4 ms·

> Mozilla has always made the bulk of its money from selling the preferred placement of a search engine in Firefox It's amazing how valuable eyeballs are -- th

> Mozilla has always made the bulk of its money from selling the preferred placement of a search engine in Firefox It's amazing how valuable eyeballs are -- that you can fund an entire software project just that way.

frutiger 6y ago
It’s not the eyeballs that are valuable. It’s the money those eyeballs will spend.
JohnBooty 6y ago
Ostensibly, they pay Firefox for eyeballs, but.... Google certainly values the eyeballs they get via Firefox, but Firefox could disappear tomorrow and that barely affect Google one bit from a pure "eyeballs" perspective. How much traffic would Google lose? People would just use those same Google services through Chrome, Safari, native apps, whatever. So, I believe Google funds Firefox mainly as a hedge against monopoly charges. If Chrome ever dominated the browser market entirely with 95%+ marketshare like Internet Explorer back in the bad old days of IE5/6, they'd be painting a large target on their backs for various governments to step in and make life difficult. If we think about it, Chrome/Chromium's current ~70% market share is pretty ideal for Google. They get to kinda sorta mostly control the web, without a bunch of pesky governments on their backs.
- stkdump 6y ago
  I guess the choice for google isn't either keep firefox alive or let it die. It's probably more be th standard search engine in firefox or not. Mozilla would probably still be able to sell that spot to s/o else, albeit for a lower price, but not so low to get Firefox fully out of the picture. I guess the revenue stream from firefox users is still big enough that it is worth it for google.
- jakemal 6y ago
  If Google decided not to pay Mozilla someone else would. Google would lose traffic and eyeballs in that case. Though I do think there is some truth to the monopoly hedge as well.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    Yeah, those eyeballs certainly are not without value! 200 million monthly users is still a lot of people. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
- BrendanEich 6y ago
  When I was there, we speculated Google was using Mozilla as antitrust lawyer repellant, but it's a weak argument. Google pushed Chrome onto Firefox users repeatedly, by accident or on purpose doesn't matter. Now that Google is in antitrust court, I think the Mozilla deal is mainly for PR, both positive while it lasts, and negative sense (to avoid being the Firefox killer by not renewing the deal this year -- Google preannounced renewal after Mozilla's August layoffs, and let others repeat the too-high-by-now $400M/year number).
  - benlivengood 6y ago
    My impression is that Google is simply having to play the same game their own advertising business makes others play; in order to keep getting customers (eyeballs for adsense+doubleclick) they have to pay for it because the competition also advertises (via paid default search). Firefox switching to Yahoo for default search was probably an eye opener for them; 30% of global search traffic (at whatever fraction of users didn't change their search engine) is a boatload of money and from public estimates at least an order of magnitude more than they pay Mozilla for the traffic. From a business perspective Google might benefit if Firefox disappeared but there's no guarantee. Opera, Brave, Safari, Edge, etc. could take up Firefox's install-base without significantly increasing Chrome's. At least Firefox is a known entity for them and they would probably rather have a guaranteed platform with Google as the default search engine than having to negotiate with whatever sprang up to replace Firefox.
    - BrendanEich 6y ago
      The Yahoo deal failed badly in first year, as Firefox users who were shocked by the change of default search from G to Y overrode default back to G. This caused Marissa Mayer's Yahoo to bleed money, as rumors supported by Mozilla statements say the deal was fixed-payment-per-year, not traffic-based. IIRC searchengineland cracked Yahoo's 10Q to show the blood loss. We also know the deal bled money because of Verizon getting out of it in 2017, when Mozilla went back to Google. Firefox market share is now in the danger zone where Google can replace it with more Chrome promotion and still save on TAC vs. Chrome-eng+mktg. Also the danger zone where webdevs do not test in Gecko and break Firefox, even on such properties as AirBNB.

frutiger 6y ago

It’s not the eyeballs that are valuable. It’s the money those eyeballs will spend.

JohnBooty 6y ago

Ostensibly, they pay Firefox for eyeballs, but.... Google certainly values the eyeballs they get via Firefox, but Firefox could disappear tomorrow and that barely affect Google one bit from a pure "eyeballs" perspective. How much traffic would Google lose? People would just use those same Google services through Chrome, Safari, native apps, whatever. So, I believe Google funds Firefox mainly as a hedge against monopoly charges. If Chrome ever dominated the browser market entirely with 95%+ marketshare like Internet Explorer back in the bad old days of IE5/6, they'd be painting a large target on their backs for various governments to step in and make life difficult. If we think about it, Chrome/Chromium's current ~70% market share is pretty ideal for Google. They get to kinda sorta mostly control the web, without a bunch of pesky governments on their backs.

stkdump 6y ago
I guess the choice for google isn't either keep firefox alive or let it die. It's probably more be th standard search engine in firefox or not. Mozilla would probably still be able to sell that spot to s/o else, albeit for a lower price, but not so low to get Firefox fully out of the picture. I guess the revenue stream from firefox users is still big enough that it is worth it for google.
jakemal 6y ago
If Google decided not to pay Mozilla someone else would. Google would lose traffic and eyeballs in that case. Though I do think there is some truth to the monopoly hedge as well.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  Yeah, those eyeballs certainly are not without value! 200 million monthly users is still a lot of people. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
BrendanEich 6y ago
When I was there, we speculated Google was using Mozilla as antitrust lawyer repellant, but it's a weak argument. Google pushed Chrome onto Firefox users repeatedly, by accident or on purpose doesn't matter. Now that Google is in antitrust court, I think the Mozilla deal is mainly for PR, both positive while it lasts, and negative sense (to avoid being the Firefox killer by not renewing the deal this year -- Google preannounced renewal after Mozilla's August layoffs, and let others repeat the too-high-by-now $400M/year number).
- benlivengood 6y ago
  My impression is that Google is simply having to play the same game their own advertising business makes others play; in order to keep getting customers (eyeballs for adsense+doubleclick) they have to pay for it because the competition also advertises (via paid default search). Firefox switching to Yahoo for default search was probably an eye opener for them; 30% of global search traffic (at whatever fraction of users didn't change their search engine) is a boatload of money and from public estimates at least an order of magnitude more than they pay Mozilla for the traffic. From a business perspective Google might benefit if Firefox disappeared but there's no guarantee. Opera, Brave, Safari, Edge, etc. could take up Firefox's install-base without significantly increasing Chrome's. At least Firefox is a known entity for them and they would probably rather have a guaranteed platform with Google as the default search engine than having to negotiate with whatever sprang up to replace Firefox.
  - BrendanEich 6y ago
    The Yahoo deal failed badly in first year, as Firefox users who were shocked by the change of default search from G to Y overrode default back to G. This caused Marissa Mayer's Yahoo to bleed money, as rumors supported by Mozilla statements say the deal was fixed-payment-per-year, not traffic-based. IIRC searchengineland cracked Yahoo's 10Q to show the blood loss. We also know the deal bled money because of Verizon getting out of it in 2017, when Mozilla went back to Google. Firefox market share is now in the danger zone where Google can replace it with more Chrome promotion and still save on TAC vs. Chrome-eng+mktg. Also the danger zone where webdevs do not test in Gecko and break Firefox, even on such properties as AirBNB.