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90% of mozillas revenue comes from Google paying to be the default search engine. Seems more like a subsidy than a successful business model Disclosure: I work

90% of mozillas revenue comes from Google paying to be the default search engine. Seems more like a subsidy than a successful business model Disclosure: I work for GOOG

srtjstjsj 6y ago
Paying money for a valuable service is commerce, not subsidy. Half of Google's revenue is paying people for traffic from AdSense to browser search bars and all in between. Is my business nonviable just because it's funded by Google ad placements?
- thethethethe 6y ago
  There is a pretty big difference between Google directly paying you to exist using money it makes from ads in a different product segment and making money for displaying ads through Google.
  - bzbarsky 6y ago
    Do you know how the payment amount is determined? I don't, but other such things are often structured as revenue share agreements, in which case it would not be exactly "ads in a different product segment", but rather "a fraction of the ad revenue directly attributable to Firefox". At which point it's really no different from how AdWords or the like work.
- yyyk 6y ago
  In theory you are correct. However, I wonder how much of Google paying is actually 'we better have a competitor to avoid anti-trust' rather than paying for the searchbar. Mozilla should have gotten a smaller amount last time due to falling behind in marketshare, yet that did not happen.
  - bzbarsky 6y ago
    > Mozilla should have gotten a smaller amount last time due to falling behind in marketshare That assumes that the amount of money in the market stayed the same. But it didn't: the number of users of the internet grew. So it's possible that the actual benefit to Google of Mozilla's users using their search engine grew. Disclaimer: used to work for Mozilla, not privy to details of the Google agreements.
bzbarsky 6y ago
Google pays other companies (e.g. Apple) for the same thing: search engine placement. Obviously Apple has a business model outside of that deal, but do you feel that the payment to Apple is also a "subsidy"?

90% of mozillas revenue comes from Google paying to be the default search engine. Seems more like a subsidy than a successful business model Disclosure: I work for GOOG

srtjstjsj 6y ago

Paying money for a valuable service is commerce, not subsidy. Half of Google's revenue is paying people for traffic from AdSense to browser search bars and all in between. Is my business nonviable just because it's funded by Google ad placements?

thethethethe 6y ago
There is a pretty big difference between Google directly paying you to exist using money it makes from ads in a different product segment and making money for displaying ads through Google.
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  Do you know how the payment amount is determined? I don't, but other such things are often structured as revenue share agreements, in which case it would not be exactly "ads in a different product segment", but rather "a fraction of the ad revenue directly attributable to Firefox". At which point it's really no different from how AdWords or the like work.
yyyk 6y ago
In theory you are correct. However, I wonder how much of Google paying is actually 'we better have a competitor to avoid anti-trust' rather than paying for the searchbar. Mozilla should have gotten a smaller amount last time due to falling behind in marketshare, yet that did not happen.
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  > Mozilla should have gotten a smaller amount last time due to falling behind in marketshare That assumes that the amount of money in the market stayed the same. But it didn't: the number of users of the internet grew. So it's possible that the actual benefit to Google of Mozilla's users using their search engine grew. Disclaimer: used to work for Mozilla, not privy to details of the Google agreements.

bzbarsky 6y ago

Google pays other companies (e.g. Apple) for the same thing: search engine placement. Obviously Apple has a business model outside of that deal, but do you feel that the payment to Apple is also a "subsidy"?