Why Google Needs Firefox 182
MrSeb writes "Almost the entirety of Mozilla's income — 97% of $104 million — arrives in the form of royalties from the Firefox search box, and the lion's share (86%, $85 million) of those royalties are paid by the default search engine: Google. In November 2011, however, Mozilla's contract with Google will expire. Will Google renew it? A better question to ask, though, is whether Mozilla wants Google as its primary search engine."
Re:Mozilla may not want Google (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Article overlooks the stupidly obvious (Score:3, Informative)
"It is speculated, mostly by tech pundits, that considering the sheer amount of effort that itâ(TM)s putting into shoving Chrome down our throats, it would not be in Googleâ(TM)s best interests to re-sign with Mozilla."
Most of Google's revenue comes from advertising, not Chrome. To ensure that revenue, they need to remain the number one search engine. To that end, it is in Google's best interest to remain the default search engine on Firefox as long as Firefox has any significant market share, regardless of Chrome's market share.
"It is speculated, mostly by tech pundits, that considering the sheer amount of effort that itâ(TM)s putting into shoving Chrome down our throats, it would not be in Googleâ(TM)s best interests to re-sign with Mozilla."
Most of Google's revenue comes from advertising, not Chrome. To ensure that revenue, they need to remain the number one search engine. To that end, it is in Google's best interest to remain the default search engine on Firefox as long as Firefox has any significant market share, regardless of Chrome's market share.
Another, slightly less obvious but equally important oversight/misunderstanding is Google's goals for Chrome. The article assumes that Google wants Chrome to displace Firefox and believes that not paying Mozilla would further that goal. But that's not what Chrome is for. Google has publicly stated on many occasions that their intent with Chrome is not to make it the universal browser, but to create competition. Not because the browser market lacked competition, but because the browser makers were not competing in the areas that Google wanted browsers to improve.
Specifically, when Chrome was first introduced, Google really wanted it to do one thing: Motivate browser makers to speed up Javascript engines. V8 was the reason for Chrome. See, Google wants the web to become the computing platform making the underlying OS irrelevant (with some success [xkcd.com]), but to do that the web has to be an adequate platform for doing all of the stuff that desktop apps do. And that requires fast Javascript execution, HTML5, etc. Had Chrome never broken the 1% marketshare mark but succeeded in convincing Mozilla, Microsoft, Apple, Opera, etc. to speed up their Javascript engines, Google would have considered Chrome a resounding success, even though pundits would have called it yet another Google failure.
Bottom line: Google likes Mozilla and Firefox, and not just for the search traffic sent to google.com -- though the revenue from that search traffic undoubtedly more than justifies the money Google spends. Google wants the web to become the platform, and truly cross-platform browsers like Firefox are important to that goal. In fact, to realize that goal, it's also important that Chrome not be the only browser. Google doesn't want the web to be "the Google platform", it wants the web to be "the platform". Because Google is convinced that it can outcompete anyone, given a standardized platform on which to compete. And, honestly, though many people will probably call me naive, or a shill, because Google thinks that making the underlying OS irrelevant is what's best for the world. Yes, that sort of idealism really is not only common, but the norm at Google.
(Disclaimer: I'm a software engineer at Google, but I don't work on Chrome, and with the exception of my comments on the ideology of people at Google, none of the above is any sort of inside information. It's all stuff I knew [computerworld.com] before joining the company.)
Re:Mozilla may not want Google (Score:5, Informative)
It's a positive development. Personally, I'd be more than happy to see Microsoft sponsor Mozilla. And while I'm sure it'd be a shock to many on Slashdot, I suspect the only thing blocking it is Google's wallet.
That's a mis-understanding of how Mozilla works. We don't sell our search to the highest bidder. We want to provide the best possible experience for our users while making the Web a safer, more competitive, and healthier place to live and do work.
In Russia, for example, Google is an also-ran and so Firefox ships Yandex as the default search service. This is not because Yandex outbid Google -- there was never a bidding opportunity, but because Mozilla believes that Yandex is the best choice today for Firefox users in Russia.
Bing is an increasingly good search service in the US and as a result of their improvements, we added Bing to Firefox 4's built-in list of search services. We didn't do that because Microsoft outbid other people on that list. We did it because Bing is a useful search service for many US users. It turns out that Bing is not doing as well in the rest of the world, so where it's not useful to our users, we don't included Bing.
- A