Mozilla's Renewed Deal with Google Showcases Google's Real Priorities

by Sam Dean - Dec. 21, 2011Comments (1)

As December began, it was unclear whether Mozilla would renew its long-time deal with Google, through which Mozilla gains the lion's share of its revenues by steering users of the Firefox browser toward Google's lucrative search/ad ecosystem. For those who favor Mozilla's browser and other tools, the issue was an important one, because Mozilla's deals with other search-focused companies don't provide anywhere near the amount of money that Google kicks in. Now, in a blog post, Mozilla has announced a new, long-term deal with Google that will last for at least three years. Above all, the renewal of the deal shows that Google cares more about steering the maximum number of users toward its search engine than it does about absolute dominance for its own software tools.

According to Mozilla's post:

"We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years."

Mozilla actually has a string of search partners, including Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, eBay and others. However, Google has provided the majority of the company's revenues for many years running in exchange for prominent default placement for its search in the Firefox browser.

Meanwhile, many analysts predict that Google's own Chrome browser, which competes neck-and-neck with Mozilla's Firefox, will overtake Firefox in market share next year. The renewal of the deal between Mozilla and Google is evidence that Google isn't solely focused on carving out maximum market share for Chrome.

Mozilla has been trying to diversify its revenue streams. It recently delivered Firefox with Bing, which steers users into Microsoft's search/ad ecosystem. In it, Bing is the default search engine in the search box. In any case, Mozilla has at least three years--and probably longer--to build search partnerships that bear resemblance to the valuable one that it continues to have with Google.