code-to-gpl

You thought you were the user?

[Colin Smith]

No, you're the product.
 

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

Why I won't buy an Android phone, or give Google a monopoly on my information. GMail and google searches (never signed in) are enough.

Re:You thought you were the user?

[geekoid]

no SHIT! Did you think know one new that?
Next up, ads on TV are there to sell you things! shocking!

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Ynot_82]

you're the product.

Do you not see the irony in this statement, posted to this site....

Re:You thought you were the user?

[geekoid]

Psst:
You aren't that important.

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, will you but a WP7 phone? Or maybe get an iOS device? I'm sorry, but you can at least but a Google-free version of Android on an Android phone...

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure you think like that about yourself on election day too.

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Missing.Matter]

Did you think know one new that?

Just.... wow...

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Neither one, but both: we are all users and people that are used. Didn't you listen to pop music in the eighties? Sweet Dreams ring a bell? How about an image of Marlyon Manson riding a pig while wearing a tutu? Anything?

The world isn't digital, its analog.

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Bucky24]

This argument, and the "I have nothing to hide" argument are useless. Yes, usually the person is not that important. Yes, usually they have nothing to hide. But, (to borrow from Robin Hood: Men in Tights): "That's not the point, it's the principle of the thing".

These invasions of privacy seem mild now, and a small thing, but its just the beginning.

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Osgeld]

I am sure it doesn't fucking matter cause our votes are worthless, its all down to how many points can they rack up in the state's government

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. I thunked it up all by myself. Hi everybody! I just got off my AOL account. My old Gateway 2000 puter finally died. There wuz a virus that wood nvr go a way. :(

Re:You thought you were the user?

[kesuki]

i vote every presidential election and try to get to the congress/senate elections too. i find it very important and it is a fine reminder that i am still an important citizen of a very important country.

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. But I see the coincidence.

Re:You thought you were the user?

[DocHoncho]

Well, to be fair he IS important, at least as far as the role he plays in contributing to the averages in the "web surfer person" dataset... While it's possible that Google has some nefarious database detailing our AC's entire search and browsing history, the primary utility of that data is feeding the averages.

As much as the advertising industry wants to believe that targeted ads are the "wave of the future", ads are ads and trying to target them with laser guided accuracy isn't likely to provide much more than a bump in the usual click through statistics.

Oh ho! Google knows I bought an iPod. Now they're trying to sell me accessories, but I don't want any. So... fail?

Re:You thought you were the user?

[DocHoncho]

LOL, I try to tell myself the very same thing, but it sure doesn't help me sleep at night.

But don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as the advertising industry wants to believe that targeted ads are the "wave of the future", ads are ads and trying to target them with laser guided accuracy isn't likely to provide much more than a bump in the usual click through statistics.

Oh ho! Google knows I bought an iPod. Now they're trying to sell me accessories, but I don't want any. So... fail?

Yes, showing you ads for things you don't want is obviously a failure. What Google wants is to determine what you do want to buy. If you want nothing, showing you no ad is fine with them. Most people do want to buy stuff sometimes. Google is good enough at this to make a bit of money at it. You don't have to click the ads, or use their services at all.

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Colin Smith]

Apple's new voice to text technology in action?
 

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Colin Smith]

I'm assuming he's trying out new "Designed to make you look stupid" speech to text translation software.

Re:You thought you were the user?

[Imbrondir]

I often wonder why google users gets so much condescending comments about "being a product for advertisers" while getting free content/services.

It's a way better deal than TV/magazines/newspapers where you usually both pay for their content but still ends up with "being a product for advertisers".

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

...and I still switched it to Bing

Re:LOL

[__aasehi2499]

Ditto.

No

[Anonymous Coward]

And wow...this is new low for SharkLaser and whoever is making him to spew this.

'Google started out as a search company. But that's not what they are today. Google's primary business is advertising.

Google is still primarily a search company. Right from the beginning their monetisation plan was through serving targeted ads. A business model that lets them closely align their interests with that of their users. If the users don't like Google they will move away to a different source and so Google will not be able to make money. This is a brilliant business model and unfortunately one that Microsoft cannot make work. So they are using all this propaganda to discredit Google's business plan.

Re:No

[bonch]

Literally 97% of Google's revenue comes from web advertising. They're not a search company; the search engine is just one of many mechanisms for displaying ads.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

That's how they make money you fucking idiot. That's like saying Microsoft makes money by selling crappy overpriced software.

My point is there's nothing wrong in serving ads for things that people are looking for. You are trying to paint it in a negative way. How the fuck do idiots like you remember to breathe - beats the crap out of me.

Re:No

[Bucky24]

My point is there's nothing wrong in serving ads for things that people are looking for.

Whoa, an AC that actually has a good point. I stand amazed.

Though they're a bit of a douche, aren't they?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

NicknameOne, don't you get tired of trolling for Google every day?

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez...seriously who the fuck are you people? cmdrpony? insightin140bytes? SharkLaser? bonch? InterestingFella? Overly critical guy?
How much will you bet half the AC shill posts here are by these accounts that all belong to one entity or two at most?

I used to come for the comments mostly but for the past several months it's been taken over by these accounts that post the same shit full of lies every single day. You idiots are making slashdot unreadable these days.

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

NBC makes money by ads.

Would you call NBC an advertising company? No. It's a media broadcasting company. No one refers to NBC as an advertising company.

I cannot explain this in a clearer manner. Even a 5 year old should be able to understand this. If you cannot, you should perhaps pay more attention in middle school.

Nothing wrong with this

[gman003]

This is free-market capitalism working. Supply is constant (there's only one Firefox), but demand increased (Bing wanted in on the traffic). Therefore prices increased.

And it's even good for the consumer. "Default search provider" can't really hurt the consumer, as long as they're free to change it (and they are). Meanwhile, this provides funding to one of the few open-source brands. Firefox isn't just a browser - it managed to build a respect and legitimacy as a product in a world dominated by closed-source, and it built that legitimacy with regular desktop users, not IT people. Mozilla could make a music e-store, or a netbook line, or an operating system, and it would share that perception of legitimacy, of the brand identity. Not many open-source non-profits can say the same.

Keeping an open-source brand alive is worth it.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Are you sure there are no hidden clauses in the contract that prohibit Mozilla from creating an app-store? I am glad Mozilla got funding. I am glad Apache is picking up Open Office. I am very disappointed in the walled gardens in Android and iOS app-store markets. Don't even mention the fragmentation and lack of standards in the TV/Boxee/AppleTV/Roku/ segments.

I really wish Mozilla/Firefox would create a standard open-standard API for apps and allow app developers to use a develop once and run anywhere model.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[alexander_686]

I mostly agree what you are saying, but I want to point out 2 technical points.

First, supply is not constant. It’s like saying the supply of Ford cars is constant because Ford is the only supplier of Ford cars – which – while technically true does not offer a lot of insight. Consumers demand a web browser. There are many suppliers of web browsers which are close substitutes. There is a reason why Google is paying Firefox 300m but not Opera.

Second, while "Default search provider" can't really hurt the consumer directly, it can harm the market and thus the customer indirectly. Think of all the tying that Microsoft has done as an example. If Windows97 ships with Explorer does this prevent people from downloading Netscape? No – but a lot won’t take the extra step. If Kraft buys out all of the eye level MacNCheese on a grocery story (which they do) does this prevent a consumer from bending over and buying a new local brand? No. (well, in this case, sometimes yes. Stores can only stock X brands of MacNCheese, so they big corps pay for the prime shelf space. The big boys can’t price out a specific smaller producer, but they can shrink and tilt the mark their way.)

I am not a huge fan on the FTA regulating internet monopolies because they take years to decided markets that last for ½ as long, but it is important to understand what is happening.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[asa]

Mozilla is building an open standards-based API for apps that allow app developers to develop once and run anywhere. Have a look here for a preview. We'll be investing considerably more in this project in the coming year. See more here https://apps.mozillalabs.com/

And no, Mozilla would absolutely not sacrifice something fundamental to our Mission for revenue. See more here http://www.mozilla.org/about/mission.html

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[Daniel Phillips]

I am very disappointed in the walled gardens in Android and iOS app-store markets.

I don't care about Apple's walled garden, that will take care of itself, and I don't perceive the Android market as a walled garden. All the excellent free (as in freedom) applications I downloaded without providing a credit card number says the Android market is not walled. But Android development is most definitely a walled garden and that sucks because Google designers and coders are not nearly as good as they think they are, or as they would have us believe. Which translates to real life suckage that hurts me in real life. Like not being able to connect to Wifi networks reliably. A situation that would not have lasted more than a year in the greater open source community, given a healthy, functioning development community as opposed to the current, bespoke and overly corporatized Googly approach. Which tends to produce results that would be comically amusing if they were not so painfully intrusive in practice, like the brain-addled conscious decision not to let users shut down an app in any simple way.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[steelfood]

You're correct about the lack of a constant "supply". In Firefox's case, supply is a function of the number of eyeballs looking at it. Being the default search provider is basically Google's marketing and advertising. Which leads me to wonder, since Mozilla is basically making money off advertising Google's product, does Mozilla consider their userbase the product too? Because it would explain a hell of a lot about Firefox's direction if it was true.

Actually, Firefox comes with several search options besides Google (Amazon, Yahoo, eBay, etc.). I believe these are all paid for, similar to the higher and lower shelves in the supermarket isle. But because there's only one search box, somebody has to be the default search provider.

The main reason why people will look higher or lower on the shelf in a supermarket is because they're paying for the product directly. People won't care about switching their (default) search provider because it's free either way, and for the most part, whatever search engine they're using turns up decent results. In a browser, the only reason to pay for one of those other spots is when the default engine is insufficient due to specialization.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[kesuki]

firefox was the first appstore i encountered IIRC though they call em add-ons... and they are donation supported.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Thanks for the info. Great to know. Wish you all the best, and hope Mozilla API becomes the defacto standard in the app store model.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[evilviper]

This is free-market capitalism working. Supply is constant (there's only one Firefox), but demand increased (Bing wanted in on the traffic). Therefore prices increased.

It's anything-but supply and demand. You've got a monopoly dumping money into an adjacent industry, running their operations at an OBSCENE loss year after year. With the primary goal not of trying to get a foothold, but instead happily wasting money on a failed cause in hopes of wounding a major competitor on their home turf.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[gman003]

Google hardly has a monopoly. They have market dominance, but none of their products are the only major option.

Search? They own 80%. For the rest, there's Bing, Baidu, even Ask.com. 80% is not normally a monopoly, especially when you can point to a single competitor with nearly 10% market share (if it were Google 80% and 200 other companies 0.1% each, then you could argue that it was effectively a monopoly, but that is not the case).

Ads? There's nothing stopping you from taking bids to run your own ads on a site (many do), and there's a variety of competitors in various areas. There's also specialized niche advertisers like Project Wonderful that focus on specific things.

Android? The iPhone's got over 40%, and, while it may be easy to, don't forget Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

Youtube? There's Vimeo, plus dozens of smaller competitors.

Groups? As if Google has a monopoly on Usenet access and custom forums.

GMail? There's hundreds of free and paid webmail hosts. Hotmail anyone?

Chrome? They're being beaten by IE, they're about even with Firefox and Opera and Safari remain respectable competitors.

Google+? Facebook is beating them. Google Docs? Microsoft Office Web Apps. Google Code? Sourceforge and/or Github. Checkout? Paypal is thrashing them.

Google does not have any monopolies. They're big enough to engage in monopolistic behaviors like bundling, but they're not a monopoly. You admit as much yourself:

It's anything-but supply and demand. You've got a monopoly dumping money into an adjacent industry, running their operations at an OBSCENE loss year after year. With the primary goal not of trying to get a foothold, but instead happily wasting money on a failed cause in hopes of wounding a major competitor on their home turf.

(emphasis mine)

The existence of a major competitor is directly incompatible with monopoly status. Your mistake is in thinking that Search is Google's main product. It is not - it is their most visible, most prominent, but not their main. Their main product is advertisements, and they are making quite a deal of money off those. Everything else they make is intended to support that, and it does - Search allows them to show ads, Youtube shows ads, GMail shows ads, Chrome drives people to Search which then shows them ads. Buying Default Search Provider status from Mozilla makes sense purely as a business move to bring more people in to Search so they can show more ads. That $300,000,000 will pay for itself this way.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[evilviper]

Google hardly has a monopoly.

You got it backwards...

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[gsnedders]

Opera very much gets money from Google.

In the past year, Desktop has brought in c. 70 million NOK per quarter, the vast majority of which comes from Google, which is approximately equal to 50 million USD per year.

In addition to that, Google is the default browser in Opera Mobile and Mini, but the amount there is far harder to quantity. Note that Mini alone has a userbase (in absolute numbers) equal to that of Desktop, so it seems reasonable to expect a considerable amount of money there as well.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[Mia'cova]

But how many years did google get cheaper prices because they had no legitimate competitor? That's a monopoly at work.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[BitZtream]

What idiots do you think are going to pick up on the buggy ass pile of crap you guys produce instead of something actually useful for cross platform development? Who's 'standard' are you using? Inventing your own? Awesome thats what we need more crappy incomplete APIs in an 'open' web.

You'd think at 100 million you could have bad at least a browser that didn't fucking suck more and more every release.

You can't make a browser that doesn't suck, what the fuck makes you think you should develop more crap instead of FIXING YOUR CORE PRODUCT.

For reference: We used to embed gecko for rendering in a cross platform environment. I know a fair amount of the details under the hood as I managed to actually embed it in a functional way, which is amazing considering the garbage heap collection of documents you guys call 'Documentation', most of which just says 'this is out of data and may be inaccurate' which actually means 'we didn't bother to actually determine if this is current or not, we just marked it cause its old'

Much like most others that embedded gecko at one point, we switched to webkit and decided it would be well worth rewriting our UI in native code for each platform than it was to bother with Gecko and its massive dependancies, size and clearly mismanaged direction.

You guys are a joke. You take in a fortune in cash and your production is pathetic by comparison. Your yearly financials show that your an extremely wasteful and horribly run organization. How the hell can you even come in here and speak considering how pathetic Mozilla is acting these days? Are you guys that oblivious to the way everyone else in the world sees you these days?

The userbase that google pays you for, that allows you to exist, is not the OSS zealots who worshipped FF in the beginning, their normal people who won't keep using your product JUST because its open source, they don't care and your numbers reflect it. Good luck enjoying the ride into irrelevance until you get some management and development leadership that has a clue.

Re:Nothing wrong with this

[BitZtream]

Then you are too young to be making comments if thats what you think an app store is.

Stores generally make money on purpose. Mozilla makes money on ignorance.

Started out as a search company?

[Anonymous Coward]

"'Google started out as a search company. But that's not what they are today. Google's primary business is advertising."

Funny, I thought they were always an advertising company. The last time it wasn't, to my knowledge, was when it was still hosted at Stanford.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of TV stations get their revenue from advertising. That doesn't make NBC an advertising company.

Wikipedia gets all of their revenue from donations. That doesn't make Wikimedia a donation company.

You people really need to learn to separate what a company does from how it finances those operations.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Daniel Phillips]

"'Google started out as a search company. But that's not what they are today. Google's primary business is advertising."

Funny, I thought they were always an advertising company. The last time it wasn't, to my knowledge, was when it was still hosted at Stanford.

The original poster is correct. Google's original business plan was wildly different from auctioned search terms. Believe it or not, it was... well, you can do your own research, I've done mine.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[The End Of Days]

What Google does is run the largest advertising company on the Internet. You not liking that reality has no bearing on its existence.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Daniel Phillips]

The vast majority of TV stations get their revenue from advertising. That doesn't make NBC an advertising company.

Are you sure about that? Anyway, Google owns Doubleclick, which is most assuredly an advertising operation.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[gratuitous_arp]

The original poster is correct. Google's original business plan was wildly different from auctioned search terms. Believe it or not, it was... well, you can do your own research

From what I remember of reading "Googled" by Ken Auletta when it came out, Larry and Sergey didn't have a business plan initially, even after getting venture funding for Google. They tried to make the best search engine they could and assumed money would somehow follow if they developed a great product. After a couple years, I believe the first idea they had was farming out their search services to places like Yahoo -- which iirc was their first deal. When that didn't keep the VCs happy, they gradually became more advertising oriented and never looked back.

So I don't think they had a plan to make money to start with, which is why I initially took issue with the original post when I read it. But I suppose it's fair to say that their original plan was selling search services to other search providers. Is this what you are referring to? (Am I misremembering part of Google's history?)

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, I thought they were always an advertising company.

It was always funded by ads. To the best of my knowledge Google didn't make any profit until it started putting ads next to the search results. In the past Google has openly said 99% of the revenue came from ads. According to the summary that has dropped to 96%. That's not to say Google's ad revenues have dropped in absolute numbers (they have most likely increased), it just hasn't grown as fast as the other revenue sources. This means that Google's revenue from other sources must have more than quadrupled.

But even though the products are funded by ads, Google still prioritizes the product over the ads. Google want users to feel that Google has the best products such that the users will keep coming back. On the short term Google could probably increase revenues by focusing more on the ads than on giving the users a good experience. But for the long term it is better to keep the users happy. Though this line of reasoning doesn't appear to apply to youtube.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google also owns YouTube, which is most assuredly a video streaming operation, Google Apps, which is most assuredly a network app hosting platform, GMail, which is most assuredly ...

You still didn't counter the point how ads providing the finances makes whole company an advertising company.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[asa]

Google isn't selling ad space along side their content, like you see on television. Google is selling the ad product itself. AdWords, AdSense, DoubleClick, those are Google ad products and that's where Google makes 95+% of its revenue. Google is not selling "ad space" or "air time" in the classic sense. They are selling the ads themselves. They own the ad product being used.

NBC does not own all of the ad studios in the business. The thousands upon thousands of ad shops own their own business and produce their own ad. Butt Google does own the biggest "ad studio" in the business, with AdWords, AdSense, and DoubleClick. That's their primary business, the ad business. Google makes and sells ads. The other businesses they engage in support their ad platforms.

If you can't see how Google is different from NBC, then you're not really thinking about it very hard.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't in general make the advertising themselves do they? It's more like they own a lot of advertising ecosystem. I'm not sure what you would call it.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is Borg

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny, because my company pays a lot of money to non-Google people to determine the copy and content that appears in our Google ads. I'm pretty sure Google isn't "making" our ads.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Daniel Phillips]

I believe the first idea they had was farming out their search services to places like Yahoo -- which iirc was their first deal. When that didn't keep the VCs happy, they gradually became more advertising oriented and never looked back. So I don't think they had a plan to make money to start with, which is why I initially took issue with the original post when I read it.

That is roughly correct. Of course they always planned to make money, they just didn't know how at first, and the idea you mentioned was a big flop for reasons I won't get into. See here for the more or less accidental way they hit it rich.

Re:Started out as a search company?

[Anonymous Coward]

> If you can't see how Google is different from NBC, then you're not really thinking about it very hard.

NBC exists to book money from advertisers. That's it, the sole purpose. TV just happens to be the medium in which it achieves this.

So yes, NBC *is* an advertising company. Its sole function is to connect vendors with prospects.

Yay!

[bigsexyjoe]

Did MS make them pay triple? Yup! MS could have actually gained some geek-cred paying Mozilla, in addition to getting searches.

I hope they spend most of this money making Web to Gecko a great OS!

Re:Yay!

[lister king of smeg]

I believe thwart would be "boot to gecko" not web to gecko. Just saying.

  http://hacks.mozilla.org/2011/07/announcing-boot-to-gecko-b2g-booting-to-the-web/

Re:Yay!

[bigredradio]

As soon as I heard they made them raise the bidding to 300% I thought of this

Question

[CanHasDIY]

If I'm the "product," wouldn't that mean I'm entitled to some form of compensation (preferably monetary)?

Re:Question

[trip23]

If you are the product, you are entitled to be sold. Money goes to the producer. Or Trader. They will feed you well, if you incorporate value.

Re:Question

[godel_56]

If I'm the "product," wouldn't that mean I'm entitled to some form of compensation (preferably monetary)?

You are already compensated in that you have the benefit of the search results.

Re:Question

[PixetaledPikachu]

If I'm the "product," wouldn't that mean I'm entitled to some form of compensation (preferably monetary)?

Sure, you're entitled to use their fairly decent browser, webmail, and search service. Their ads actually managed to point me to a decent hotel deal a couple weeks ago

Re:Question

[93 Escort Wagon]

If I'm the "product," wouldn't that mean I'm entitled to some form of compensation (preferably monetary)?

You think they give you free access to Gmail, Chrome, etc. out of the goodness of their corporate heart?

Re:Question

[zippthorne]

You're not paying for search, but it's clearly not something that can be done for free - it takes gobs of bandwidth just to spider everything and racks upon racks of processing to digest it all into something that can fit on mere "whole data centers" worth of disks.

Since you're not paying, someone must be. And if they're paying, what must they be buying?

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

If I'm the "product," wouldn't that mean I'm entitled to some form of compensation (preferably monetary)?

Your payment is the content you see on web sites. Don't tell me you don't value it: You choose to spend your time and tolerate ads to see it. Including the front page of slashdot.

You could tell Google that you refuse to use their web sites, or any web site that serves ads, until they pay you. Good luck with that.

Can you now...

[Anonymous Coward]

fix your bloody browser.

I couldn't see what the problem was before this deal, revenues were good, expeniture cannot have eaten too far into it. May be money was put aside because of uncertainty about future funding. But now.... it better be good, and soon.

Lots of Mozilla

[ears_d]

Does this mean we will see even more major Firefox versions in 2012? Or, will Mozilla beef up its graphics design staff and add even more eye candy???

Re:Lots of Mozilla

[Daniel Phillips]

I hope it means that Mozilla foundation can now afford to pay to put the reload button back where it belongs.

300%?

[ve3oat]

This bidding war was costly to Google, which is now paying 300% of what they used to,

Ahh ... $300 million is NOT 300% of $100 million. (I will refrain from my usual rant about journalists trying to use statistics.)

Re:300%?

[Anonymous Coward]

I really don't see how 300 million is anything other than 300% of 100 million

Re:300%?

[bjorniac]

Yes it is. 50% of 100 million is 50 million, 100% of 100 million is 100 million, and 300% of 100 million is 300 million. "Of" in this context means multiplied by.

Perhaps you're confused by "300% of" as opposed to "increased 300%"? - it's a 200% increase, or 300% of the original value.

Re:300%?

[radish]

Actually I'm pretty sure it is. They didn't say "300% MORE than they used to", which would have been wrong. 50% of $100m is $50m, 100% of $100m is $100m, 200% of $100m is $200m, and so on.

In fact, Wolfram Alpha confirms it!

Re:300%?

[Anonymous Coward]

(I will refrain from my usual rant about journalists trying to use statistics.)

Oh no, please continue with your rant :-)

Re:300%?

[ve3oat]

Perhaps you're confused by "300% of" as opposed to "increased 300%"? - it's a 200% increase, or 300% of the original value.

You're right, that is exactly what happened. Silly me!

Re:300%?

[bjorniac]

It happens to us all at times :)

Re:300%?

[Chuck Chunder]

Perhaps you're confused by "300% of" as opposed to "increased 300%"? - it's a 200% increase, or 300% of the original value.

Percentages are stupid measurements to use when 100% doesn't relate to some fundamental whole of which you are indicating a ratio of. I can't imagine what could lead someone to write:

which is now paying 300% of what they used to

rather then

which is now paying 3 times what they used to

other than disregard for the reader.

Re:300%?

[bjorniac]

I take your point - they certainly convey information in a less clear fashion than simply saying X times. I would say that the 100% does represent a 'whole' here, and I believe that the over 100 statement is being used for dramatic effect. Usually a percentage is smaller than 100, so when going above it makes a big impact in the reader's mind. In this context it is because one might have expected Google's contribution to be lower this time around due to increased Chrome usage, so Mozilla might only receive 10% of previous amounts. The larger number catches your attention more if you're just skim-reading.

All that said, however, this is goddamned Slashdot, so we can handle a little math! Just give us the straight numbers (three times, or 300 million vs 100 million etc) and journalistic attention grabbers like this aren't so necessary.

Re:300%?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Irish Times, the Senile Old Lady of Tara Street, managed to have the Church of Scientology revenues decrease by 150% in an article. I bet Wolfram cannot keep up with south Dublin's finest!

So the better question IMHO

[__aasehi2499]

Is why Firefox doesn't have all it's problems worked out with an operating budget of at least 100 million dollars a year, one would hope that with an additional 200 million dollars a year, they will really start making heads turn towards, and not away from, their product.

Re:So the better question IMHO

[AbRASiON]

Vote you up or post, I say post.
Agreed. - Those people are frankly, idiots. Their direction in the past 12 months has been an utter joke. Firefox is slowly becoming a mess. I continue to perservere with the 3.6 build (still updated for security, just last week infact) - however I'm not sure how long I can endure this performance.

Re:So the better question IMHO

[tibit]

Assuming, very conservatively, that they can spend 50% on developers, and 50% on everything else, you can get a lot of brilliant people employed for that kind of money. Of course software development isn't really scalable by throwing people at the problem without a structure to support them. But they should be able to afford software engineers who can design the innards in such a way that the work can be done in parallel on many isolated pieces. Perhaps a bigger problem is that there are no good tools to support this kind of work. Ideally you'd want something that integrates version control, bug tracking, collaborative document editing, etc. Any systems out there that pretend to do that are "enterprisey" enough to make you puke, and are really useless and counterproductive.

Re:So the better question IMHO

[__aasehi2499]

I use Firefox as my primary browser on every site that allows me too, while falling back to the others when a site overwhelmingly prefers one of them. I use Nightly for everything until it crashes and then resort to the beta. I like Firefox for its functionality and the filtering of the web that its add-ons allow i.e. NoScript that the others don't. I'm just always surprised at the amount of money that gets tossed around these days, and my ignorance on the matter can't grasp what it could possibly be spent on considering my family of five subsists on about 25k a year. I often forget how much of a 'necessity tax' gets put on things that companies have to have to operate, and the people selling said things know it while charging for the privilege.

No, Google chose to pay triple.

[Anonymous Coward]

If they hadn't, MS or Yahoo would have paid whatever the next bid was. It was a bidding war. C'mon, /.

Oh and I love that the link in the summary includes the word "Microsoft" but not "Yahoo."

Evil me...

[Tanuki64]

Google is paying so much to be default search machine. And the first thing I do with a new FF installation is to remove it and replace it via 'Add To Search Bar 2.0' with DuckDuckgo and Dogpile. But hey, at least I am still using google. Indirectly.

Re:Evil me...

[kesuki]

mint linux has a google replacement search tool too, only novices don't notice it's not the normal google search but a custom frontend

Re:Evil me...

[InterestingFella]

Actually, DuckDuckGo uses Bing.

Re:Evil me...

[Tanuki64]

But dogpile uses google, bing, and some more.

Sounds familiar

[onyxruby]

I made a comment talking about how this was likely just a few days ago.

My point was the platform brings a lot of eyeballs, and has a value on that merit alone. That value has now been placed at 300 million dollars. Conspiracy theorists need to get a grip and remember that most things have simple explanations.

Firefox can't be bought or otherwise buried. However they can be joined, and there is nothing wrong with their doing so.

Re:I don't think Chrome has Google "locked in"

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you installed / upgraded IE... it prompts to set defaults to all Microsoft or "Allow me to select my own defaults"... selecting the 2nd option opens a tab for each "accelerator"... from there Google is really easy to select for search, blogs, email, etc. It's been that way since IE8 and the massive anti-trust lawsuits in Europe.

Market share - boring......

[Chuck Chunder]

Firefox usage is falling

It would be interesting to know if this were true, not as a percentage of the market but in terms of total volume (number of users, number of searches done using Firefox, ie something actually somewhat relevant to how Google derives revenue).

People seem to focus a lot on market share but I think it's a largely irrelevant metric for doing anything other than cheerleading. After all, you can apparently run a viable business based on a single digit browser market share. Given the astonishingly large number of people using the web this shouldn't be surprising but people seem to look at the percentages and forget the volume.

300 million sounds like a lot of money (because it is!) but it would seem to be less than a dollar per Firefox user per year. Would Google expect to derive more than a dollars worth of revenue per user over a year on average? It doesn't sound like a fundamentally unreasonable proposition (and Google should have the metrics to know, it would not be much of a gamble for them).

Re:Market share - boring......

[Anonymous Coward]

Would Google expect to derive more than a dollars worth of revenue per user over a year on average?

Doesn't Google make more dollars in a year than there are people in the world? So I guess the answer is yes.

Re:Market share - boring......

[asa]

Mozilla Firefox users and usage is increasing. For the last year or so it hasn't outpaced the growth of the Web, but it is certainly increasing in absolute terms. I don't have the graphs in front of me but it's tens of millions of additional Firefox users so far this year.

Re:Market share - boring......

[Kjella]

It would be interesting to know if this were true, not as a percentage of the market but in terms of total volume (number of users, number of searches done using Firefox, ie something actually somewhat relevant to how Google derives revenue).

If you wanted a first-order approximation to the business value you could start with adjusting for market share per country and GDP. A user in the US is far more valuable than a user from some poor country in Africa. Global market share is more a popularity contest indicating where the market might be going.

Re:Market share - boring......

[gsnedders]

Bear in mind that Opera is far from the smallest browser which funds a viable business: yes, we are probably the smallest browser that attempts to compete on the Desktop (and certainly growing in absolute terms; whether we're growing as fast as the market is less clear, however), but there are other browsers out there.

Consider browsers such as NetFront and SkyFire: both of them have radically different business models (in fact, both ones that Opera has moved away from!), the former developing custom browsers for OEMs, and the latter charging end-users.

Re:Market share - boring......

[tibit]

OT: it was interesting to see Opera as the browser on Nintendo DSi. I used to use Opera exclusively in times of Windows 95 and 98. Heck, I even paid for it back then -- a couple times, no less. It offered really refreshing experience when the alternatives were Netscape (a clusterfuck it was, it seemed) and IE.

Re:Market share - boring......

[InterestingFella]

It's even more interesting when you turn on a hotel TV and in some instances you see Opera logo quickly flashing there :)

Re:Market share - boring......

[tibit]

Thank you, very interesting indeed.

Proof of Google's harmful monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just further proof the harmful nature of Google's monopoly.

I've seen COUNTLESS posts on this site as well as others in which people say "Sure Google has a monopoly... BUT THEY DON'T HARM ANYONE!" It's a silly and WRONG argument, and the fact that they were underpaying Mozilla just proves it.

Monopolies are bad because they mess up supply and demand. Without competition Google was able to lowball Mozilla and not pay them a fair amount. You think that people wanting to advertise on Google also aren't being harmed by the lack of competition? Google has grown too powerful and their tentacles keep reaching into new areas and they keep extending the monopoly into more areas.

Also, does anyone else think it's anticompetitive for a company with monopoly share to PAY people to use their services?

Re:Proof of Google's harmful monopoly

[RenderSeven]

Also, does anyone else think it's anticompetitive for a company with monopoly share to PAY people to use their services?

Well, its anticompetetive to let everyone *except* them pay to use the service. By your argument, if Google didnt bid then Microsoft would be underpaying for Firefox which would be proof of Microsofts harmful monopoly. If everyone is free to bid, no monopoly, and no one underpaid anyone.

Re:Proof of Google's harmful monopoly

[Locutus]

they competed with Microsoft to fund Firefox, a free browser which runs on arguably ALL platforms. WTF are you crying about.

Do you really think that it would have been better to let Mozilla be beholden to Microsoft? As if there isn't reams of court docs which show they would likely try to make it only run on Windows.

I would rather Google be there than Microsoft since Google got where they got in the search engine biz by being better than everyone else. If Google had even a pinch of the history Microsoft has I would be saying this agreement with Mozilla was bad for users but they don't and the Google search engine is still quite good.

LoB

Re:Proof of Google's harmful monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

I think /. has no clue what constitutes anti-competitive behavior

Re:Proof of Google's harmful monopoly

[makomk]

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the EU sees things this way. One of the Microsoft subsidiaries that provides Bing with targetted shopping results integrated into the main search submitted an anti-trust complaint about Google doing the same thing with their shopping results, and the EU are taking it seriously, which means that in the name of enforcing anti-competition laws soon Microsoft may become the only company allowed to integrate this kind of context-specific search with web searching.

Re:Proof of Google's harmful monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

Underpaying? Who's to say they aren't overpaying now instead? A value of a product is it's desirability and perception of worth. These thing change constantly over time. What you paid 5 years ago won't be what you paid 5 years later even when adjusted to inflation. This is especially true for services rather then things with natural pricing limits (like actual product cost as a min which also helps determine a soft max since people can undercut you).

Paying different amounts, even large differences, are a natural part of contracts. There is a reason why those contracts have strict time limits.

Lets get the facts straight.

[drolli]

Google has a revenue of sth like 30Billion/year. 60% of that is on their websites and i presum something like 40% comes from firefox users, which (according to my habit) mostly comes from the built-in search. Now lets say 50% of the revenue on the google websites is search-related. That makes 12% of 30Billion$ which could be lost. Lets say half of the people åre too lazy to change the default search engine, so we are talking about a loss probably larger than 1.5 Billion.

So paying 300Million seems a reasonable decision to me.

Re:Lets get the facts straight.

[gbjbaanb]

especially given what would happen if the default search engine for the majority of the web users became Bing - in IE, in FF, in anyone stupid enough to install Yahoo and it's toolbar or the "Bing Bar" crapware.

Imagine a world where Bing was the majority search engine. (I know, it's difficult). Such a thing could happen if MS paid enough money out. Imagine saying "I'll just bing that".

Its bad enough that the voice activation on xbox only responds to "bing x" for search.

So - $300m for Firefox default search, very much worth it. At least MS didn't push the price up to $8.5bn, amateurs :)

Re:Lets get the facts straight.

[Daniel Phillips]

...paying 300Million seems a reasonable decision to me.

Totally. But the number is so large that I worry about the money being largely pilfered by the usual sort of people who are attracted to large sums of money, instead of being mostly spent on doing good.

Re:Lets get the facts straight.

[asa]

You can read Mozilla's annual update here http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2010/ and see that we spend the money on people and infrastructure mostly.

Re:Lets get the facts straight.

[Daniel Phillips]

Wonderful, but I still worry, because large sums of money have a long and distinguished attracting the wrong sorts of people. See, worry can be a creative force for good.

At the moment I find myself wondering why Mozilla development seems to progress at a snail's pace which such a lot of money behind it. Spending the money on the wrong people perhaps? I mean, development isn't completely stopped, it is just slow. Mozilla still will not stay running indefinitely after so many years, unlike Linux for example, which will run for years without slowing down to a crawl and eventually crashing like Mozilla does. You would think hundreds of millions of dollars would be enough to fix that, what is wrong?

Re:Lets get the facts straight.

[Daniel Phillips]

OK, I read the financial report and it shed precious little light on exactly how those many millions were spent on software development. So now I am more worried than before.

Re:Lets get the facts straight.

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

Well we can see that a fair chunk of cash went on feel-good video production.

Anyway, from the actual 2010 accounts:

$63 m on "software development" activities
$10 m on "branding and marketing" ( why? )
$12 m on "general and admin" ( what? )

Not much transparency there.

Re:I don't think Chrome has Google "locked in"

[Anonymous Coward]

Good lord.... once again Slashdot is full of ignorant MS bashers. "Durrr Google doesn't lock you in.... BUT MS DOESN'T ALLOW YOU TO USE GOOGLE IN IE!!!!11"

Nope.

Want to set Google as IE's default search provider? Enter something into the address bar and notice the dropdown list of suggestions that starts to appear. Notice the search provider icons at the bottom. Select the big "G".

There - you have now set Google as the default provider.

Next time try not to be an ignoramous who bashes MS at every turn.

mozilla is now MS?

[Anonymous Coward]

If google is better for open source than MS, and Mozilla is playing MS and Google against each other for the highest bidder, should all the linux distros dump mozilla and switch to chrome?

Should Google be packaging .deb and .rpm files for distros?

Providing anti-trust and advertising revenue protection to the highest bidder, based on a legacy (and shrinking) user base, seems like a shoddy business model, but so much of marketing is based on chatter rather than substance perhaps this is a natural side effect of the underlying system.

That's good

[Frankie70]

At 1 million $ per version, I expect to see atleast 300 google sponsored revisions of Firefox in 2012.

Charity claim misleading

[DragonWriter]

Many took this as charity, and for the purpose of advancing the web.

I don't think that's accurate. What would be more accurate is that many media outlets have misrepresented various Googler's comments that what Google pays Mozilla advances Google's interest in the open web, and that that is one reason why Google would continue to funnel lots of money to Mozilla even though it has its own browser which competes directly with Firefox as a claim about "charity".

That claim has nothing to do with charity, its a statement that is about revenue -- largely ad revenue, but also revenue from Google's other services -- because the more happy people are with doing things on the web (whether new things or things they previously would use desktop apps or non-web technologies for) the bigger the market is for online advertising, web application hosting, and all kinds of other services Google provides for a price. And the more the web uses open standards to do that, the more Google's various services that rely on scraping, analyzing, and summarizing data from across the web can do.

There's also, of course, the direct search ad revenue that Google derives from use of their products in search, which is the most direct and visible reason they would pay Mozilla to be the default Firefox search provider. And of course that's important, too. But their strategic interest in making the web friendlier to promote their whole host of services (which is still mostly advertising, but not all of that advertising is search advertising) is why they are consistently willing to pay more to be the default search provider in Firefox than Microsoft, for whom promoting the open web isn't a strategic interest in the way it is for Google. Because Google sees a return beside the direct search revenue that Microsoft doesn't, because Google's long-term business interest are more closely aligned with Mozilla's ideological interests.

Safari

[Johnny Mnemonic]

If you thought that was a lot, wait until you see what Google will have to pay for primary placement in Safari. I don't recall when that deal is up, but you can bet that Apple is going to be all too happy to stick it to Google for pilfering the iphone design for use in Android hardware.

Apple has a tremendous thing going with iPhone and IPad sales. They're none to happy that Google is trying to rock that boat. I expect Apple to force Google to pay dearly for placement, Apple will be just as happy to switch to Bing.

btw, if you thought Bing's existence was a waste of energy, it was built for exactly this kind of forcing costs up on competitors. It doesn't have to be widely used, it just has to be a credible threat so Google is forced to pay more than it otherwise would have.

Does a surprise increase of 300% to Mozilla mean that they are going to be able to hire more developers, and build/iterate faster?

Re:Safari

[Anonymous Coward]

Iterate faster? As if once every six weeks weren't enough.

Re:Safari

[Kethinov]

Bing and Google are the same ball of wax to Apple in that respect. Both companies are trying to compete directly with Apple's portables. I suspect Apple would rather keep Google as the preferred search engine in Safari than piss off a bunch of their customers by switching it to Bing just to spite Google.

in the 90s and early 2000s MS purchased Java shops

[Locutus]

they purchased Java products and companies in bidding wars with Sun and Netscape only to shut them down. ie they were purchased at a high cost to get useful Java apps and tools off the market. As for Google, they benefit from an open market and not a closed Microsoft or Apple market. And we benefit from that too.

LoB

Re:I don't think Chrome has Google "locked in"

[msoftsucks]

Only until the next time you upgrade your machine. I have deleted the Bing search and set Google to be the default, yet Bing keeps getting reinstalled and set as the default for all my users every time there is an update to IE. This keeps confusing a great deal of my users due to the fact that Bing doesn't even come close to giving good results as google does.

Google buying marketshare again

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they just let the users decide on their own. I thought forcing defaults was what Microsoft did.

Re:Google buying marketshare again

[Kalriath]

Nah, even IE on first run asks if you really want to stick with Bing (and offers a two click way to change to something else). Read into that whatever you like.

Google buying marketshare again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they just let the users decide on their own? I thought forcing defaults was what Microsoft did. Guess not :P

Bing

[Anonymous Coward]

They do realize that if they set the default search provider to Bing, most people (including myself) would just switch away?

Re:Bing

[Nimey]

No they wouldn't. Bing got popular because it's the default in IE, and statistically speaking nobody bothers switching away.

Especially not now that MS had made it so hard after IE9 came out - you have to dig through a fuckton of minor search engines to find the one for Google, which they can get away with because they put them in alphabetical order.

You may argue "but idiots don't use Firefox!", except thanks to us /they do/. We've put it on our parents' computers and told them to use it instead of IE, to protect the computer.

Re:I don't think Chrome has Google "locked in"

[DocHoncho]

I dunno, at my last job I had to do a number of "rebuilds" as they called it on machines from XP to Win7 and IE 8/9 would always pester me to do the initial preference setup, but whenever I tried (just for grins) the link took me to an incomprehensible mess of an "app store" and it was up to me to dredge Google from the morass.

I could never quite tell if it was Microsoft being underhanded and hiding the other options, or just plain old fashioned incompetence, by which I mean plain old fashioned Microsoft-ness.

The only reason I even started IE in the first place was to replace it, so I usually just said "Remind me later" or whatever the relevant option is.

Search has negative value?

[Animats]

Once upon a time, search was an expensive, high-end service, sold by companies like Nexis/Lexis and Mead Data Central. Then it looked like search might be something you paid for with your ISP bill, like premium cable. Then it was free, supported by ads, but users had go to to the search site. Search engines competed on search result quality, which is how Google beat Lycos, Yahoo, and AltaVista. Now Google has to pay cash for traffic flow. Search now has negative market value.

This is striking. TV networks have never had it that bad. US cable networks pay for their channels, at the rate of $0.03 to $0.25 per subscriber per month for most of what's on basic cable. Some channels do pay for access to cable networks, but that's for ad-heavy junk like the Jewelry Channel.

This may be an indication that search results are now too ad-heavy. That's a bad place to be. Myspace went there, and crashed from hero to zero in three years.

Re:Search has negative value?

[Colin Smith]

Now that is one of the most insightful comments I've seen on the market for a long time.

Re:Search has negative value?

[Dr. Spork]

Google pays for extra search traffic because each marginal unit of that traffic makes them more money than whatever they paid for it. They're basically buying $10 bills for $8. I think that's a sustainable business model!

more specifically

[mbkennel]

I think Google created Chrome to make sure that Google Apps, online versions competing directly against Microsoft, will be sure of running sufficiently well on some set of platforms. They could bid for multi-year contracts and have an answer for some prospective buyer who asks, "Yeah, your apps work in the browser now, but what if the browser changes?" Answer: "We have a good browser which we control fully, and we will guarantee support for the apps we're selling you on Chrome until YYYY-MM-DD".

IE can clearly sabotage Google Apps, and Mozilla might go in its own direction and not serve the needs of Google Apps.

Re:more specifically

[Anonymous Coward]

While it's smashing that you think that, you cite no evidence at all. Without that, your comments are inane.

Call their bluff?

[initialE]

Just hypothesizing, but what would happen if Google didn't renew their contract with Mozilla, allowing Microsoft to burn $300 million a year, while expecting users to change their search provider based purely on the expectation that their product was stronger than Bing search?
Additionally, Firefox would take some flames from users who would be unexpectedly switched away on their next product update. I doubt that Mozilla could change the existing search provider without people noticing or complaining that their rights were invaded, and they would be forced to do so because of the contract. Mozilla may essentially be forced to accept Google on their terms, whatever they were, and turn down a higher bid from Microsoft and Yahoo, simply based on the difficulty on making the switch alone.

Re:Call their bluff?

[dch24]

First off, Microsoft would see gross proceeds increase more than $300 million for the cost of winning the contract. So net win for Microsoft (if they could out-bid Google).

Next, even assuming Microsoft saw zero increase in proceeds, $300 million is nothing to Ballmer. He'd do it in a heartbeat.

Finally, where's the proof Microsoft actually caused the increase? An allthingsd.com story that says Microsoft was competing? Maybe they aren't bidding (very high) at all -- I'm calling the bluff over at allthingsd.com. Where's the proof that Microsoft bid something even close to $100 million?

Re:Call their bluff?

[gl4ss]

both companies would have bid on a per search/user/view price - not on a lump sum. 300 is the cap and ms could quite probably have bid larger than the old contract, if just for kicks and early stage bid.

also google _needs_ another browser than their own that they're in bed with. why? so they can push new web tech to be implemented on more than just chrome.

Everybody knows smartass

[Snaller]

So move along. Go play with your toys.

I use Firefox BECAUSE Google is Default Search

[Anonymous Coward]

That's right, I'm a Google lover. Ii is simply the most efficient search engine. I can find exactly what I'm looking for quickly and easily with Google. I don't however like the Bundled search toolbars and it irritates me how Internet Explorer makes it so difficult to set Google as the default search.

Mozilla is part of the 1%

[Anonymous Coward]

They got your money (via ad proxy) now they don't care about features any more.

Browsers like Opera, Midori, Konqueror and Rockmelt on the other hand have less market share and are more likely to add features in order to get more users. Opera 11.60 isn't perfect, but it's user interface is what Firefox would be if they were not run by idiots. I uninstalled Firefox this month and now advocate browsers who care.

Why doesn't the Open Source community "get it"?

[RoLi]

People at debian, Linux Mint, etc.:

All you have to do is fork Firefox, fix the release schedule and earn many millions.

When you look at how fast Libreoffice has taken over from OpenOffice, a sane version of Firefox (like Icecat) could get 10% marketshare within a year, which translates into about 100 million per year.

The success of Firefox hurts MS the most

[Dr. Spork]

If some Microsoft people thought they were clever by making sure that Google overfunds Firefox, the joke is on them. In reality, the best thing that could happen for MS is that Firefox's oxygen is cut off. I can't think of a way that Google can invest money which is more harmful to MS than by funding Firefox. With two good browsers teaming up to take on MSIE, I don't really see any possibility for MS to dominate the internet like they once hoped. If anything, this situation guarantees that they will lose more users and more control. Imagine if US special forces cleverly managed to part the Taliban with a big chunk of money. Is that a win for the US? Not if that money was actually just diverted to Al Quaeda.

Can The Default Be Changed

[Anonymous Coward]

Can the default search engine be changed to duckduckgo?

Re:I don't think Chrome has Google "locked in"

[tibit]

Please be careful. The add-on gallery displayed in IE is seeded with 3rd party "providers" that use Google logo, yet the searches definitely do NOT go to Google. I don't know why MS/Google won't litigate those to hell (or simply kick them out), but that's a fact. Every time I upgrade IE and get presented with the add-on gallery, the first Google-branded providers have nothing to do with Google. The concept of this add-on gallery is fundamentally broken, and I wonder how many drive-by infections those "providers" are accountable for.

Pathetic headline

[Dunega]

Microsoft didn't "make" Google do a damn thing. Google CHOSE to outbid Microsoft.

Re:I don't think Chrome has Google "locked in"

[tibit]

Morass -- that's exactly what I thought of it. Not only you have to dredge for Google, but you have to inspect the links used by those add-ons -- many show off Google logo but have nothing to do with Google, they go to some 3rd party url. It's creepy because I'm sure many people must fall for that.

"Traffice acquisition costs"...

[bwcbwc]

probably includes the entire operating budget of YouTube, and Google+. And possibly the other "free" services like Google Maps, Google Earth, and Gmail.

And if their accounting is finer-grained than that, I still bet it includes the revenue-sharing on YouTube.

Chrome-only?

[DragonWriter]

Not just that, but they've been pushing web-based replacements for desktop applications that are Chrome-only, like the HTML5 version of Angry Birds and pretty much the entirety of NaCl.

HTML5 is, obviously, not a Chrome-only technology, and the HTML5 version of Angry Birds that can be "installed" through the Chrome Web Store doesn't rely on any Chrome-specific technology, and works fine (according to all reports I've seen) in Firefox.

NaCl is an open technology that Google is pushing that is only currently implemented in Chrome, but Google is pushing it to try to get other browser vendors on board with it (with, so far, little success), not as a closed competitive advantage for Chrome.