Between the Lines

Larry Dignan, Andrew Nusca and Rachel King

Mozilla retains Google as default search engine in Firefox

By | December 20, 2011, 11:09am PST

Summary: Mozilla and Google have renewed their friendship with a new search deal for Firefox.

Mozilla and Google are renewing their partnership with a new agreement regarding the default search engine in Firefox.

That would be Google, obviously, and it will stay that way for at least the next three years, according to the new deal.

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs explained in a prepared statement, “Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world.”

Other search engines that sit below Google within the Firefox browser are Yahoo, Bing, Amazon.com, eBay and Wikipedia.

Financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed except that it will provide “a significant and mutually beneficial revenue” stream for both parties.

To put the value of this relationship into at least one perspective, Mozilla relied heavily (perhaps too heavily) on Google search revenue in 2010. The Firefox search box has generated anywhere from 85 percent to 90 percent of Mozilla revenue in recent years. Google contributed approximately 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue last year.

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Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

Disclosure

Rachel King

Rachel King has no business relationships, affiliations, investments, or other potential conflicts of interest relating to the content posted in this blog.

Biography

Rachel King

Rachel King is a staff writer for CBS Interactive in San Francisco. Before serving as a contributing editor at ZDNet in New York City for two years, she previously worked for The Business Insider, FastCompany.com, CNN's San Francisco bureau and the U.S. Department of State. Rachel has also written for MainStreet.com, Irish America Magazine and the New York Daily News, among others. Rachel has a B.A. in Mass Communications and History from the University of California, Berkeley and a M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University, where she served as art director for the student magazine, Plated.

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Less is sometimes more
klumper Updated - 20th Dec
@jgm@...

I can't say you don't have a point, and a fresh one at that. Glad you made it.
0 Votes
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Should Be a Surprise to Nobody
CFWhitman 20th Dec
This is pretty much the announcement that I expected.
@CFWhitman Not if you read Ed Bott it isn't. happy
0 Votes
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Hopefully win-win
klumper Updated - 20th Dec
nt
@klumper I don't know... where's all that money going and what is Mozilla doing with it? Maybe less money/less suits and more developers would let them take the number one spot from Google again.
0 Votes
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Less is sometimes more
klumper Updated - 20th Dec
@jgm@...

I can't say you don't have a point, and a fresh one at that. Glad you made it.

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