Is Google a friend to Mozilla Firefox or a potential rival?
By Mark O’Neill
An interesting piece has popped up in the International Herald Tribune about Mozilla Firefox’s heavy dependency on Google’s money and whether that relationship will continue - or if Google will end up becoming a rival in the browser wars.
A staggering 85% of Mozilla Firefox’s total annual revenue comes from Google and if Google suddenly decides to pull the plug, Mozilla would be OK in the short term as they have amassed $70 million in the bank (I thought Mozilla was supposed to be a non-profit foundation?). But in the long term, could Google finally develop their own browser to seriously challenge Firefox’s growing influence?
Is a Google browser the next stage in Google’s plans for total world domination?
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Mark, you dork!
Of course Mozilla isn’t a for-profit entity. The money that Google gave is an investment not simply in the Mozilla browser code but in Open Source at large. Mozilla hasn’t sold Google anything as far as browser code goes. Maybe they sold some trinkets and consulting time, but that still doesn’t imply profit making. Just like non-profit trusts that $70 million will be used by Mozilla to continue development of the free and open source browser. Google, if they wanted to undermine Mozilla, would have to develop a browser from scratch, essentially. That would be a waste of money invested in Mozilla, and even more expensive to duplicate the browser. The only reason Google would have for doing that would be if they wanted to corner the browser market like Microsoft did in the late 90s, an inherently ‘evil’ thing to do.
Believe it or not, the $85 million “donation” Google made to Mozilla is a long term commitment to the success of the Mozilla browser and a free and open internet economy. At present, the only thing that stands between Microsoft and domination of the internet is the success of projects like Firefox and companies like Google. The singular success of Google does imply the possibility of swapping one tyrant for another, granted, but the character of the collective conscience that is Google would have to change significantly first.
Microsoft from it’s very inception had set itself up to be a tyrant. Long before they had the monopoly they do many people recognized how much trust they were giving to Microsoft to not become the bully they potentially could be, and unfortunately that trust was misplaced. Google would have to make too many constitutional changes to even be ready to ask that kind of trust. I believe we would all see through that. Is it impossible? No, just improbable.
I dont think Google will do the mistake of making its browser.plus
I think Mozilla as a company is not governed by any selfish motives.
rightly said Google didn’t pay $85 M to Mozilla but to the open source market at large.& in the bargain makes billions with the toolbar which it downloads. Its a strategic move by dominating the browser world without even owing the browser.
The bottom line is to make money with a particular product & Firefox helps Google do that.