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Comment by Vinnl | Hacker News Reader

From the announcement post [1]:

> As part of our focus on user experience and performance in Firefox Quantum, Google will also become our new default search provider in the United States and Canada.

Does that mean the deal with Yahoo! has lapsed? And is there a new deal with Google, or no deal at all? (And what would be the revenue impact of that?)

Edit: Just saw an announcement for this as well [2], with no word about revenue. Guess that means that Yahoo! isn't paying anymore and that it means Google is the more sensible choice when nobody pays - though that's still reading between the lines.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/introducing-firefox...

[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-go...

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I'd say that the most sensible choice in the absence of any payment, considering FF sensibility and message, (i.e. according to me) DDG would be the most sensible default. (edit : clarify)

When has any proof ever been given that they’re any more privacy conscious than any other search engine?

Their privacy statement is pretty clear. That's a legally binding document and lying in that will get you pretty high fines even in the US.

Netflix was sued because they kept rental history on former customers.

Netflix revenue: $8,800,000,000

Lawsuit amount: $9,000,000 (or approx 0.1%)

Lawyers received: $2,100,000

Plaintiffs received: $30,000

[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/class-action-law...

You can't compare to revenue, that makes no sense.

Netflix's global net income in 2012 was apparently $17 million.

A $9 million fine is then over half of their annual income.

[0] https://www.scribd.com/mobile/document/121853053/Netflix-4Q-...

What sort of proof could they offer that would satisfy you? Honest question.

They're not an ad agency, which is a good enough answer for me.

An ad agency has a big incentive to keep your user data to themselves, as that's their most valuable and competitive resource. Google and Facebook have a huge incentive to not leak information about their users; why would someone pay them if that data was available elsewhere?

DDG has every incentive to sell user data, given that they don't have their own ad network with which to target. How else would they make money off of it?

https://duck.co/help/company/advertising-and-affiliates

My point is that "they're not an ad agency" is not an argument that a company has some incentive to protect user privacy, and "they're an ad agency" is not an argument that a company is incentivized to sell user data.

Yeah, okay, DDG _might_ be lying about their privacy promises. They _might_ be tracking us all ways to Sunday the way Google and Facebook do. They _might_ have some seekrit, back-door ad sales department that nobody knows about and somehow they've managed to keep secret. Which, of course, is a great method for making ad sales.

What does incentivise them is that their entire marketing is based around the privacy messaging, and thus pretty much their entire userbase considers that their primary selling point. If it ever came out that they were handing over that data to whomever, they'd be gone in an instant.

I believe that there will be an official announcement later today.

(I'm a Firefox dev)

The details of these deals aren't generally public, so I don't expect to see any official answers about this.

Well, it's particularly interesting when you tie these two facts together:

> According to documents filed with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), Yahoo paid Mozilla $375 million in 2015, and is obligated for the same amount each year through 2019 under a five-year contract.

> Under terms of a contract that has been seen by Recode, whoever acquires Yahoo might have to pay Mozilla annual payments of $375 million through 2019 if it does not think the buyer is one it wants to work with and walks away.

I would really love to know what the Blood Alcohol Content of the Yahoo representatives that signed that contract was. Those terms seem absolutely braindead stupid.

I don’t know, but I bet Mozilla’s representatives’s were higher.

Idk, $375 million per annum through 2019 despite a declining user base, with the ability to leave the agreement at any time if Yahoo was acquired without incurring any penalty and where the new owner still has to pay out the contract without receiving anything in return, is a pretty goddamn good deal for Mozilla.

Mozilla's drinking is celebratory :)

That is not good news for the health and diversity of the Web which Mozilla is supposedly defending (unless this means less cash). How does that reconcile with their "Big Browser" campaigns?

They could instead switch to some underdogs to help them improve, but no... Google it is again, with the excuse of "It's better for the user". Sad day, Mozilla!

The underdogs don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to pay Mozilla. They do have to keep the lights on.

But, Mozilla does often do partnerships with smaller, local search engines in small markets.

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