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jqpabc123

Google has no qualms about sucking up all your data.

Google also has no qualms about you using Firefox. They pay Mozilla $450 mil a year to insure it stays this way.

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Given the choice between:

- massive anti-trust lawsuit

- paying $450 million / year to Mozilla

- you using Chrome

- you using FireFox

It is very well possible that the preferred boxes to tick include you using Chrome and paying $450 million / year to Mozilla to recoup some of that money. Chrome is one of the more powerful planks in Google's control over the web, without Chrome they'd be fighting a continuous rearguard action, now they get to be the dictators. Think of the $450 million as a license to operate. Any users that end up using the product created using that $450 million are additional loss.

Yeah, the ideal outcome for Google would be paying Mozilla whatever amount they need to stay afloat while still having no market share. As you said, 450 is just the cost of doing business. Though I wonder how effective the monopoly "shield" would be if Firefox continues slipping in market share. Maybe they just need it to exist?

Google absolutely has qualm about you using Firefox. Yes, they pay Moz money to keep them as the preferred search, but that's because it's the better of two options (no data at all from you, or at least your search data).

But if you need evidence that Google has qualms about you using other browsers, look at how poorly supported other browsers are for google services.

I don't claim to read minds or have inside information, but there's no doubt in my mind that this is largely a $450mil annual hedge against getting antitrust'd by the DOJ.

Sorry, that argument no longer flies.

Goggle payments have done nothing but go up as FireFox market share has done nothing but go down --- to the point of insignificance, now around 3% world wide --- less than Opera.

Paying a huge sum of money for a miniscule market share doesn't provide any reasonable hedge --- as evidenced by the fact that Google is in the middle of an anti-trust lawsuit and FireFox has played virtually no role.

I would expect Google aren't paying based on market share, they're paying based on the number and quality of users they get access to. If market share goes down but total market size rises, and the cohort of users selecting Firefox have more disposable income (hence are more profitable for search advertising), paying more for them over time would be a rational decision.

Still flies.

    Goggle payments have done nothing but go up as 
    FireFox market share has done nothing but go down

Your reasoning, then, is that Google is paying Firefox strictly for business reasons but they've decided to increase payments as Firefox's share has decreased. Because they're bad at business? Or some other strictly business-y reason(s)? I mean, okay, but please be explicit about this.

    FireFox has played virtually no role [in Google's 
    antitrust case]

That suggests it's working.

The DOJ has antitrust beef(s) with Google, but monopolizing the browser market is not one of those beefs. We can't read the minds of the DOJ, but it strongly suggests Google's support of Firefox is working within that context.

It does not, obviously, give them global blanket immunity against all conceivable antitrust shenanigans -- were you mistakenly believing this is what I was suggesting?

Not sure where you’re getting your Opera figures from, but I’m seeing 4x Firefox than Opera, even with Firefox typically shimming away Google Analytics.

https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

These obviously float up and down some over time but Firefox has been consistently under 3% globally for a while now.

Right, but Firefox’s enhanced tracking protection mode blocks Statcounter’s JS (see https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking-protecti... which is where, I believe, Mozilla source their ETP blocklist from). Given the userbase for Firefox these days, I’d be very surprised if Statcounter is even vaguely accurate.

Detecting which browser you're using is not a real problem --- even with Javascript disabled.

See for yourself here: https://www.whatsmybrowser.org/

Aren't those very payments currently turning out to be a big antitrust issue for Google, for unfairly keeping people away from other search engines?

Different battleground, but could very well end up having a major impact on this.

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