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Mozilla Warns DOJ's Google Breakup Plan May Hurt Small Browser Makers 114

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Mozilla has warned that the Justice Department's proposed breakup of Google could harm independent web browsers, pushing back against a key element of the government's antitrust remedy.

The maker of Firefox browser said in a statement the DOJ's blanket ban on search revenue-sharing deals would disproportionately impact smaller players that rely on such agreements, while failing to meaningfully increase competition in search.

Firefox and similar browsers account for a small share of US search queries but provide crucial alternatives for privacy-conscious consumers, Mozilla said. The DOJ's wide-ranging proposal, submitted to a federal court in Washington, includes forcing Google to sell its Chrome browser and prohibiting the company from paying other firms to set Google as their default search engine.

The plan follows an August ruling that found Google illegally monopolized the search market. In a statement, Mozilla argued that rather than an outright prohibition on search agreements, remedies should focus on "addressing the barriers to competition and facilitating a marketplace that promotes competition and consumer choice."
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Mozilla Warns DOJ's Google Breakup Plan May Hurt Small Browser Makers More

Mozilla Warns DOJ's Google Breakup Plan May Hurt Small Browser Makers

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  • Sure (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sosume ( 680416 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @06:17AM (#64964389) Journal

    They're just worried about losing that sweet searchengine deal.

    • Re: Sure (Score:5, Insightful)

      by too2late ( 958532 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @06:24AM (#64964401) Journal
      The sweet search engine deal is the only reason Firefox still exists. That is how they make money. They make a few pennies from Pocket, which is universally hated by everyone on slashdot. How do you propose they pay the bills?

      • Re: Sure (Score:4, Funny)

        by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @06:33AM (#64964423)

        What do you mean, pay their bills? Software is free just like music and movies. No one needs to be compensated for the work they do.

        • No, no... Fair point. Anyone that makes anything anywhere, ever, should be paid. They did "work" and this must be paid. That's how it works. Your right. Quality, talent, usefulness, artistry... None of that matters. You do a shit, someone pays you for the effort. Makes perfect sense.

          (I think I win the strawman?)

        • What do you mean, pay their bills? Software is free just like music and movies. No one needs to be compensated for the work they do.

          Also, everyone needs a high-paying job, especially software developers and other IT folk, also good benefits, reasonable hours and other good treatment by their employers.

          Obviously there's no conflict between the goals of software being free and software developers being paid.

        • That's what my boss says!

      • Re: Sure (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @06:42AM (#64964443)

        The sweet search engine deal is the only reason Firefox still exists. That is how they make money. They make a few pennies from Pocket, which is universally hated by everyone on slashdot. How do you propose they pay the bills?

        Exactly, the problem is they are in a market where users expect free services, so unless you can make money elsewhere your business is not sustainable long term. Add in that, rightly or wrongly, Google/Chrome won the search/browser wars. Only Apple and MS have the resources to compete, and even Apple has stayed out of search in exchange for GoogleCash (tm). Remember Alta Vista? Yahoo?

        in addition, if your search engine relies on aggregating results from multiple sources, including Google, at some point they could knee cap you by limiting access or results, or blocking you outright.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by derplord ( 7203610 )

        You mean this is how their management makes money. Can't let that sweet 10M€/year slip from their fingers.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You mean this is how their management makes money. Can't let that sweet 10M€/year slip from their fingers.

          Exactly. Mozilla currently gets something in the neighborhood of $450 Million a year from Google in their "search deal". Nearly all of that money is wasted on big salaries and fancy offices for Mozilla executives, and all sorts of silly bullshit that nobody cares about.

          The Firefox source code is already out there and it doesn't require $450 Million a year to keep development going.

      • Re: Sure (Score:4, Insightful)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday November 22, 2024 @07:28AM (#64964509) Homepage Journal

        ow do you propose they pay the bills?

        I propose they stop paying a CEO. Why do they even need one?

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by narcc ( 412956 )

          Do you know what a CEO does? Do you know what they typically earn in that role for a corporation the size of Mozilla? Do you know what Mozilla pays its officers and key employees? Do you know how to find out?

          I didn't think so.

          • I know all of those things and none of them explain why Mozilla needs all that money that is obviously not going to maintaining the software. Executive salaries should be capped at a percentage of the salaries of people who do actual work. Anything else causes enshittification

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Why would they lose the search engine deal anyway? Firefox is already down to single digit percent of the market and nobody is talking about breaking Google Search off, so presumably they would keep getting paid.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by RedK ( 112790 )

          The reason Google pays them is to pretend they have competition for Chrome.

          If Google doesn't have Chrome, why would they pay Mozilla ?

        • If statcounter [statcounter.com] is accurate it looks like Firefox is around 2.65% -- isn't that proof that Chrome is darn near a monopoly?

          Current stats in case anyone is interested:

          Browser Market Share Worldwide - October 2024
          66.6% Chrome
          18.0% Safari
            5.2% Edge
            2.6% Firefox
            2.2% Samsung Internet
            2.2% Opera

      • How does Chrome being a separate product stop Google search from paying Firefox to use them for search? I donâ(TM)t understand.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by nmb3000 ( 741169 )

        How do you propose they pay the bills?

        I know this idea is dead before it is out of the gate, but I dunno... how about charging for the software?

        This idea that web browsers should be free is a direct holdover from Microsoft's attempts to dominate the market during the early browser wars, and it's absurd. Like it or not, modern web browsers are incredibly large and complicated software products and they deserve to be supported financially directly by users.

        Firefox is open source, so there will always be free builds available, and maybe Mozilla e

        • It's dead out of the gate. Very few people will pay for a web browser, and you will just have people sticking with legacy stuff, going to a full free/open source alternative, or "warez".

        • I know this idea is dead before it is out of the gate, but I dunno... how about charging for the software?

          First they would have to maintain the software. Firefox is known for having bugs open for years while they spend time creating new UIs and spend money on features people don't use.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by narcc ( 412956 )

            Have anything specific? No? Why am I not surprised...

            "Mozilla! Quick! Copy paste the same shit I've been copy/pasting since Australis! I'm still butt-hurt!"

      • I tried pocket out of sheer spite to the people who wouldn't shut the fuck up about it.

        Turns out I like it, so you're claim it's universally hated here not only isn't true but it's your fault it's not true.

      • They don't need to "make money". They're a dinosaur, spun off from a now defunct startup called "Netscape" which made money in the past.

        We need to go back to community developed open source browsers that are built by talented individual people in their spare time. That is the way. Nix the corporate nonsense.

      • Are you sure? Thunderbird survives without Google money, presumably a slimmer Firefox could survive too. Sure, not one with headquarters in San Francisco, with huge bonuses for the CEO, with useless advocacy projects and such...

    • Re:Sure (Score:4, Insightful)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @06:35AM (#64964425)
      "Please, please, please don't hurt our sugar daddy! We neeeeed him!".

      • It is a classic, abusive, co-dependent relationship, for sure.

      • "Please, please, please don't hurt our sugar daddy! We neeeeed him!".

        Well, software developers do have this annoying desire to be paid for their work.

        • Firefox development doesn't cost $450 million/year.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by narcc ( 412956 )

            Prove it.

            • Okay.

              Alex Kontos updated 32-bit Firefox to 64-bit Waterfox and maintained it solo for years before Firefox finally caught up with a 64-bit distribution that wasn't a nightly build.

              Yeah he built off Mozilla's work but he also demonstrated that just one guy on basically no salary could incorporate major new features/updates to Firefox on his own.

              Or for an example of a codebase that forked off on its own, there's always Palemoon.

              • I am not sure that $450 million/year is a reasonable figure so I won't defend that. However, Firefox is supposed to be a "professional" software. Whether it is or not is debatable, but that's how they want to present themselves. They must follow the endless evolution of the Web "standards" - aka what Google Chrome dictates. The number of websites broken with the message "Use a browser based on Blink, too lazy to write portable HTML/CSS/JS" is really telling.

                This means that any browser not based on Blink mus

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by narcc ( 412956 )

                So ... you can't prove it. Why am I not surprised?

          • Firefox development doesn't cost $450 million/year.

            Nice unsupported assertion.

  • Defeating the purpose (Score:3)

    by NotEmmanuelGoldstein ( 6423622 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @06:36AM (#64964427)

    ... Google to sell its Chrome browser ...

    Who's going to spend millions on a browser then give it away for free? The only reason for that is, the new owner installing their own tracking software, defeating the purpose of blocking Google's tracking software, in the first place.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Targon ( 17348 )

      It could be used as a tax write-off, though with politicians giving all those tax breaks to corporations, tax breaks probably don't apply to those who don't pay taxes anyway.

      • It could be used as a tax write-off

        I think you don't understand how tax write-offs work. If a company writes off a $100 loss on its taxes, that doesn't mean its tax bill is reduced by $120, netting a profit. At best, its tax bill is reduced by $100 meaning the whole thing was a pointless waste of time and energy. But even that is really, really rare and only occurs in unusual circumstances. Most of the time, losing $100 reduces the tax bill by the company's tax rate applied to that loss, say, 25% so $25, meaning the company ends up with

    • Yeah I don't know how these forced sales work, but you can be sure some of the bidders will fully intend push updates to all one billion installs to run ads or even worse crypto farmers or malware. Best case sale is probably to Microsoft who is invested in developing Chrome as well through Edge.

      Of course that begs the question... if Google can't develop a web browser, why can Microsoft? Why can Apple?

  • How Relevant is This? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Vlad_the_Inhaler ( 32958 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @06:54AM (#64964467)

    Today the DOJ is thinking of splitting Google up.
    In a couple of months there's going to be a new administration in town and we already know they feel no compulsion to follow previous policies, actually a lot of their policies are based on: "if the Dems are for it then we're against it, and vice versa".

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by markdavis ( 642305 )

      Right, exactly like the Dems did when they came into power. Funny how that works. Stop framing it as one-sided, because it isn't. It is "normal" and has been for quite a while now.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Didn't the Democrats get a lot of criticism for not undoing some of what Trump did, like stacking SCOTUS with unsuitable conservative judges or the failed trade war with China?

    • But the initial filing to start this investigation was in October 2020, during the previous Trump administration.
      The outcome published a few days ago is that the previous Trump administration were correct and justified in their complaint.

    • Today the DOJ is thinking of splitting Google up. In a couple of months there's going to be a new administration in town

      Its 1999/2000 all over again. The DOJ was on the verge of splitting up Microsoft, and then there was an election and it all went away.

      Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

      • And 26 years later microsoft browser isn't dominate by any means, and its search engine isn't dominate by any means, its desktop is a falling percentage of the market and given away for nothing. The $199 dollar copies of office are gone. If you don't want to use microsoft, you can do it on a 30 dollar computer today with free software in a manner 1000% times better than the Office/IE/Windows 2000 experience. You did not need the DOJ to do anything to Microsoft to keep innovation going, big companies

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

          26 years later you still have a hard time accessing services on anything but Windows due to lock in. 26 years later Microsoft is breaking functionality in order to push their products.

          26 years later we are at a new lockin on the browser.

          Nothing has changed. Microsoft is still abusing their position. You could always use other products but it's always been a fight and hassle to fight the non standard implementation of a monopoly.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by RedK ( 112790 )

            This is ridiculously wrong.

            26 years later, most of Microsoft's own offering are now open source and Linux based. No one has any issue accessing services on other systems. Steamdeck is in full swing running Linux for gaming even.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by MeNeXT ( 200840 )

              Outlook IMAP no longer accepts a username that is different than the email address.

              I still can't run MS Office on Linux and even the Mac version has compatibility issues.

              Compatibility and Microsoft don't mix well. There are always issues just look at email and calendar.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Teun ( 17872 )
                Although I agree there still isn't a Linux version of MS Office, from experience I must say Office 365 as offered by the company I contract for works OK on Linux via a browser like Chromium.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      If you think Trump's Republicans have less reasons to split Google to deny it monopoly position after all the bullshit he endured from Google during last 9 years that Democrats who were openly endorsed by this corporation, you don't live in a real world.

    • Hard to say. The Republicans would like to take the media companies down a peg so they can buy them out and control them, like Elon Musk did with Twitter. So they might keep the pressure up.

    • Donald Trump has no love for Alphabet Corporation.

  • Browser"s" (Score:5, Interesting)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Friday November 22, 2024 @07:24AM (#64964501)

    >"Mozilla has warned that the Justice Department's proposed breakup of Google could harm independent web browsers"

    Strike the "s" on that last word. There is really only one released/active, cross-platform, independent browser... it is Firefox. All the others are just Chrom* (different UI's built on Google's Chromium)..

    Unfortunately, it is true that Mozilla/Firefox is dependent on Google search revenue. I am not sure there is a good solution here.

    >"Firefox and similar browsers account for a small share of US"

    Other than a few minor off-shoots of Firefox code, there are no other similar browsers to Firefox. And if we lose it, all the web belongs to Google for all platforms except Apple (which still has Safari, and that is not only runs only on Apple equipment, but also not open source).

    >"ruling that found Google illegally monopolized the search market"

    Yep. So address that more directly, for now, somehow, without destroying Google's only multiplatform/open competitor in the browser space that remains. So there is the complex challenge. Honestly, I don't see any options, unless it includes Google being forced to pay Mozilla for a very long time, regardless, due to the damage that Google already perpetrated.

    • Safari is basically open source [github.com] (except the skin).

      • It's not independent.

        It's also not worth using.

      • >"Safari is basically open source (except the skin)."

        The engine (webkit) is open source (and, last I checked, maybe more collaborative than Chromium), not the browser. Yet, there are no major/multiplatform browsers that are based on it; there is just Apple-only Safari. I believe large portion of users on MacOS don't use Safari. Apple has a lockdown on their mobile devices, though, since any other "browser" installed is just a skin/UI over Safari (and if they didn't do that, I wonder what would happen

      • The guts of chrome is open source also. The DOJ is going after the IP holdings and market share of CHROME and its logo, the technology is already long out of the bag. The DOJ has long gone after dominate players if the political attitude is anti the dominant player. Google should shoot the projects into a non profit and walk away. They might also want to put search into a ad selling company and sell it off and just be a quiet cloud hosting provider with a technology stack that has been paid for by

        • >"The guts of chrome is open source also."

          Yes, but barely. Chromium is open source but it is not an open project nor collaborative. It is 100% controlled by Google, and "too big [complex] to fork."

    • i am concerned how forcing a sale of Chrome would impact Chrome OS/Chromebooks and Android. In particular Chrome OS IS Chrome, so what happens when Google can no longer legally provide support and updates to brand new Chromebooks?

      • They sign a contract with the spun off company to provide support or they license designs from their hardware division to the new company and let them sell/support Chromebook.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by narcc ( 412956 )

      There is really only one released/active, cross-platform, independent browser... it is Firefox.

      You mean they're the only one left. All the others have been destroyed.

  • FUD (Score:2)

    by sinij ( 911942 )
    Mozilla is controlled opposition to Google's browser hegemony. This FUD from Mozilla shows just how close we came to browser mono culture (and disappearance of ad blockers).

  • I've long argued that the internet - including much of its backbone and many of its services - is societal infrastructure and should be a part of the commons. Of course there's an argument to be had about the tragedy which might ensue, but that's a separate discussion.

    So imagine if FOSS browsers such as Firefox - along with search engines and other services - had taxpayer support. Before you say that this would likely bankrupt governments, keep in mind that the money currently supporting browser, search, an

  • People think they know what should happen and want to use the government as a weapon. Well, you get some "know-nothings" making decisions and stupid things happen.

    I love how ridiculous all of the anti-trust stuff has happened over these past few decades. They finally want to take action against Google when their dominance is faltering. The LLM tools, and specifically NOT Google's because it sucks, are implementing better search than search engines and people are using them. So... they don't have a monop

  • When google gets broken up the only winner is Microsoft. The real monopoly that needs breaking up is the Windows/Office Stack. There's no competition in software, hasn't been for years. Competition would suggest a market where different players compete with similar product offerings. That just doesn't exist in the office/corporate directory/OS space. Adobe and Autodesk should also get broken up. Software in general has become so monopolised it's crazy.
  • Building a company on the back of a monopolist's blood money infusions for that Goliath to illegally maintain their monopoly, is in facrlt, completely unethical and no one cares about the success or failure of that business in the context of the broad powers that Google is afforded otherwise. No one care about Firefox's profits. People care about the advertising and search industry having virtually no competition.
  • While Google's porping up of Mozilla might very well have been an attempt of reducing their exposure to being called a monopoly ... that's not a bad thing? It was working exactly as intended. While Chrome has become dominant (IMHO on merit, but it doesn't really matter), we, and many other people, always know that Firefox is a worthy competitor, and if Chrome would screw up, people could very easily switch to Firefox.
    That, in my opinion, was an almost optimal win-win solution.
    If Chrome would rest on its

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