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I find it the situation with Firefox and Google rather dire; Firefox seems to only be alive at this point because they receive annually $450 million USD from Go
by gzer0 5y ago
I find it the situation with Firefox and Google rather dire; Firefox seems to only be alive at this point because they receive annually $450 million USD from Google [1].
What happens when these payments disappears? Firefox is most definitely beholden to Google. Safari, seems to be the only real competitor right now, but again, Google is paying Apple ~$12 billion USD a year to be the default search engine there as well [2].
I know that the points I bring up relate to search engine dominance, but in a way, it extends much further than that. Firefox web browser is afloat solely because of these payments.
[1] https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/08/mozilla-firefox-goo https://www.androidheadlines.com/2020/08/mozilla-firefox-goo...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-search-deal-doj https://www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-search-deal-doj...
- lpcvoid 5y agoIf it forces Mozilla (the corp) to abandon their stupid side projects and refocus on developing Firefox, I'm all for a huge budget cut.
- webmaven 5y ago> If it forces Mozilla (the corp) to abandon their stupid side projects and refocus on developing Firefox, I'm all for a huge budget cut. Given the apparent reasoning behind the Servo team being laid off a couple of years ago, I don't think Mozilla's response to a budget cut would be a renewed focus on Firefox. I suspect that instead what users would get is yet another Chromium based browser... along with a bunch of side projects.
- sharikous 5y agoIn that case hopefully a fork will be made and maintained by someone else.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- judge2020 5y agoGoogle is effectively forced to keep paying Mozilla, since stopping in an unplanned manner would surely collapse Firefox as a competitive browser, leaving only Chrome(ium) on Windows desktops.