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Comment by kingofclams | Hacker News Reader

I’m not sure, but I have a feeling the majority of Vivaldi users wouldn’t be using google

Frankly speaking, I’m pretty sure most users of both Firefox and Vivaldi are using Google.

But my point was more around how the minimal amount of money coming from other search engines or sponsored bookmarks can’t sustain a browser dev team.

There were a couple years recently Firefox was primarily sponsored by either Yahoo or Bing (can't remember which) and that deal supported the entire Mozilla foundation same as the Google deal as well as Firefox (which also makes their own browser back end) not just a browser front-end dev team.

So there are definitely other decent sources of income besides Google for these deals and since it's a significantly more focused organization it doesn't seem implausible to me.

It was Yahoo.

But here's why there's confusion. Yahoo search at the time (or shortly before or after) switched to using Bing's search and ad engine.

These deals are based on market share, user activity and usage, and so on. No search engine is paying Vivaldi as much money as Yahoo or Google did to Firefox. It would be laughable to expect that kind of sponsor money for a niche browser that also reduces ad tracking. That’s how these things work.

It'd be laughable to expect Vivaldi needs the exact same 600 million dollar search deal that floats the entire Mozilla foundation to fund a custom Chromium UI.

As I said, there are definitely other decent sources of income besides Google for these deals and since it's a significantly more focused organization it doesn't seem implausible to me.

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