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."
Mozilla may not want Google (Score:2, Troll)
But if the exec want to keep drawing ridiculous salaries while they run Netscape errr Mozilla into the ground again, than they'll keep on talking Googles money just like Netscape did before them with their other partners.
Who else is going to give them money? Won't be Microsoft ... and by extension that means it won't be Yahoo.
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Why wouldn't it be MS? Have you read the article? It makes a pretty good case for why it would be Microsoft.
Re:Mozilla may not want Google (Score:5, Informative)
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Microsoft has changed? Maybe I'm just going blind, but I don't see it. Had you claimed that they had toned things down, and acted less like a blood crazed shark in chum waters than they used to, I might agree. But real change? No - they are still predators. Get into their sights, and they're still coming after you, albeit, without the berserk feeding frenzy.
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Given that this whole discussion is predicated on the assumption that Google is about to turn on Mozilla, MS can't be any worse.
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Actually, Google is about to turn on Mozilla. Microsoft WILL turn on them...it's not an "if" like it currently still is with Google..it's a solid "when".
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"is about to" is not an "if" word, it's a "when" word, with "when" = "very soon".
Re:Why wouldn't it be MS? (Score:2)
There's something very slippery about the article, almost like it's AstroTurf 2.0. Stay with me mods, it's at least an intelligent article.
Mozilla is at least a decent entrant into the OSS world. There's always nitpicks, but they're pretty solid. Mozilla makes a browser first.
Google is doing Search first and only lately is doing a browser. Does Google want Chrome to be the dominant browser, the same trick MS pulled last time? Maybe. I've seen my share of "FF is old and tired, go Chrome". Hard to tell if any
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Why wouldn't it be MS? Have you read the article? It makes a pretty good case for why it would be Microsoft.
I read the article but I didn't see it make any case at all. There seemed to be a vague implication that Microsoft might think that even though users of Internet Explorer (still the browser with the largest market share) overwhelmingly use Google rather than its default of Bing, that users of Firefox would blindly use whatever the default is and that therefore Microsoft would shovel money at Firefox to get that default status. But there was no explanation at all of why Firefox users wouldn't just keep using
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The reason they undermined Netscape was that they wanted to control web standards. They won the battle, but lost the war - they are no longer in a position to dictate proprietary extensions to the web through control of the browser. A page that only works in IE is no longer an option for developers.
(A page that only works on Windows, however, is still an option in a few contexts, and MS struggle to keep it that way).
I wouldn't bet on Ballmer's stupidity overriding his business sense.
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Balmer hates Google a lot more than he hates Mozilla. $85 million to hurt Google? I think he'd go for it.
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Hello there.
My sensors have indicated that you are new to reality.
Allow me to assist you in getting up to speed.
People are people. People do stupid things for stupid reasons.
Some of the largest companies in history have been bankrupted due to corrupt and/or self-centered and/or moronic CEO's/Managers/Boards.
In any other industry or with any other company Ballmer would have bankrupted it a long, long time ago. Microsoft simply have too much inertia and market share behind them. Which is entirely a function o
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I just switched to DuckDuckGo for me search needs. For everything else, I'll happily continue using Google, though.
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I dunno. I think that I'd use Mozilla a lot less if Mozilla and Microsoft were having conjugal relations. Just how much market share MIGHT Mozilla lose in the deal?
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
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The first thing we do with it is to pay taxes [wikipedia.org]. It was not trivial for us to figure out how to do that.
You can get a sense of how much we're saving by reading financial reports from previous years [mozilla.org]. To some extent, we're saving not because we want to save, but because we can only hire people so fast while maintaining quality and culture.
$85 million in royalties (Score:2)
...is a whole lot of hits. Even if Google wanted Chrome to dominate, I still don't think they'd want to let all of Firefox users who use whatever's in the search bar out of convenience leave for another engine.
Of course, the article makes this pretty clear, but why ruin the Slashdot tradition and publish a descriptive, non-flamebait summary?
Re:$85 million in royalties (Score:4, Insightful)
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$85 million is what they pay Mozilla, not what Google makes off of those hits. Obviously in order for them to ink the deal, the revenue would have to be >$85mil.
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I doubt Google makes more than $250-$300 million on the traffic they generate from AdSense through Firefox. That's about 3% of the total generated revenue from AdSense.
I'm not saying it's something Google would want to throw away, however that's still not to say that Google needs Firefox. I think Google could easily make do with 3% less.
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Well that's perfectly fine but in the end Chrome isn't meant to displace Firefox or anything of the sort. Chrome was meant to spur innovation where Google felt innovation was lacking. I don't think Google wants to gouge Mozilla or anything silly like that.
No money no development (Score:2)
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The article explains why.
Re:No money no development (Score:4, Insightful)
Mozilla is not a competitor. Google does not sell browsers, it sells ads, and mozilla is one more channel.
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FTFY. Chrome [http] nukes that supposition that you just made. Combine that with Chromebook [google.com] and there's nothing at all accurate in your claims.
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How does that nuke his supposition? Google doesn't sell Chrome, it distributes Chrome without charge -- sometimes it even pays organisations to distribute Chrome. I don't know whether it profits from Chromebook sales, so I'll let that point slide for now.
But Google isn't obviously getting anything out of a person using Chrome rather than Firefox. Dig a bit deeper and maybe they can pick up user habits and data for advertising from Chrome, but that's exactly an argument to do what they can to remain Firef
Nonsense (Score:3)
For $85 million — or whatever Mozilla decides to charge, because it could charge almost anything — Bing could bolster its global share to 10, 15, or maybe 20%.
What absolute nonsense. Bing is already the default search engine on IE and only a fraction of IE users are using Bing. To assume that all Firefox users would meekly follow Mozilla's direction to use Bing is absurd.
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To assume that all Firefox users would meekly follow Mozilla's direction to use Bing is absurd.
Yes, it's absurd, which is exactly why the line you quote does *not* make that assumption.
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How many IE users have bothered updating to a version recent enough to have a search bar?
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Well for most IE users they don't even use that search bar. They will click on a shortcut to google then type in the search box something like www.yahoo.com. For firefox users I think their head will explode if the search box went to Bing.
Is there really that much hatred of the both just because both have browsers. In normal business it is very common for companies to Partner with each other and Compete with each other at the same time. And their Partnership is very strong with a lot of good MBA Buzzword
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Not as much nonsense as you think. Bing from what I hear doesn't suck it is also pretty. If you are really into the Google ecosystem then you might not care. If you type a search and you get what you are looking for and it is pretty then a lot of people might not change back. If nothing else it will get people to try Bing.
I know that people on Slashdot really don't like Microsoft and that includes me. From what I see Bing is actually a pretty good search engine. Since I use everything Google including my ph
IE v. Biollante (Score:2)
Back in 2003 when Mozilla and Firefox first emerged, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer owned 95% of the browser market. Mozilla single-handedly destroyed IE over the next five years
That's a bit of an overstatement I think. Keeping in mind the "guesstimate" nature of browser market share, the usage trends for both IE and FF (mutant Mozilla) [wikipedia.org] are probably not so much the results of direct competition as they are simply the predictable result of the market "maturing" as the executive types say.
IE probably went downwards b/c there is actually a lot more competition now in terms of OS and platform; it's not all desktops on desks running XP.
Chrome isn't about winning (Score:2)
The purpose of Chrome isn't to make money or even to be the most popular browser. The purpose of Chrome is to advance technologies to promote standards to encourage the creation and usage of web applications as part of Google's war against Windows applications and now iOS applications.
Mozilla is also a big promoter of web standards and is a big part of Google's war.
While Microsoft could use Firefox to help Bing, Google needs Firefox even more to help the entire company.
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Without Chrome javascript would still be slow
Jeez, Google's advertising campaigns sure do work. JavaScript performance wars were pretty hot years before Chrome appeared.
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The purpose of Chrome isn't to make money or even to be the most popular browser
The purpose of a business is to turn a profit. Without profit, a business starts dying. Everything, including odd-ball projects and products, is geared towards supporting the business model of turning a profit.
To think otherwise is embarrassingly naive.
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The purpose of Chrome is to help other parts of Google's business turn a profit.
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But no decent equivalent to NoScript, which is arguably more important for privacy concerns. It is mind-boggling the number of useless third party javascript that exists on most pages.
Even if you just take Google into account, they have their finger in a huge percentage of sites either through hosted javascript libraries (jquery especially), ads, analytics, maps, etc.
It is sort of ridiculous.
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But it's nowhere near as effective as the Firefox version. Last I checked, the Chrome version couldn't block those annoying ads that play at the start of some video clips, whereas with Firefox I didn't even know such things existed.
Firefox/Mozilla needs the money (Score:2)
So it can pursue its 'new version every month' policy
and break all the add-ons
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Is it every month? Seems like they try to update me every other week or so... I'm slowly migrating over to Chrome because of the hassles it causes.
Invent Mozilla Search (Score:2)
I saw a link, but can't find it where a user recommended a search engine similiar to Google's but is not prone to SEO, fake reviews, and other sleezy techniques that make Google less efficient than 10 years ago. Anyone know the name of it?
10 years ago you could find anything with Google without people trying to sell you crap and it was always accurate. Remember those days?
Anyway, a browser is free but advertisement is where it can make some money and I think Mozilla should hook up with that search engine or
I really hope not (Score:4, Insightful)
Cutting off funding could be the best thing for Firefox. They would have to get rid of all the UI designers and tech evangelists who are slowly destroying Firefox. It would go back to being community driven with a focus on producing a really good app instead of playing buzzword bingo and copying Chrome.
Fingers crossed.
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Oh but then we couldn't have Asa telling us why enterprise users are bad and we really want a new version every 6 weeks even if all we get out of it is a shittastic looking UI in Windows 7. (And that's generous compared to the disaster that is the new Thunderbird UI.)
I'm with you. Mozilla needs to clean house and get back to what they were doing when Firefox was growing: making a better browser for users.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers [wikipedia.org]
Community driven browsers (without corporate backing) seem to be doing great, eh? The internet is big cutthroat business, these aren't the Phoenix days any more.
bing (Score:2)
article is wrong
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There is a number of Microsoft products that don't suck. Sorry you're too blinded by hate to see it.
No, that is not the question.. (Score:2)
Well the math seems obvious to me, they receive $100.8 million from Google (97%) and there's no other entity that is going to step up and pay them so what do you think?
It's in Google's best interest to kill off the relationship because of gaining higher Chrome market share. Is that "evil"? No, it's business.
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Unless it was Microsoft doing it. Then it'd be called evil.
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I liked when the author stipulated that Mozilla could charge whatever it wanted, instead of just $85 million.
google has been great in the past (Score:3)
oh, and i like both firefox and seamonkey so i will be willing to abandon google before i abandon mozilla's firefox and the open source community developed seamonkey
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Doing so hurts mozilla. userdefined search engines dont pay the bills.
I think mozilla could have used those $85m to fund a search engine of their own, that would avoid their reliance on google and make a much better investment than all those UI designers who keep breaking firefox.
Article overlooks the stupidly obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
"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.
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Article overlooks the stupidly obvious
No, the article didn't overlook the stupidly obvious, you did, because you failed to read the next paragraph:
"While it's true that Mozilla strongly relies on Google's royalties, don't forget that Google is completely reliant on search traffic"
and later:
"In all likelihood, Firefox is probably the cheapest source of traffic that Google has."
and:
"If Google fails to renew its contract with Mozilla, do you think that Microsoft would blink an eye at spending $85 million for the majority share of Firefox's 450 mil
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"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 co
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But by now most users are used to google and would simply change the default if it was something else. By now Bing is unfamiliar to the majority of the population and Google is considered the best search engine by most. It is going to take quite a lot more than setting Bing as the default to change that in people's minds.
True. If Mozilla tried to change the default to Bing or anything else, I'd simply change it back to Google; just like I do with all IE installs I come across - switch them over to using Google for their search provider (mostly b/c those people don't realize they do have a choice, they just use the search bar or [more likely] just load google's website directly).
Two views (Score:3)
Title should read... (Score:2)
"Why Firefox Needs Bing"
I'll be honest, Google is in the dominant position, and I'll never use Bing. But, Microsoft is throwing money at search like there is no tomorrow (because for them, there may not be if they have no virtual real estate). Microsoft would probably be willing to up the offer of money. Even with their rivalry, they know good and well Chrome is a bigger rival to IE. If nothing else, Firefox could force a much better contract with Google with a high Bing offer.
That's just smart business
hand in hand (Score:2)
They both do good on the web, they both try to offer better solutions then MS could ever bring, they bring competitive edge, they are both companies that started off by providing free services, and now built a cult following, becoming a brand house hold name. They would be crazy no to stay together...sort of like ross and rachel!...just wondering who is the guy and who is the girl...maybe the fox is the gurl?
Interesting strategic thinking (Score:2)
Anti-Trust (Score:2)
Whether or not it would result in an Anti-trust judgement down the road, I don't think Google is in a position to deny Firefox as a customer.
The DOJ has Google under the gun right now, and they would be wise not to do anything stupid. Using their monopoly in search to hurt a broswer competitor would be considered anti-competitive by quite a few experts.
$86M? (Score:2)
$86M seems like chump change. I'm surprised that MS hasn't bid up the value of that real estate, except that they would have to eat crow to support an OSS browser. But I'd think that they'd make that $86M pretty fast back if they could redirect firefox to bing. Or at least make Google pay more for the privilege ;)
Maybe MS doesn't want Mozilla to have more financial resources, even if it would mean costing Google more money?
And btw, who accounts for the other $19M of royalty for that real estate?
Firefox struggling to stay relevant (Score:2)
Discarding Google will make them disappear.
Problem is, there still isn't any good web browser.
Surprised more distros don't override this. (Score:2)
That is a LOT of cash. I'm surprised most linux distros don't negotiate their own deals with Google. They could charge Google to keep their default browser setting in Firefox (or for that matter Chrome), for example, or charge Bing to switch it. Granted, the volume for linux will be lower than for windows, but I imagine that quite a few people still install firefox/chrome/etc.
Now, the trademarks could become an issue. A way around that is to patch in the change post-install so that the distro doesn't ac
Ah, now maybe I understand... (Score:2)
... why Mozilla has not made a social semantic desktop with all that vast amount of money. No search engine advertising revenues?
http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_Desktop [semanticweb.org]
"The Internet, electronic mail, and the Web have revolutionized the way we communicate and collaborate - their mass adoption is one of the major technological success stories of the 20th century. We all are now much more connected, and in turn face new resulting problems: information overload caused by insufficient support
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Firefox is a browser, Webkit is a layout engine.
What's your point?
Re:Who cares, honestly (Score:5, Insightful)
If we're at the point where the internet is "whatever Webkit renders", we've done something wrong.
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Some would but I think a larger number wouldn't notice or care. The only reason Google gets most of my search traffic is inertia and I'm so deeply integrated into the whole "Google Experience" at this point that it's just more convenient. I haven't used Bing but I would be willing to at least give it a shot.
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It just doesn't feel right anymore.
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I have in the past as well but it has only been due to the fact that the results displayed were useless and that to find results that mattered I had to go three or four pages in. With Google it would be front page and usually top 5. If Bing has it's results similarly well arranged then I would be willing to try it.
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Then why don't you go try it?
I'm sorry, but the idea that a Slashdotter is willing to try a new search engine but can't be bothered to make the two total clicks it takes to change it in Firefox doesn't compute -- nor does the fact that that same user would use it if only Mozilla would change it for them. Maybe I'm giving people more credit than they deserve.
The majority of users--and the vast majority of Firefox users--are going to use the search engine they prefer. You'll catch a few stragglers who l
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For those "convert X to Y"queries, use Wolfram Alpha. It's way better than Google Calculator.
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Seriously? I doubt that somehow many would feel that strongly to switch browsers rather than to change a setting. I know I wouldn't. I like Firefox as my browser, I like Google as my search engine, heck I like Windows Vista 64-bit (ewww) as my OS.
Your average, no-knowledge-of-IT user is on IE or Safari. Those are the ones that will let their computer dictate the way they use it. BTW, not saying that savyy users aren't using IE/Safari by choice.
If most Firefox users saw "bing" as the default search; the
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In a surprising example of user-friendliness, IE 8 actually goes one step beyond Firefox in that regard, by helping you create a search entry for one that it doesn't have in its list.
Since I have to use IE often for testing, I was surprised to see that when I changed to qrobe for my search.
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The more likely situation is if Google stopped funding Mozilla, that Firefox would fall behind pretty drastically. Then most folks would be stuck with a choice between IE and Chrome. Some proportion of that group would choose IE, and probably stick with the default Bing search. This costs Google money.
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Are you serious? I typed "Pantech Breeze" into Google and got http://www.pantechusa.com/phones/breeze_ii [pantechusa.com] as the second search result, behind AT&T's page for the phone.
Googling for "Pantech Breeze USB" returned this page [att.com] which has a bunch of information about USB and the phone. Apparently you need to use Microsoft's ActiveSync package to connect the phone, or bluetooth.
You might want to check your computer for viruses and trojans. It sounds like something is intercepting your search results.
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Second hit for "pantech breeze": http://www.pantechusa.com/phones/breeze_ii [pantechusa.com]
Click on "PC Suite".
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Microsoft isn't going to give them a dime
Bing is in the list of default search engines in Firefox, and somehow, I don't think Mozilla puts them there for free.
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2) They immediately become the major driving force in web standards, so they can start playing all kinds of nasty games.
I guess you haven't noticed ... they already ARE a major driving force in web standards.
Re:It's symbiotic (Score:5, Insightful)
but to simply have an independent entity that develops standards and pushes the envelope.
You mean Opera?
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Eroding Safari is like eroding a grain of sand.
And MS bought a big chunk of Apple back in the day as a method of cash infusion to keep them from going under and MS from getting chased for being a monopoly. Since then Apple has done... uh ... a little better, and MS has divested.
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...As if the world we live in is 2001?
Folks: Google is the new evil empire. Microsoft is a weak old underdog...
Weak?
That "weak old underdog" is still the same company that runs corporate America(quite literally), so call it weak and old all you want, but much like members of Congress, they're still around, and still in power. And that "underdog" is still the #1 choice of botnets everywhere.
Who is worse is all dependent on your definition of "evil".
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I also can't recall any instance of Google being found guilty of abusing a monopoly.
Google has a bunch of lawsuits running against them for antitrust violations in the EU. I think it's silly to think that Google doesn't have a monopoly on search. Whether they're abusing that is another matter. If you surf with IE on Google, I think it continuously slams Chrome ads down your throat. Too much of that behavior can get them in trouble.
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Google has a bunch of lawsuits running against them for antitrust violations in the EU. I think it's silly to think that Google doesn't have a monopoly on search. Whether they're abusing that is another matter.
Using and abusing sit on opposite sides of a rather large chasm of legality. Google can't help it if people prefer to use Google, so that certainly doesn't make them a monopoly by any means. Abusing/Manipulating search results could be construed differently, but if the abuse were really that bad, usage would have likely declined significantly. It really hasn't.
If you surf with IE on Google, I think it continuously slams Chrome ads down your throat. Too much of that behavior can get them in trouble.
I'd sure as hell prefer to deal with simple ads then "bundled" installs, such as what has managed to junk up the average users computer when tryin
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I'm not sure if you realize this, but if you install Adobe Flash nowadays it will also install Chrome and set it as the default.
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If by "abandoned" you mean "continued to fund", then yes, I suppose they did.
Yep, because Microsoft has no history at all of shafting its business partners and has no vested interest whatsover in seeing firefox fall by the wayside. And to think I was worried for a second there...
After all, saying it is enough to make it true. Which is
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Has Netcraft confirmed it yet?
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