Senior Mozilla exec explains how Firefox dies without Google and it's not just the money

If you have been reading Neowin or some other tech blog fairly regularly, you must be aware of the current Google vs DOJ situation.

As a refresher, the DOJ has been pushing Google to sell off Chrome and open its search index to competitors. Google has been paying the likes of Mozilla and Apple billions to maintain Google Search as the default search engine, and the DOJ has flagged this practice as anti-competitive.

While it sounds like a win for Google's rival, in the case of Mozilla, things are not looking too bright, at all. That is because an enormous portion of the funding that Mozilla is able to get comes from Google. Some say it is close to 80%, although Mozilla itself stated back in 2011 that the "specific terms of this commercial agreement are subject to traditional confidentiality requirements" and that it is "not at liberty to disclose them" with reports suggesting it was around $300 million.

If true, it must be a big chunk of change in 2025 as the firm is clearly very worried.

Following the recent testimonial by Mozilla's Chief Financial Officer, Eric Muhlheim, the firm published a blog post explaining how Google's funding, or the lack thereof, could make or break Firefox as well as its in-house engine. It says:

It’s no secret that search revenue accounts for a large portion of Mozilla’s annual revenue. Firefox is an independent browser — we don’t have our own OS, devices, or app store. Without this revenue, Mozilla and other small, independent browsers may be forced to scale back operations and cut support for critical projects like Gecko, the only remaining browser engine competing with Google’s Chromium and Apple’s WebKit.

Google itself had put forth the same argument previously.

However, it is not just the funding itself that will hurt Mozilla and its ability to develop the browser; the default search engine itself can play a big role, too.

The firm says that Google Search has already proved itself to be the better alternative as Yahoo had previously failed to satisfy the search needs for most of its users, but to the dismay of Mozilla, many of those dissatisfied users moved over to other browsers.

It writes:

Firefox users view Google as the best quality search engine. Mozilla experienced this firsthand when we switched the Firefox browser’s default search engine from Google to Yahoo between 2014 and 2017 in an effort to support search competition. Firefox users found Yahoo’s search quality lacking and some switched to Google search while others left the Firefox browser altogether.

Thus, the damage Firefox could take can be twofold: first, from the lack of funding itself and second, from unhappy users who ditch Firefox due to a dissatisfactory browsing experience.

Mark Surman, President of Mozilla, also argued previously that this does not actually help promote healthier competition:

The big unintended consequence here is the handing of power from one dominant player to another. So, from Google Search to Microsoft, or Bing for example—while shutting out the smaller, independent challengers that actually drive browser innovation and offer web users privacy and choice.

 

This isn’t something we do because it’s profitable or easy. We do it because it matters. The DOJ’s proposal doesn’t just miss the mark, it risks handing even more power to dominant industry players like Google or Apple, not less.

It will be interesting to see how things pan out and whether Mozilla can survive, let alone thrive, if Google is forced to cut ties from the search engine agreement.

Source

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