How browsers make money, or why Google needs Firefox
extremetech.com
extremetech.com
There are multiple possible scenarios -
Post such a shift FFs market share erodes quickly and Microsoft basically bought a Lemon. Chrome becomes even more powerful.
Post such a Shift FFs market share is simlar to that it enjoys today - Microsoft bought some traffic but a a large majority of FF users switch the search engine back to Google. Microsoft bought a sort of Lemon
Post a shift - FF market share stable/increases and lots of people do not change default search - Microsoft bought a winner and Article makes sense.
I do not see #3 as the most likely outcome.
I'll be willing to bet that winning 1% of the search market cost much more than 85 million, and they'll get a much larger share of the market than 1%, even under your most pessimistic scenario.
Do you know something we don't?
And they click "Yes" or "Ok" on any dialog without reading ;)
The Amazon Kindle reader was a nice example of that, working on Chrome and Safari, but not Firefox, due to competing web-database standards being implemented.
H.264 vs WebM is another one. Google made a lot of noise about dropping H.264 for WebM, Firefox actually did so (because they had no choice, anyway), but Chrome still ships with H.264 support.
So I don't have the impression there are real fronts as far as promoting web standards are concerned. For better or worse.
Just because they're using WebKit today doesn't mean they will forever (or for everything). Gecko is valuable as an alternative and as a way to "keep web standards honest". A WebKit monoculture would eventually bake in too many hidden assumptions.
I'm still surprised that no one has written an IndexedDB shim on top of Web SQL DB.
Seriously, I was thinking the same thing a couple of days ago when I downloaded FF Beta 6. Adblock used to be my first installed extension, now DDG SSL search is. Right after that I "fix" the fallback address bar search as well.
Bottom of page 37 says that Opera made 242,000,000 NOK from its desktop browser, which is mainly from search revenue (about $43 million)
Firefox has demolished Internet Explorer's market share over the years, and it's always been an important product for MS. Arguably more important than Bing (which continues to hemorrhage money).
I don't see how funding Firefox would be any more in Microsoft's interest than in Google's.
I doubt it.
Google should stop paying just to see that flamewar, would be fun.
'Losing' firefox wouldn't be a massive blow, people who use firefox know how to change the default search engine. All that will happen is that they'll be a massive amount of hate directed at firefox for trying to force bing down their throat.
I expect Google to keep paying so they can pretend there's some sort of competition in the search market though. 'But we had to pay for firefox's search box!'.
Some people would switch their default to Google and some wouldn't, but I don't see Firefox losing a significant number of users regardless.
I imagine it would be disconcerting in the same sort of way that having rusty water shoot out of your shower for a second or two every morning would be. It's not the end of the world, you don't know how to fix it, but after a couple seconds it's not like it really matters.
It would be insane for Google to risk even 1% of its search marketshare for "fun". And the risk here is larger than 1%.
It would be fun for you, but disastrous for Google.
Hopefully Google and Mozilla both appreciate they have more to gain by cooperating.
Read into that what you want.
So if Firefox switch to Bing will be competition, but now Google has monopol