Mozilla Warns DOJ's Google Breakup Plan May Hurt Small Browser Makers 77
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."
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."
Sure (Score:4, Insightful)
They're just worried about losing that sweet searchengine deal.
Re: Sure (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Sure (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re: Sure (Score:3)
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?)
Not round here: Anglian Water will charge me! (Score:3)
"You do a shit, someone pays you for the effort."
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I mean it fits doesn't it? Lot of people have an awful lot of entitlement just for existing these days.
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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.
Re: Sure (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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You mean this is how their management makes money. Can't let that sweet 10M€/year slip from their fingers.
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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)
ow do you propose they pay the bills?
I propose they stop paying a CEO. Why do they even need one?
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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.
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The reason Google pays them is to pretend they have competition for Chrome.
If Google doesn't have Chrome, why would they pay Mozilla ?
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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
Re: Sure (Score:2)
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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
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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:Sure (Score:4, Insightful)
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It is a classic, abusive, co-dependent relationship, for sure.
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"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.
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Firefox development doesn't cost $450 million/year.
Defeating the purpose (Score:3)
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.
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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.
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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
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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)
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".
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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.
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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?
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>"Didn't the Democrats get a lot of criticism for not undoing some of what Trump did"
Not that I saw, he did a pretty clean 100% backslide from what I could t2ll.
>like stacking SCOTUS with unsuitable conservative judges
1) They were all suitable.
2) Waaaaah!! The 50+ year liberal/left court swung to "not my side" for once.
3) All legal.
4) There was no "stacking", that would imply expanding the seats, which would be a forever arms-war.
5) The Biden administration couldn't do anything about it.
This has nothi
Re:How Relevant is This? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the dissent to the undoing of Roe v. Wade, or the decision that the president has immunity to almost all laws for official acts, it's pretty clear that the people Trump put in were using whatever tortuous logic they could come up with to reach their decisions.
A true conservative would be outraged at the loss of freedom and the lawlessness of it, but Republicans seem to be focused entirely and solely on winning.
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No, presidential immunity is not find under any circumstances.
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Then why won't the UK gub'mint pillory & imprison Prince (as in Member of The Royal Household, brother of The Sausage Finger King) Randy Andy for raping at least 1 underage female on Epstein Island?
Your statement works BOTH WAYS.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/... [mirror.co.uk] https://www.huffingtonpost.co.... [huffingtonpost.co.uk] https://uk.style.yahoo.com/kin... [yahoo.com]
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You see to think I'd defending our monarchy... Which is odd because I think she should be in jail too.
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It's not really a case where he's getting away with it because of being royalty, it's because even a regular person generally won't face charges i
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Remember when Republicans were boasting about being the small government party? Pepperidge Farm remembers.
Now we got the insidious Project 2025 that wants to intrude into every aspect of people's personal lives and shove it's dick in all the pies.
Republican now means no freedom, and huge intrusive government to basically fuck up your life.
Re:How Relevant is This? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is legal, and there is ethical. What Sen. McConnell did in delaying the appointment of a justice till the Republicans were in control wasn't ethical. If not for that, it'd be 5/4 instead of 6/3. Still conservative, but not out of whack nuts - posting as a Republican.
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>"Didn't the Democrats get a lot of criticism for not undoing some of what Trump did"
Not that I saw, he did a pretty clean 100% backslide from what I could t2ll.
>like stacking SCOTUS with unsuitable conservative judges
1) They were all suitable.
2) Waaaaah!! The 50+ year liberal/left court swung to "not my side" for once.
3) All legal.
4) There was no "stacking", that would imply expanding the seats, which would be a forever arms-war.
5) The Biden administration couldn't do anything about it.
This has nothing to do with Firefox/Mozilla, but of course everyone has to make everything about politics. Sigh.
1) They have a pulse
2) What "side" is the court on, because conservative justices can't seem to agree on a coherent ideological view of anything. I feel embarrassed for Chief Justice John Roberts.
3) This is just sad. It's legal AG pick Matt Gaetz says about drug fueled orgies. It's legal Sec Def pick Pete Hegseth says about serial adultery. Morals, ethics, fuck those, let's all just wear a shiny gold cross around our necks, that'll do it.
4) You're redefining stacking to mean increasing the total number of p
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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.
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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.
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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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:How Relevant is This? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why would they, when Google openly tilted search results for Democrats?
The past isn't important. Trump wants an American oligarchy in his back pocket. "Owning" Google would be fantastic for him, and his new AG pick can make that happen at zero cost.
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Why would they, when Google openly tilted search results for Democrats?
The past isn't important. Trump wants an American oligarchy in his back pocket. "Owning" Google would be fantastic for him, and his new AG pick can make that happen at zero cost.
If I am being charitable, this is evidence-free hypothetical. So lets elaborate on this hypothetical. Your view is that Trump want to wrestle the cultural control of Google away from Democrats and he will abuse his influence over the office of AG to kill the DoJ action against Google, which in quid pro quo way would switch its bias to Republicans. This will manifest during the next election cycle, where they will promote in search all kinds of smear content against Democratic candidates. Did I describe your
Re:How Relevant is This? (Score:4, Insightful)
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That might not make him a pedo, but he'd still do hard time for it if it were true. We'll probably never find out now that he's left Congress and dropped out of the running for AG.
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Donald Trump has no love for Alphabet Corporation.
Browser"s" (Score:5, Interesting)
>"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.
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Re: Browser"s" (Score:1)
It's not independent.
It's also not worth using.
Re: Browser"s" (Score:2)
Aww I hurt an apple users feefees
Safari is the worst of the browsers in every way
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>"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
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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.
FUD (Score:2)
A simple fix? (Score:2)
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
This is what we deserve... (Score:1)
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
The only winner is Microsoft (Score:2)
Firefox has a bad faith argument. (Score:1)