Firefox's Survival Hinges on Search Deal with Google

By Netvora Tech News

The future of Firefox hangs in the balance if the search engine deal with Google is banned, Mozilla has reiterated. This week, Mozilla's CFO Eric Muhlheim testified in a lawsuit brought by the US against Google. The US Department of Justice asked a federal court last year to take various measures to break Google's monopoly on the search engine market. This could include forcing the tech giant to sell its Chrome browser and prohibiting Google from entering into paid agreements with Apple and other parties to make Google the default search engine on smartphones and browsers.

Mozilla received $528 million from search engine providers in 2021 for setting their search engine as the default search engine within Firefox. The majority of the amount came from Google. In 2022, the figure dropped to $510 million, and in 2023, it was around $495 million.

It's no secret that search engine revenue is responsible for a significant portion of Mozilla's annual income. Firefox is an independent browser. We have no operating system, devices, or app store. Without these revenues, Mozilla and other small, independent browsers may be forced to downsize operations and discontinue support for important projects such as Gecko, the only remaining browser engine that competes with Google's Chromium and Apple's WebKit.

Consequences of a Ban

According to Mozilla, privacy and user choice can only thrive if browser engines can compete with each other. "Smaller, independent browsers like Firefox are dependent on search engine revenue to keep our operations running and invest in user-focused innovation. Without these agreements, we would face severe limitations - not only limiting our ability to grow, but also our ability to offer a non-profit-supported alternative to Chrome, Edge, and Safari," Mozilla argues.

Mozilla wants any measures taken by the court not to come at the cost of browser competition and for these measures not to financially harm small and independent browsers.