Google Strikes Exclusivity Deal For Firefox
Google has apparently played its hand, revealing a deal with the Mozilla Foundation that means to position itself as the search engine of choice for Firefox users, as reported by ZDNet. Apparently, Google’s deal was to make it the default search engine in all Firefox browsers, even some foreign langauge packages of the browser where it wouldn’t make sense. The money Google paid for this privelege is the only thing keeping Mozilla afloat financially Firefox’s Gervase Markham acknowledges in the article that the money from Google has been very helpful in for the Mozilla Foundation.
“The Google deal has provided a significant stream of income for the Foundation,” said Markham, speaking at the FOSSDEM conference in Brussels. “Without that deal the Foundation would not have been in a position to have hired some of the people that it has.”
Now, granted Firefox users themselves can change the search engine the second the browser is installed (even if none of the builds are allowed to), and Firefox users are more likely to actually change it (unlike IE users), but this tactic is still reminiscent of many used by Netscape back in the day, or even Microsoft. I don’t think this qualifies as evil, but others might disagree. Either way its a bit of an unusual restriction, considering the mindset behind Firefox.
(via Weblogs)
UPDATE: You’ll notice I’ve changed a sentence. Read the comments below by Gervase. I’m waiting on a little more clarification, but here’s one thing I’d like to make known: The Google deal allows localized builds to default to localized versions of Google. What it doesn’t do (and what I was referring to) is allow localized builds for areas where Google is not the most popular search engine to default to the search engine of choice in those areas of the world. Yes, there are places where local search engines are more popular than Google, but the deal ensures Google gets defaulted there as well.
Still, Gerv refers to the article as being incorrect, and there may be more corrections. I do not apologize for trusting ZDNet as a source. Any errors are their own, and not my responsibility.
UPDATE 2: The final word, straight from Gervase Markham, to me, to you (not exactly a straight line, but I’ll take it):
The latter. The MoFo has agreements with several search partners, all of whom we value greatly. The one with Google makes a co-branded page (hosted on google.com) the default start page for all our official builds. There are versions of this page for different localisations, and official localised builds use them. (This was the misunderstanding the reporter had.)
And as I noted to Gervase, MoFo is the greatest… acronym… ever…
That’s absolutely false information. Get your facts straight.
http://standblog.org/blog/2005/03/02/93114039-search-engines-and-firefox
Comment by Rafael | March 2, 2005
I’m the person whose talk the original report is about.
The article is incorrect. All official mozilla.org releases do use Google as the default start page, but they can and are encouraged to use the localised version of Google.
It’s also not true that the money is “the only thing keeping us afloat”; we have many partners, in the search space and otherwise, all of whom are committed to supporting Firefox and mozilla.org.
Gerv
Comment by Gerv | March 2, 2005
Nathan i think your report is significantly different from what you can get from Zdnet article. They put an inaccurate and misleading intro but it would suffice to read Gerv and Tristan quoted declarations to understand that Google’s money can’t be what kept the Foundation “afloat”.
Not considering this is immediatly clear for everyone has minimal knowledge of how FF is developed.
I don’t think is it important to apologize. Just be more careful next time.
ciao
Comment by Antonio | March 2, 2005
The lede of the article (yes, it is common to spell it “lede” in the newspaper biz, I don’t know why) reads:
–
“The Mozilla Foundation’s partnership with Google has kept it afloat for the past few months, and is now allowing it to hire more staff”
–
The word “afloat” is in there. Regardless of what the quotes in the article said, as long as that sentence is in there, the mistake is theirs. Using them as a reference, my sentence is perfectly accurate given the source. I only removed it when a more reputable source (Gerv) came along.
Comment by Nathan Weinberg | March 2, 2005
There seems to be some disagreement on the blogs regarding how much Google is paying, whether or not the money from Google is having the impact on the Foundation that this article implies and whether or not Google is wrong for mandating that the Foundation default all builds to the Google home page.
My guess is Google is probably giving them a decent chunk of change - maybe even more than this deal is worth. But over all this money pays dividends in all kinds of ways. And as far as people crying that Google is forcing the Mozilla folks to default all build home pages to Google, well I say bravo. Hello, Google is paying for it. It’s not like they showed up at Mozilla’s door and pulled a gangster-style shakedown. They signed a deal and asked that all builds default to a special Mozilla-themed Google home page. Anyone who installs the software has the right to change it ASAP. I’ve been using this page for months just to show my support. I intend to keep doing so in hopes that if enough people use this page Google will keep giving Mozilla money. Servers, Web sites and people aren’t free. Better Google pay than me.
Comment by Adam | March 2, 2005
Speaking of new Google featues, check this out:
http://downloadaborted.blogspot.com/
Comment by Fred Langin | March 3, 2005
For the record, as long as the MoFo does not limit choice to it’s end users by restricting the users choice of default search page, and their decision to make the “factory default” Google because it is firstly the best choice, and secondarily due to a sponsorship agreement, I can thankfully continue installing and recomending it.
Let this be a caution to the Mozilla Foundation on how strongly I and perhaps a great many other users value free and open as applied to organizational conduct as well as source code.
It is *imperative* that MoFo lives up to this standard, or they will lose their only irreplaceable asset, user trust.
Comment by Clifton Hyatt | March 3, 2005
mis-information
There’s a lot of buzz around some statements that Gerv made ot FOSDEM last week, the latest of which is an almost completely wrong post up at Inside Google. There are a few big misrepresentations here. The first is around the localized releases and th…
Trackback by Asa Dotzler on firefox, cats, mars, and more | July 5, 2005