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Firefox: Google’s Secret Weapon Against Microsoft?

Will Success, or All That Money From Google, Spoil Firefox? from the New York Times asks if all the money Google is feeding Firefox going to hurt the browser and the community behind the browser in the future, by aligning the browser too closely with Google and its war against Microsoft.

Of the $66 million in revenue reported by Mozilla, 85 percent of that came from Google. But Mozilla said they made sure Google “understood the separation between a search relationship and the rest of our activities.” That may suggest that Mozilla is aware of why Google may want them to overtake Microsoft’s claim over the browser market.

See Google: As Open As It Wants To Be (i.e., When It’s Convenient) for some links and background on Google’s deal to be the default in Firefox in most countries (in several Asia countries, it’s Yahoo).

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About the author

Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.