Is Mozilla the one to suffer the consequences of Google's antitrust defeat?
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United States District Judge Amit Mehta found Google guilty of building a monopolistic position in web search. The Mountain View corporation spent billions of dollars becoming the...

Mozilla has a close relationship with Google, as most of Firefox’s revenue comes from the agreement keeping Google as the browser’s default search engine. However, the search giant is now officially a monopoly, and a future court decision could have an unprecedented impact on Mozilla’s ability to keep things “business as usual.”

United States District Judge Amit Mehta found Google guilty of building a monopolistic position in web search. The Mountain View corporation spent billions of dollars becoming the leading search provider for computing platforms and web browsers on PC and mobile devices.

Most of the $21 billion spent went to Apple in exchange for setting Google as the default search engine on iPhone, iPad, and Mac systems. The judge will now need to decide on a penalty for the company’s actions, including the potential of forcing Google to stop payments to its search “partners completely,” which could have dire consequences for smaller companies like Mozilla.

Its most recent financials show Mozilla gets $510 million out of its $593 million in total revenue from its Google partnership. This precarious financial position is a side effect of its deal with Alphabet, which made Google the search engine default for newer Firefox installations.

The open-source web browser has experienced a steady market share decline over the past few years. Meanwhile, Mozilla management was paid millions to develop a new “vision” of a theoretical future with AI chatbots. Mozilla Corporation, the wholly owned subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation managing Firefox development, could find itself in a severe struggle for revenue if Google’s money suddenly dried up.

  • TheJack@lemmy.worldEnglish
    11520·
    3 months ago

    I have written this elsewhere many times and I know it’s extremely unpopular with FOSS crowd but truth needs to be told in here once again:

    Everyday I use Debian, Ubuntu and Windows 10/11/Servers.

    I’m an “IT guy” and have installed Firefox on literally hundreds of computers over a decade. I also install and setup extensions like uBlock Origin (with few comprehensive ad & malware blocking lists) , Dark Reader, Auto Delete Cookies, Crypto blocking and many more… but I have given up on Firefox 2016 onwards.

    You could give Mozilla 10 billion per year just to develop Firefox but Mozilla can and will decide that they wanna spend only 1 or 10 percent of that money on actual Firefox development.

    They will spend most of their money on anything but Firefox.

    I mean I love world-peace, and cancer and aids free world too but with the money Mozilla get in a year, none of that gonna happen.

    Mozilla couldn’t stop Russia attack on Ukraine; neither were able to solve Israel Palestinian conflict nor hunger and migration from African countries to Europe…

    Then what are they spending money on?

    What they could have done successfully is to spend all the money they made from Firefox towards Firefox development alone. But this is the thing Mozilla do not want to do and are open about it.

    Now I don’t want Mozilla to stop developing Firefox either but because Firefox needs money from Google, Google must be allowed their monopoly on search… is utterly insane thinking.

    If Mozilla cannot survive without Google monopoly, so be it.

    I would say some open source/ Linux foundations/ Linux distros needs to fork Firefox and let Mozilla die peacefully.

      • mke@lemmy.worldEnglish
        7·
        3 months ago

        I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s entirely correct:

        Servo aims to provide an independent, modular, embeddable web rendering engine source - About Servo

        I think it’d be better to say they’re working on becoming a modern, easy to use alternative to the likes of Gecko and Blink, the engines powering Firefox and Chrome, respectively.

        I saw nothing about plans to become a fully featured web browser, even in the roadmap. Do you have anything else to share that supports the browser idea?

    • MCasq_qsaCJ_234@lemmy.zipEnglish
      215·
      3 months ago

      There is already the Ladybird project, which is a fork of the SerenityOS browser. We can say that it is a spiritual successor, although its license is more permissive than the Firefox browser.

      • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
        94·
        3 months ago

        Ladybird is in a prime position if they keep up their steady progress, I really hope they succeed.

        • PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          I would be happy to seem them being open to use already working solutions, and not doing everything by themselves, since it just slows development speed by a lot, but it’s understandable.

      • mke@lemmy.worldEnglish
        61·
        3 months ago

        Once again, note that if you’re the kind of user who shuns Brave because the CEO says stupid stuff every once in a while, you’ll probably not look fondly upon Ladybird’s project lead and main developer being scared of pronouns.

        See the issue on github.

        If you don’t care about that, it’s an interesting project. Can’t say I approve, though.

        Posting this to inform people and let each one decide what to do on their own. Don’t harass anyone, please.

    • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
      1·
      3 months ago

      Diversifying into non-firefox stuff people can pay for is the way they try to get some extra revenue in case something catastrophic happens.