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Firefox Could Be Doomed Without Google Search Deal, Executive Says (theverge.com) 95

An anonymous reader shared this report from The Verge: Firefox could be put out of business should a court implement all the [U.S.] Justice Department's proposals to restrict Google's search monopoly, an executive for the browser owner Mozilla testified Friday. "It's very frightening," Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said.

The Department of Justice wants to bar Google from paying to be the default search engine in third-party browsers including Firefox, among a long list of other proposals including a forced sale of Google's own Chrome browser and requiring it to syndicate search results to rivals. The court has already ruled that Google has an illegal monopoly in search, partly thanks to exclusionary deals that make it the default engine on browsers and phones, depriving rivals of places to distribute their search engines and scale up. But while Firefox — whose CFO is testifying as Google presents its defense — competes directly with Chrome, it warns that losing the lucrative default payments from Google could threaten its existence.

Firefox makes up about 90 percent of Mozilla's revenue, according to Muhlheim, the finance chief for the organization's for-profit arm — which in turn helps fund the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. About 85 percent of that revenue comes from its deal with Google, he added. Losing that revenue all at once would mean Mozilla would have to make "significant cuts across the company," Muhlheim testified, and warned of a "downward spiral" that could happen if the company had to scale back product engineering investments in Firefox, making it less attractive to users. That kind of spiral, he said, could "put Firefox out of business." That could also mean less money for nonprofit efforts like open source web tools and an assessment of how AI can help fight climate change.

Ironically, Muhlheim seemed to suggest that could cement the very market dominance the court seeks to remedy. Firefox's underlying Gecko browser engine is "the only browser engine that is held not by Big Tech but by a nonprofit," he said.

Firefox Could Be Doomed Without Google Search Deal, Executive Says

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  • by aRTeeNLCH ( 6256058 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @07:50AM (#65350941)
    Surely is true, so that's refreshing to the previous state where bad management decisions were the biggest risk to Firefox....
  • How is it ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @07:53AM (#65350943) Journal

    ... that we can have a full featured open-source operating system without being dependent upon one huge funding source, but not a browser?

    • Re:How is it ... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @08:33AM (#65350979)

      Because an "operating system" sounds big but isn't big. A browser is big, it shouldn't be but it is.

      Also, an OS is technically driven, a browser is financially driven. There are a lot more sociopaths in browser chain. An open source operating system is worthless, as an end-user product, without a browser to run on it. An OS is a glorified app launcher from the user's perspective.

      Walmart exists because, despite all the complexities of making countless products, there is one thing all products have in common, they get sold. And the selling part is where money changes hands and where the profit is made. Selling is the easiest, the least labor-intensive, the most scalable and imposes the least liability YET it is where all the profit is, by design. The Dells and Walmarts of the world exist to do no work while sucking the blood out of the people, in this case Google is the Walmart, your open source operating system is the thankless task performed for "free" so that Google can take all the money, Linux's job is to pick the produce in the field.

      Did Musk, or Jobs, or Andreesson, or Dell, do any of the work to make the products they are known for? Not really, but none of them are "dependent upon one huge funding source" because they've got their hands in a giant cash register. Their goal is to take in all the money and pay none out, that's what makes them billionaires. Don't like it? Stop voting for Republicans. Now you wouldn't do that, would you?

      • There is help available ... please seek it.
        • There is help available ... please seek it.

          What's your justification for that remark? Beyond the "stop voting for Republicans" parting shot - except for the very recent past, Red and Blue aren't really that much different - I see the comment you're replying to as a remarkably insightful analysis.

          • What's your justification for that remark? Beyond the "stop voting for Republicans" parting shot - except for the very recent past, Red and Blue aren't really that much different - I see the comment you're replying to as a remarkably insightful analysis.

            Not sure I need a "justification", lol

            But in any case, the guy's first two sentences were reasonable enough ... then he suddenly started spewing political gobbledygook like the kid spewing pea soup in The Exorcist.

          • except for the very recent past, Red and Blue aren't really that much different

            This is nonsense. The things happening now are the things the reds have been openly attempting to do (and even telling us they wanted to do!) for decades, and they have been gearing up for this all this time. This did not just happen, it is the tip of an iceberg which has only just now become apparent to some people but which other people have been warning them (and you) about all along.

            Reds and blues are both corrupt, but that doesn't mean they are the same in all regards, only some of them.

        • No, there isn't. Not really. It's not covered by insurance.

      • then maybe firefox might improve if the mozilla foumdation died and the firefox, seamonkey & thunderbird souece code was forked and went to github & gitlab and teams of decelopers trimmed the fat off and they turned into a cleaner leaner browser & email client, and hopefully websites got ungoogled so they worked better without the googley code, i guess i am an optimist that dont see doom & gloom with every major change
        • teams of decelopers

          I assume that's a portmanteau of decent developers. I like it.

          • this darn phone, the spell check works in my email client and text editor, but not the browser, seems strange, i disabled chrome and refuse to use it, and chrome on android is really just a frontend gui that uses "Android System Webview" for the browser engine as so several other android browsers, at the moment i am using Berry browser which is another frontend for Webview
      • "Did Musk, or Jobs, or Andreesson, or Dell, do any of the work to make the products they are known for?"

        If you think it's easy to gather that many items from that many suppliers and get them to a certain at a certain place at a certain time feel free to open your own business.

  • "It's very frightening," Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim said.

    He is only afraid of losing that big paycheck, that he only gets because of the truckloads of money Google sends to Mozilla.

  • by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @08:16AM (#65350967)

    'Firefox's underlying Gecko browser engine is "the only browser engine that is held not by Big Tech but by a nonprofit," he said.'

    No, Firefox is held by Google, his testimony shows that. Firefox is just as beholden to Google and the Chrome team is. That's the problem.

    'Losing that revenue all at once would mean Mozilla would have to make "significant cuts across the company," Muhlheim testified...'

    Oh no, that would mean the cuts would have their intended effect! Why is a Firefox hog better than an Apple hog? They're both feeding at the trough of corruption.

    If Mozilla can't justify its own existence without sucking at Google's teat, they can say goodbye. What we have here is a business executive, Muhlheim, getting rich off Google's monopolistic bribes and complaining that you can't impose a solution because it hurts him.

    • by jamienk ( 62492 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @09:53AM (#65351085)

      I think there really is something to your point. FF never tries to take advantage of the weaknesses of Google and Apple, they always play nice and never step on toes. They didn't make a big deal out of being blocked from iPhone. They didn't pound of Google over manifest v3. They didn't ho for jugular against the bad monopolistic practices. They didn't set up an alt vision against the "App stores" or the "Cloud" etc. It feels like they decided to just try to stay in their own lane and coast. Do not get me wrong: love FF and the developers - they have done some of the best Free Software work we have ever seen. But maybe the org did become "beholden" like you say. Maybe this is an opportunity to shift.

  • by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @08:18AM (#65350971)

    Google doesn't pay Firefox from the goodness of their heart. They pay Firefox because having more browsers, even if completely insignificant, makes Google look better and less monopolistic. Firefox has become a corporate whitewashing tool.

  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @08:26AM (#65350973)
    It was winning the battle against Internet Explorer, and it had almost 30% market share. Firefox needs actual people fighting for it again. If you aren't actively using Firefox and haven't donated to Mozilla then you are part of the decline of Firefox.
    • by Anonymous Coward
      There's more to a browser than something that displays advertising-laden CSS, SVG and HTML. Firefox won't be usable for any interesting applications - like those requiring Web Bluetooth, WebGPU or Web Serial - while Mozilla continues to keep its head up its arse and ignore its development responsibilities.
      • by Anonymous Coward

        Or maaaybe such technologies should be used in applications and not in the browser. Ever thought about just programming a native tool?

      • that stuff should not be in the browser. Google slamming this in so they can scrape my heart rate monitor in order to target me with better ads is ridiculous.

    • and haven't donated to Mozilla then you are part of the decline of Firefox.

      It's not going to work with donations. Mozilla make the bet of becoming a big corp: hiring lots, making noise, headquarters in one of the most expensive cities in the world. This only works with big bucks from B2B services. They'd now need millionaires queuing day and night to feed the bottomless pit. Their only product is for consumers, which famously won't give a cent, and their only source of money comes from a "pact with the devil" (a deal with their main competitor).

      The hybrid corp/non-profit status is

    • If you aren't actively using Firefox and haven't donated to Mozilla then you are part of the decline of Firefox.

      This is an ignorant, victim-blaming take. No amount of personal donations can come anywhere near to having an effect on Mozilla's policies compared to the blizzard of Google money. Also, even before the Google money, Mozilla had a completely deserved reputation for ignoring users, and also allowing known bugs to persist. They tried everything to get the users to make donations except actually listening to them and giving them what they want.

    • It was winning the battle against Internet Explorer, and it had almost 30% market share. Firefox needs actual people fighting for it again. If you aren't actively using Firefox and haven't donated to Mozilla then you are part of the decline of Firefox.

      I suspect people who 'aren't actively using Firefox' don't care if it declines. The challenge is how to get the average user to try a browser that is not the default.

  • Why not require Google to give its stock to the top 50 web browser companies? Just literally "split it up" and give the pieces to those poor, poor competitors it has treated so unfairly. That way, no matter how much money Google makes, all of it will go to its competitors.

    • Why just browser companies? Google also owns DoubleClick, so should they also distribute their stock to other ad companies? Google also owns YouTube, so should they also distribute their stock to other video streaming companies?

      In any case, confiscating ownership stakes in Google and giving it to others would be a massive redistribution of property. If you have a 401(k), your retirement probably includes some portion of Google stock. Your proposal would take that away from YOU and the other millions of pers

      • Honestly man.

        I do not understand how you people don't recognize VERY OBVIOUS sarcasm when you see it, plain as day.

        • There are people on this site who actually DO believe what you said. So unless you add some kind of notation like /s, it's hard to tell.

  • "Ironically, Muhlheim seemed to suggest that could cement the very market dominance the court seeks to remedy".

    Ironic, yes. Surprising, no. Yet again, government accomplishes exactly the opposite of what it aims to do.

  • Not for Mozilla, but for Firefox.

    There will be quite a lot of forks. Most will die soon, but there will be one or two surviving, maybe forked by one of the larger groups like GNU, FSF, Apache Foundation, etc. and it can only get better than what Mozilla does to the browser.
    And that Mozilla thinks they can't survive without Google money is the best indication for their mismanagement. Other organizations create larger projects with less money, entirely by donations. Mozilla invests more money into management

  • Can we get back to the judge's decision that Google Search is somehow a monopoly? He's clearly either corrupt or a complete idiot (porque no los dos?). There are many other search engines. I haven't used Google's in years. He's incompetent and ought to be removed from the bench.

    • It doesn't have to have 100% of the "market" to be a monopoly. Think of it as a "near monopoly" because that is what it is. The few competing search engines mostly use Google or Bing as their base. So the only real competition is Microsoft Bing, and that is way far behind, and also a huge, monopolistic entity itself.

      The search space is, indeed, not healthy. Neither is the browser space, with Firefox being the ONLY non-Google-based multiplatform browser. And it doesn't help that Mozilla is beholden to G

    • Can we get back to the judge's decision that Google Search is somehow a monopoly? He's clearly either corrupt or a complete idiot

      "Monopoly [wikipedia.org]" doesn't legally mean literally the only choice any more than "immunity" means you won't contract a virus. And only the legal definition matters, because this is a court case. Your opinion of whether that makes sense is irrelevant.

  • by topham ( 32406 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @10:01AM (#65351097) Homepage

    Firefox has had enough money at various points in time to have invested it into a trust and to pay out from annuities to support the entire development team for the indefinite future lasting decades at a minimum.

    Mozilla foundation has burned money left and right on frivolous adventures having little or nothing to do with Firefox.

  • One of Firefox's core ideas: not being evil like Google. The problem is: if Firefox is also evil, loyalty no longer matters.

    Also, for me personally, the loss of the Scrapbook extension was personally devastating to my projects and my studies, and the replacements cannot replace it. With the security changes, something like Scrapbook would have built into the browser.
  • by couchslug ( 175151 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @11:52AM (#65351253)

    Mozilla failed to concentrate their resources on the browser and Thunderbird which is why they're not competitive.

    It was not always thus but Google money removed any need to compete for market share.

    Firefox used to be the default recommendation for new Windows installs with Internet Explorer used to download Firefox then ignored. It spread thanks to user advocacy but that was a long time ago.

  • by CommunityMember ( 6662188 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @12:03PM (#65351271)
    To be fair, Firefox may be doomed whether or not the Google revenue stops. It is now essentially irrelevant in the browser market share according to recent numbers (2-3%), and every year the percentage drops a little bit more (which means lower revenue), and every year more and more people use ad blockers (further reducing revenue). Losing the search fees all at once will simply accelerate the decline as an end to funding will make Firefox less and less relevant as it lags further behind the others due to needing to trim development expenses. The Mozilla foundation has repeatedly tried (and repeatedly failed) to find different funding models to support the organization. It is about out of options.
    • Re:Reality.... (Score:4, Informative)

      by dsgrntlxmply ( 610492 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @01:44PM (#65351483)
      Here was the most quantifiable symptom of the underlying problem, from Wikipedia on "Mitchell" Baker.

      In 2018, Baker received $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla.[16] In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, Baker's salary was more than $3 million. In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5.5 million,[17] and again to over $6.9 million in 2022.[18] In August 2020, the Mozilla Corporation laid off approximately 250 employees due to shrinking revenues after laying off roughly 70 employees in January 2020. Baker stated this was due to the COVID-19 pandemic, despite revenue rising to record highs in 2019, and market share shrinking.

  • withers away (Score:3, Insightful)

    by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Sunday May 04, 2025 @12:04PM (#65351275)

    I don't use firefox any more. I didn't have time to find workarounds for everything that they broke, and learning the changes in UI that happened weekly.

  • Why does Mozilla keep switching me from Duckduckgo to Bing?

  • Lunduke has been reporting this for months.

  • by Anonymous Coward
    What did these idiots do in the years they were getting billions from Google while watching their market share erode? Did they hire the best team to make the product better and stop the decline of market share (which would have taken, like, 10% of the money that was coming in) and save the rest for a rainy day? Fuck no they wasted the money.
  • Mozilla is wasting money in programs that aren't about web browsing at all, they have the size of a company without the income needed for that, they should reduce the size and only dedicate their effort to the browser development, but they grow and grow just to spend Google's money in their own personal benefit. That's the real reason Mozilla it's going to collapse, not the deal with Google, the waste of money they did not have.
  • Forcing the world to browse the internet on Lynx would be a net benefit to humanity.

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