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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

What do you mean? Doesn't most of Mozilla's revenue come from Firefox?

I think people are implying that Google told Mozilla to drop Servo, to make sure Firefox wouldn't leapfrog Chrome. And since Google funds Mozilla almost entirely, Mozilla had to comply.

Almost no technical aspect of Firefox have anything to do with how much money Google pays them.

Mozilla is basically paid by Google to have a multi-platform non-Blink browser around they can point to when accused of being a monopoly.

Having a quality browser is not required, merely it existing. So why waste money on novel web engine experiments when you can have AI conferences in Zambia?

Living large and loving life --- by selling out.

How do you think Firefox is making money, since it has no payed features? Hint: it has Google search as the default search engine.

That's my point... The fewer people use Firefox, the less money they get from Google. If you follow the money, it doesn't make sense for them to neglect Firefox.

The fewer people use Firefox, the less money they get from Google.

You obviously haven't been following the money.

The statistical global marketshare of Firefox is very close to that of Internet Explorer --- within a single rounding digit.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-05-05/why-go...

Firefox users just block trackers, that's why you don't see them.

No. Check Mozilla’s own numbers if you don’t believe tracking stats.

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

Firefox users also tend to disable telemetry and any kind of phoning home whatsoever.

Possible perhaps --- but definitely not easy and thus highly unlikely on a broad scale. And this is by design.

The most *easy* and sustainable way to achieve this is by using a fork of Firefox --- aka LibreWolf.

https://github.com/K3V1991/Disable-Firefox-Telemetry-and-Dat...

Tops make goods money as is. All they need to do is to keep Fx the way it is.

And Google won't be paying more if Firefox becomes something bigger than Chrome. Google has no interest in it. All they need is a spoiler effect.

But Google did pay Mozilla even when Firefox was bigger than Chrome.

Mozilla is simply an antitrust litigation sponge.

Google knows it shouldn't be developing a browser. This paltry pocket change protects their pane of glass moat.

> The fewer people use Firefox, the less money they get from Google

This is not reflected in the numbers, at least from what I've found: 300m/year in 2011[1], 400+m/year in 2020[2], 485m/year in 2025[3].

[1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/1543269/google-to-pay-...

[2] https://www.pcmag.com/news/mozilla-signs-lucrative-3-year-go...

[3] https://nerdschalk.com/85-of-mozillas-revenue-at-risk-firefo...

Is mozilla being rewarded if the user base provably falls?

Google does not need Mozilla to have a sizable market share. They just need it as a semblance of competition in the browser space.

I can't believe how this is common knowledge, this arrangement between Google and Mozilla as a weak and incompetent "competitor" propped up to avoid being accused of monopoly and anti-competitive practice. Why isn't it considered a form of fraud, not even with extra steps - a direct relationship. Maybe there's enough plausible deniability that it's hard to prove criminal intent.

In the browser space, what Apple is doing is awfully manipulative of the market too. It's almost like this situation is being willfully ignored and effectively encouraged by regulators.

You’re the one who didn’t follow the money: they’ve made more from Google as their market share has decreased. Neat incentive, huh?

Nope it comes from Google.

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