9 ms·
Mozilla Files Cross-Complaint Against Yahoo Holdings and Oath
- moocowtruck 9y agowas there some detail around what they didn't live up to in terms of their contract?
- gruez 9y agomaybe this? https://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer-deal-mozilla-yahoo-payment https://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer-deal-...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- simula67 9y ago> According to the change-of-control term, 9.1 in the agreement, Mozilla has the right to leave the partnership if — under its sole discretion and in a certain time period — it did not deem the new partner acceptable. And if it did that, even if it struck another search deal, Yahoo is still obligated to pay out annual revenue guarantees of $375 million. Wow. What a phenomenally bad deal that was for Yahoo and Marissa Mayer
- rdtsc 9y agoWhy would they go with that deal. How did anyone at Yahoo read that and said "Great, let's do this". Was it desperation - "If only we could put yahoo search in front of all those firefox users, yahoo will prosper again". Sadly I do imagine someone saying that. People who would disagree probably jumped ship a long time ago.
- StudentStuff 9y agoIt was a reasonable proposition, look at all the users funneled by IE and Edge to Bing. Google isn't a be all end all search engine, outside the English language sphere, Yandex, Baidu (albeit propped up by China) and others either dominate or take a large chunk of the search market.
- Brotkrumen 9y agoPretty much a standard clause. Put it in your supplier contracts! You want to protect your product from degrading by changes in your supply-chain. Bankruptcy or a new owner of your supplier may change their product so significantly that you want an immediate out without having to keep your side of the obligations. The supplier just restates with that clause that they won't change the product drastically and what that product is exactly is specified in the rest of the contract.
- moocowtruck 9y agoyikes this is what prompted my question because I figured it had to be an extremely bad deal like this, I just didn't want to believe that was the case !
- TAForObvReasons 9y agoRelevant discussion from last year regarding Recode's interpretation of the original contract: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12050374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12050374 The confusing part, as pointed out in the top comment in the post, is that the contract as interpreted by Swisher would certainly be material enough to be mentioned in Yahoo financials. However, the Yahoo filings at the time gave no such indication of this obligation.
- jlgaddis 9y agoRelated discussion here about the contract termination 20 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15711002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15711002
- jlgaddis 9y agoGood. I hope they get that $1B from Verizon and that it goes towards making the Internet even better. Knowing Mozilla's reputation, I'm confident that it will.
- gcp 9y agoCould also go bankrupt before the suit is decided. (cough Netscape cough)
- vanderZwan 9y agoI'm not sure why this is downvoted. Isn't this a realistic concern when it comes to these types of lawsuits?
- gcp 9y agoI mean there were 2 more years left in the deal IIRC? (2014-2019). 750M more or less probably means quite a bit to Firefox development. If it gets killed in the marketplace before the money ever shows up, getting it then might be a bit late to save the browser landscape.
- ericand 9y agoQuite a situation. Mozilla has basically one paying "customer" and it can only be one of two search engines. The concern here would be if they burn bridges with Yahoo, than they have less negotiating leverage with Google. I forget, is Yahoo search based on Bing, or is it the other way around, or is that deal dead?
- StudentStuff 9y agoMozilla could go to DuckDuckGo, Bing, Ask, etc or a mix of search engines varying by country, a bidding process isn't unheard of (Opera did this).
- floatingatoll 9y agoOr Yandex: https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2015/03/mozilla-makes-yandex-the-default-search-engine-for-firefox-in-turkey/ https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2015/03/mozilla-makes-yandex-...
- rgbrenner 9y agoMozilla already did this. The google deal was global.. but the yahoo deal was not. Yahoo only purchased the US default. And Mozilla signed deals with Baidu for China, and Yandex for Russia at the same time. Google was left as the default for all other countries. https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-innovation-on-the-web/ https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-an...
- Kiro 9y agoWhy would they go to DDG instead of directly to the source (Bing)?
- allenz 9y agoDDG has a stronger commitment to privacy. That said, DDG will almost certainly be outbid by other companies, and DDG will probably face problems scaling to that many users.
- jimnotgym 9y agoYahoo is suing one of the internet's good guys. SAP is apologising for suing it's customers (Diageo). Oracle, well they have been known to retain the odd lawyer. When you go to court it should be a last resort. When you go to court everyone loses. I think this kind of case is so damaging to Yahoo. I hope Mozilla wins a huge sum
- bad_user 9y agoYahoo is known to be a patents troll — for example I remember when they sued Facebook in 2012 [1] Now I don't blame anybody for trying to milk Facebook and I'm definitely not rooting for Facebook, but it's the general principle that counts. Yahoo has been using patents offensively. When big companies can no longer innovate, they litigate. [1] https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/yahoo-and-facebook-said-to-settle-patent-lawsuits/ https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/06/yahoo-and-facebook-s...
- dspillett 9y ago> When you go to court everyone loses. Apart from the lawyers.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- MaxBarraclough 9y agoGood point. All the people lose.
- craftyguy 9y agoLawyers are people too, they are just way better at playing the game than you or I.
- TallGuyShort 9y agoI've never been a bigger believer in this than now: recently had several conversations with lawyers hired to advise my company. Every single statement they made was hedged to protect themselves in the event they were wrong. They would only tell me what the law said by including copies of the actual law text. They would not directly answer questions about how the law can be interpreted based on case law and other precedents. Their only value was in providing the law text slightly faster and more conveniently than I could do so myself. Their chief concern seems to be protecting themselves from any blame, not protecting their client.
- yuhong 9y agoIf you follow me on Twitter (@yuhong2), you probably have seen my recent discussions with BrendanEich on Google, Mozilla, and the debt-based economy. I even attempted a debt diagram. The government shutdown may hit this week, making it a good time to discuss.
- owly 9y agoWould love to see a browser ask which search engine to use at at first launch and at every major version update. The list could be randomized as to not favor any.
- Vinnl 9y agoWith what purpose? Surely nobody would voluntary use that?
- zentiggr 9y agoImplement this by having the already built search provider list, with none selected at install. On the first address/search bar use, prompt the user. (Choose or add your own as currently available...) I like it.
- inetsee 9y agoThe search box in Firefox has a pulldown menu that lets me choose from 8 different search engines, including Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and others. My default is set to DuckDuckGo because I'd rather not be tracked, but if I think another search engine may give me better results for a particular search, the choice is just a click away.
- cortesoft 9y agoThis removes the only real source of revenue Mozilla has. How do you suggest they fund development?
- 9y ago