Google has been the default search engine on Mozilla’s Firefox browser for several years, a deal that results in some nice royalty payments for Mozilla. The deal, however, expired in November, so what does that mean for the future of Firefox?
Mozilla and Google are still negotiating a search deal, but Mozilla is touting its product, and soliciting donations, with a new video titled, “The Mozilla Story” (below).
A Mozilla spokeswoman confirmed that the two sides “are in active negotiations [but] have nothing further to announce at this time.”
“Our search relationship with Google remains positive for both of us,” she continued. “We have every confidence that search partnerships will continue to be a strong and growing generator of revenue for the foreseeable future.”
In an official statement, a Google spokeswoman said that the company doesn’t generally “disclose specific terms of business agreements.” Google “can confirm that we still have an agreement with Mozilla, but have nothing new to share at this time,” she continued.
In its October State of Mozilla report, the company said that its largest search contract is with Google. Specifically, the search giant makes up 84 percent of Mozilla’s royalty revenues.
“The majority of Mozilla’s revenue is generated from search functionality included in our Firefox product through all major search partners including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, Ebay and others,” Mozilla said at the time. “Mozilla’s reported revenues also include very important individual and corporate donations and grants as well as other forms of income from our investable assets.”
Can Mozilla make Google money via donations? Not likely, but the company is still soliciting contributions online. The aforementioned video is intended to show “how a small group of people dedicated to making the Web a safe, open and accessible tool for communication, collaboration and community came together to create Mozilla—and how that work continues today,” Mozilla said.
The news comes several days after StatCounter said that Chrome surpassed Firefox’s global market share for the first time last month. Net Applications, however, said its data showed that Chrome still has a little catching up to do.
With the release of Firefox 4, Mozilla added the option to make Yahoo or Bing the browser’s official search engine, though Google remained the default choice.
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Article source: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397242,00.asp