5 ms·

The dynamics behind the deal are interesting. Google probably paid just enough to outbid Bing, the second highest bidder. Or Firefox played a great hand of poke

The dynamics behind the deal are interesting. Google probably paid just enough to outbid Bing, the second highest bidder. Or Firefox played a great hand of poker with Google. In either case it should trouble Mozilla that they are dependent on not only Google, but Bing (by extension) for the majority of their revenue. Finding a sustainable way to reduce reliance on these companies should be the #1 job of the Mozilla business team in the next 3 years, before the deal comes up for renewal.

v21 15y ago
I'm sure Mozilla feels very precarious getting such a huge chunk of money from a single source. But: - Mozilla isn't a company, it's a non-profit (this deal was done by Mozilla Corp, yes, but that's a wholly owned branch of the foundation). Reducing their reliance on Google for cash is never going to be Mozilla's aim as a whole. - Three years is a hell of a long time. When the last deal was negotiated, there was no Bing, and no Chrome. The world was a very different place. No matter how good their strategy is, it's going to be a terrible one for the world in 3 years time. - The interests of the Mozilla foundation and Google are broadly aligned - they both care about an open, free web. That's a rare thing to find in large industry players these days.
- robryan 15y ago
  Your right that for Google whether a user is using Chrome or using Firefox with Google Search it shouldn't matter much on the bottom line and they don't have to worry too much about feature support from Firefox as they are quick to propose/ adopt standards.
robryan 15y ago
Actually I think it is looking more sustainable now that bing has high interest in the position as well. As long as Firefox holds a market share similar to its current one and bing holds its market share to keep ms interested in pushing it the decent sized deals should continue and probably grow. What would to suggest as an alternate revenue source?
nl 15y ago
Not really. If Google or Bing hadn't paid enough then it would be pretty easy[1] to raise the money from random investors. There are precedents for that - Lycos (I think? or Infoseek?) raised capital after buying a default slot on the original Netscape browser with money they didn't actually have. [1] Not saying that building a web scale search engine is easy, exactly, but I am saying that the default search engine for ~25% of the world web browsers is a business a lot of investors would want to invest in.
- bobthebee 15y ago
  It's a great option to consider, but: * What matters is not just default placement, but actual share. How many would not switch to Google? Say hypothetically half which I think is generous. * That leaves them with the kind of share that Bing had prior to the yahoo deal. And bing was losing over a billion a year. * That still doesn't actually create a business model, because now they have create a search ad network to compete with AdWords. That's another tough problem - especially without scale. So all in all I don't doubt they could raise some money, but chances of success would be extremely slim. I don't think that Mozilla has a BATNA to Bing/Google which is why the economics are so different in each round. It's entirely based on Google and Bing bidding against each other.
- zobzu 15y ago
  Investors don't invest if there are no shares to get. And, there are no shares to get. And that's the whole point of Mozilla's existence. Thus, there's only such deals and donations. An investor would therefore need to donate, to support Mozilla.
  - cpeterso 15y ago
    I think nl was suggesting that investors could raise money to buy Firefox's search spot and then create a search engine. Imagine if some VC firm raised $301M to outbid Google and then signed a deal with DuckDuckGo.
    - bobthebee 15y ago
zobzu 15y ago
Mozilla is not your traditional corporation. Money always comes second. Openess and such values always come first. Always. There is no share holder. No one has to be worried, except people who support Mozilla's point of view. That's why it's a company worth supporting. If you support it, you win. If you don't, well, they might eventually die, and there aren't really many (read: any) replacement. It's pretty atypical.
- dchest 15y ago
  I like Mozilla, but I think you're stretching "openness" here. I don't see a lot of openness in this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=471561 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=471561 Per the new business arrangement between Mozilla & Yandex in Russia, we need to make some changes to the ru build's search defaults. ... This bug is marked confidential until the agreement has been announced publicly. Openness would mean asking Russian users to vote for the default search engine before striking a deal.
  - tikhonj 15y ago
    No, openness means you can take the Firefox source and release your own (rebranded) browser with a different search engine. This is exactly what Iceweasel is; in fact, I think they even use DuckDuckGo for searching, but I could be wrong because I don't have it installed.
    - dchest 15y ago
      We are talking about different opennesses here. I'm not arguing that their browser is not open source. This thread is about bidding for the default search engine in Firefox and Mozilla's business decisions. Obviously, Yandex outbid Google in the Russian market. The switch from Google was based on money. The decision was not made in the open. I interpret this as "we value openness, but to keep this organization afloat to continue making open source browser we need to make _closed_ deals with search engines", which looks like an acceptable compromise to me. But it's nowhere near the complete openness as I understand it. If your goal is pure philanthropic -- to make the best free browser -- you base your decisions ONLY on what's best for users, not on an acceptable compromise somewhere inbetween [who gets you the most money] and [what's best for users]. PS I don't suggest that Yandex is not the best choice for Russian users (it may be), but we'll never know, because nobody asked them.
cpeterso 15y ago
Even though I prefer Google's search results to Bing's, I feel the "open web" might be a better place if Mozilla unseated Google's search monopoly by signing with Bing. Mozilla does have a search deal with Microsoft, but it's for second place on the list. If Bing was Firefox's default search engine, Google would have some healthy search competition.

v21 15y ago

I'm sure Mozilla feels very precarious getting such a huge chunk of money from a single source. But: - Mozilla isn't a company, it's a non-profit (this deal was done by Mozilla Corp, yes, but that's a wholly owned branch of the foundation). Reducing their reliance on Google for cash is never going to be Mozilla's aim as a whole. - Three years is a hell of a long time. When the last deal was negotiated, there was no Bing, and no Chrome. The world was a very different place. No matter how good their strategy is, it's going to be a terrible one for the world in 3 years time. - The interests of the Mozilla foundation and Google are broadly aligned - they both care about an open, free web. That's a rare thing to find in large industry players these days.

robryan 15y ago
Your right that for Google whether a user is using Chrome or using Firefox with Google Search it shouldn't matter much on the bottom line and they don't have to worry too much about feature support from Firefox as they are quick to propose/ adopt standards.

robryan 15y ago

Actually I think it is looking more sustainable now that bing has high interest in the position as well. As long as Firefox holds a market share similar to its current one and bing holds its market share to keep ms interested in pushing it the decent sized deals should continue and probably grow. What would to suggest as an alternate revenue source?

nl 15y ago

Not really. If Google or Bing hadn't paid enough then it would be pretty easy[1] to raise the money from random investors. There are precedents for that - Lycos (I think? or Infoseek?) raised capital after buying a default slot on the original Netscape browser with money they didn't actually have. [1] Not saying that building a web scale search engine is easy, exactly, but I am saying that the default search engine for ~25% of the world web browsers is a business a lot of investors would want to invest in.

bobthebee 15y ago
It's a great option to consider, but: * What matters is not just default placement, but actual share. How many would not switch to Google? Say hypothetically half which I think is generous. * That leaves them with the kind of share that Bing had prior to the yahoo deal. And bing was losing over a billion a year. * That still doesn't actually create a business model, because now they have create a search ad network to compete with AdWords. That's another tough problem - especially without scale. So all in all I don't doubt they could raise some money, but chances of success would be extremely slim. I don't think that Mozilla has a BATNA to Bing/Google which is why the economics are so different in each round. It's entirely based on Google and Bing bidding against each other.
zobzu 15y ago
Investors don't invest if there are no shares to get. And, there are no shares to get. And that's the whole point of Mozilla's existence. Thus, there's only such deals and donations. An investor would therefore need to donate, to support Mozilla.
- cpeterso 15y ago
  I think nl was suggesting that investors could raise money to buy Firefox's search spot and then create a search engine. Imagine if some VC firm raised $301M to outbid Google and then signed a deal with DuckDuckGo.
  - bobthebee 15y ago

zobzu 15y ago

Mozilla is not your traditional corporation. Money always comes second. Openess and such values always come first. Always. There is no share holder. No one has to be worried, except people who support Mozilla's point of view. That's why it's a company worth supporting. If you support it, you win. If you don't, well, they might eventually die, and there aren't really many (read: any) replacement. It's pretty atypical.

dchest 15y ago
I like Mozilla, but I think you're stretching "openness" here. I don't see a lot of openness in this: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=471561 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=471561 Per the new business arrangement between Mozilla & Yandex in Russia, we need to make some changes to the ru build's search defaults. ... This bug is marked confidential until the agreement has been announced publicly. Openness would mean asking Russian users to vote for the default search engine before striking a deal.
- tikhonj 15y ago
  No, openness means you can take the Firefox source and release your own (rebranded) browser with a different search engine. This is exactly what Iceweasel is; in fact, I think they even use DuckDuckGo for searching, but I could be wrong because I don't have it installed.
  - dchest 15y ago
    We are talking about different opennesses here. I'm not arguing that their browser is not open source. This thread is about bidding for the default search engine in Firefox and Mozilla's business decisions. Obviously, Yandex outbid Google in the Russian market. The switch from Google was based on money. The decision was not made in the open. I interpret this as "we value openness, but to keep this organization afloat to continue making open source browser we need to make _closed_ deals with search engines", which looks like an acceptable compromise to me. But it's nowhere near the complete openness as I understand it. If your goal is pure philanthropic -- to make the best free browser -- you base your decisions ONLY on what's best for users, not on an acceptable compromise somewhere inbetween [who gets you the most money] and [what's best for users]. PS I don't suggest that Yandex is not the best choice for Russian users (it may be), but we'll never know, because nobody asked them.

cpeterso 15y ago

Even though I prefer Google's search results to Bing's, I feel the "open web" might be a better place if Mozilla unseated Google's search monopoly by signing with Bing. Mozilla does have a search deal with Microsoft, but it's for second place on the list. If Bing was Firefox's default search engine, Google would have some healthy search competition.