[arp242]

I suppose Microsoft might be willing to broker a deal to have Bing as the default search, although that would probably attract similar levels of criticism from the same people.

DuckDuckGo would be the "obvious" choice, but I doubt they can come up with the same kind of numbers.

Brave Search might be an option, but unlike Google and Microsoft the browser is Brave's main product so they might not want to deal with a competitor, they probably have a lot less cash lying around, and they have some history with Mozilla.

Yahoo! Search is still around, maybe some others? I don't think anyone other than Microsoft and Google have a spare ~$500 million lying around for this though.

[st3fan]

Wait what? "spare money lying around?" that is a complete misunderstanding of how this works. You make it sound as if that money is some kind of "donation". THat Google is doing Mozilla a _favour_ here. But nothing could be further from the truth: instead this is a business deal where everyone wins. (Read: generates a stupid amount of revenue)

Google probably makes at least 3x of what it pays Mozilla in search royalties. At least. Who knows what Google makes with what it does after Firefox has done its small part.

This is a hugely profitable business for Google. That has _nothing_ to do with "spare money lying around". This is a cash cow for Google. Specially since they do the same with other players like Apple. Many many billions of dollars are at stake.

[mike_hearn]

Realistically Google is doing Mozilla a favor and the money is a donation.

Firstly, Firefox's remaining userbase is pretty technical. They aren't the sort of people to blindly use defaults because they don't know how to change them. Even if Google cut Mozilla off entirely, tomorrow, 90% of Firefox users would continue to search on Google by default.

Secondly, what would Firefox switch to? Bing? What if MS don't care about paying Mozilla either, or only are willing to pay a fraction of what Google pays? What's Mozilla going to do? They'd have to go with Bing anyway because it's that or nothing. There are no other search engines willing and able to pay lots of money for browser traffic.

So Mozilla would be in a double bind: even if MS paid them to replace the Google deal, (a) most of their users would change the default back again, so they'd refer very little traffic and (b) Microsoft could cut them a very bad deal and they'd have to take it anyway. They'd still suffer a huge drop in income overnight.

No matter what Mozilla does, they will be depending on one of two companies BOTH of which make competing browsers and frankly, both of which would be quite happy if Mozilla just went away and died, given that from their perspective Mozilla's primary contribution to the web is telling the Chrome/Edge teams they can't do things.

I don't get the anti-trust angle. There is browser competition: Chrome, Edge, Safari, Brave, Vivaldi, etc. If Mozilla tried to claim that Google ending their deal was anti-competitive, they'd just immediately lose in court.

My guess is that Google continue to be Mozilla's sugar daddy for legacy reasons. They've done it for a long time, cutting Mozilla off would upset a lot of techies and the money is irrelevant to Google. But one day that calculus will change.

What might cause the calculus to change? Most obviously, if Google decides that Mozilla is no longer actually developing their browser properly, or if Mozilla's management just upsets the relevant point-person at Google badly enough. Baker obviously stopped caring about web browsers years ago, if she ever did at all, and is now treating the Google deal as a piggybank for pushing her political ideology. All it takes is for the person responsible for the Mozilla deal to be replaced by someone who hates anti-white wokeness and they've got all the ammo they need to just defund Mozilla completely. A less sympathetic organization is hard to imagine.

[st3fan]

> All it takes is for the person responsible for the Mozilla deal to be replaced by someone who hates anti-white wokeness

That you write this utter nonsense tells more about you than about Mozilla ... shows your true colors. Wow.

[mike_hearn]

From the article, that is what Mozilla is funding:

Mckensie Mack is a public speaker who regularly discusses her anger at “White Colonialism” and her dislike of “CIS” men and women.

That founder, Neil Lewis Jr., appears to have focused his career on “vaccine acceptance”, problems with “white” people, and his theory that “white people” can not be victims of discrimination.

They provide links to back these claims up. It's not what you'd expect from a browser company.

[arp242]

You need to have the $500 million "spare money" lying around if you want to invest it.