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Comment by randall | Hacker News Reader

This could keep the company alive though. If they lose their goog contract (which is 99% certain) they will have very little revenue.

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On the contrary, google contract has been rumored to be 99.99% certain (company sources).

Now confirmed: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/barrycolli...

Without AMP:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/08/13/mozilla...

Right on the heels of Mozilla's announcement to shutdown research on a promising potential next gen browser engine. Hm. I wonder if the renewal deal had an impact on which programs Mozilla cut besides raw funding.

Likely the other way around. They didn’t get as much as they wanted so they reprioritized and made cuts. Deals don’t happen and end in a press release the next day.

According to this[1], they got about the same annual amount.

"our source told us Moz will likely pocket $400m to $450m a year between now and 2023 from the arrangement, citing internal discussions held earlier this year."

[1]https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/14/mozilla_google_search...

So on the basis of "earning" $1.6 billion(!) Mozilla is "refocusing" on a bookmarking service, a VPN and a weird sorta "social VR" (whatever the fuck that is).

What the hell are they doing with the rest of the money? It should be "paid back" to the shareholder (the foundation) as tax free dividends that are kept in a fund for the purposes of that foundation.

Google needs Mozilla as much as Microsoft needed Apple and will be happy to fund them one way or another if only to look good in the eyes of the regulators. And it's pocket change to Google.

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