Mozilla has a close relationship with Google, as most of Firefox’s revenue comes from the agreement keeping Google as the browser’s default search engine. However, the search giant is now officially a monopoly, and a future court decision could have an unprecedented impact on Mozilla’s ability to keep things “business as usual.”
United States District Judge Amit Mehta found Google guilty of building a monopolistic position in web search. The Mountain View corporation spent billions of dollars becoming the leading search provider for computing platforms and web browsers on PC and mobile devices.
Most of the $21 billion spent went to Apple in exchange for setting Google as the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems. The judge will now need to decide on a penalty for the company’s actions, including the potential of forcing Google to stop payments to its search “partners completely,” which could have dire consequences for smaller companies like Mozilla.
Its most recent financials show Mozilla gets $510 million out of its $593 million in total revenue from its Google partnership. This precarious financial position is a side effect of its deal with Alphabet, which made Google the search engine default for newer Firefox installations.
The open-source web browser has experienced a steady market share decline over the past few years. Meanwhile, Mozilla management was paid millions to develop a new “vision” of a theoretical future with AI chatbots. Mozilla Corporation, the wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation managing Firefox development, could find itself in a severe struggle for revenue if Google’s money suddenly dried up.
I do not like walls of text, so I’ll answer half before I go to sleep.
If you exclude my own, then 0. I am not in tech support.
Re: GIMP & LibreOffice: I often use these and have trouble recognizing why people hate them. The latter defaults to a worse interface for some reason while tabbed view is hidden behind a simple and great toggle. I feel like the hate on GIMP is because people try to impose proprietary paradigms and do not realize that a “find action” mennu exist.
Windows Mobile was never there. Additionally, iPhone had charisma and massive marketing. Charisma is the thing that propels many things good and bad. There’s even an entire book about this called “The Charisma Machine”.
Microsoft was also facing federal prosecution around this time for monopolizing. The result of the case was forcing Microsoft to advertise other browsers, including Firefox and Chrome and Maxthon and two others, all of which gained significant market share. This reset the market, and eventually Firefox emerged as the victor by a bit, and then Chrome beat that bit. If that court case didn’t happen, we’d still all be using some kind of Internet Explorer.
Because they are paying for the far cheaper options. While Apple and Samsung attract with big bucks on marketing and charisma, the 3rd largest phone seller worldwide is Xiaomi, the budget option.
I’m noticing a pattern here of you bringing up examples of leaps and bounds/cross-generational products. If someone builds a browser comparable to the iPod, I doubt we’d even call it a browser anymore. Unless you have a next-gen product, people will remain on the default option.
These are rookie numbers compared to the number of android phones sold worldwide. Subtract that by 100 million, and that’s mostly all people who use the default option.