Google and Mozilla: Partners, Not Competitors

Much has been said about the (perceived) rivalry between Chrome and Firefox, but Google engineer Peter Kasting had enough when he read an article trying to discern Google's true motives for signing a new Firefox search deal. Kasting posted to Google+ to clarify what value the company sees in funding a "rival" browser. Quoting: "People never seem to understand why Google builds Chrome no matter how many times I try to pound it into their heads. It's very simple: the primary goal of Chrome is to make the web advance as much and as quickly as possible. That's it. It's completely irrelevant to this goal whether Chrome actually gains tons of users or whether instead the web advances because the other browser vendors step up their game and produce far better browsers. Either way the web gets better. Job done. The end. So it's very easy to see why Google would be willing to fund Mozilla: Like Google, Mozilla is clearly committed to the betterment of the web, and they're spending their resources to make a great, open-source web browser. Chrome is not all things to all people; Firefox is an important product because it can be a different product with different design decisions and serve different users well."

Re:Google and Mozilla

[theweatherelectric]

Google is paying Mozilla around $100 million of commissions per year.

It's now around $300 million a year [allthingsd.com].

Re:Then why not support Opera in their services?

[Beelzebud]

And tried to charge money for them, when others were starting to offer them for free. Every time a thread about browsers is posted here, some member of the Opera team comes on here to tell us how Opera had everything first. Well, I'll give you that. Opera introduced me to tabbed browsing, and I loved it. Then they put ads in the fucking browser unless you paid for it, and I found a different browser.

Re:Then why not support Opera in their services?

[gsnedders]

See Opera's financial reports [opera.com]:

Opera's monetization strategy for its desktop browser revolves predominantly around search. Google is Opera's global search partner and provides the vast majority of desktop monetization.

...and...

Today, revenue generated from Opera's mobile consumers emanates primarily from mobile search, the Opera Mobile Store and content partnerships.

Google is Opera's default search partner for Opera Mini and Opera Mobile world-wide.

Both go on to mention other, smaller, search affiliation deals.