The antitröst case, which is carried out by the US Department of Justice, stands out as an important step against Google’s search engine domination, one of the biggest players of the Internet. Mozilla Financial Affairs Director Eric Muhlheim, who testified to the court within the scope of this case, said that the decisions to be taken may directly affect the future of Firefox. If Google’s payment agreements, which keep the default search engine, are terminated, Mozilla will lose serious income. Muhlheim stressed that this scenario could be very destructive for the company.
Firefox browser, Mozilla’s most important product, survives directly with agreements with Google. According to Muhlheim, about 90 %of Mozilla’s income is obtained through Firefox, and 85 %of which comes from Google. Google pays hundreds of millions of dollars every year to become a default search engine in the Firefox browser. This revenue finances Mozilla’s product development budget and attempts for open source and public interest.
The proposals of the Ministry of Justice include the prohibition of payment to be paid in other browsers to be included in other browsers. This may affect Mozilla the most because no other search engine has the power to make Google’s financial contribution. Muhlheim said that such an arrangement would blow the Firefox’s development process and lead to loss of user. This may cause the browser to lose their competitiveness and withdraw from the market.
Mozilla may have to make great deductions in Firefox under the effect of loss of income.
Muhlheim, if the income flow from Google will have to go to structural shrinkage, he said. This shrinkage will not only be limited to the decrease in the number of employees; It will show its effect in many areas from product engineering to user experience. The slowdown of development activities can reduce Firefox’s innovation capacity. In such a case, it may be inevitable that users turn to alternative browsers.
Mozilla attempts to present alternative search engines by default in the past, but these efforts did not give the expected result. Between 2014-2017, the positioning of Yahoo as the default search engine in Firefox was negatively welcomed by users. The decrease in the user experience caused many people to pass to different browsers. This process revealed how risky Mozilla’s decisions are contrary to user preferences.
Similarly, in an experiment in 2021-2022, the search engine of Firefox users was changed to Bing. However, the income obtained remained quite low compared to the cooperation with Google. According to Muhlheim, Bing could not provide enough efficiency in terms of traffic. Although Mozilla has contacted Microsoft, it is not possible to reach a similar income level without Google.
However, comments that Mozilla should earn income with another model are also on the agenda. Some browser companies, such as opera, turned to advertising revenues and created a different financial structure. However, Firefox’s privacy -oriented policies make it difficult to adopt a model based on advertising revenue. Although this approach is a positive choice for users, it limits the company’s financial flexibility.
One of the most basic points in which Firefox separation from different browsers is the browser named Geçko. Unlike Google’s Chromium and Apple’s webkit engines, Gecko is completely developed by Mozilla and does not belong to major technology companies. The independent structure of this engine is critical for the protection of open web standards. Muhlheim warned that the diversity on the web may decrease if Gecko stopped.
In addition to all these, Mozilla always emphasizes that he attaches importance to user preference. There are many points in Firefox where different search engines can be used. However, Mozilla does not defend a preference screen that opens to users in the selection of the default engine. According to Muhlheim, although the right to election is important, how this right is presented as well as it is as decisive as it is.
In any case, the steps taken to limit Google’s domination may have unexpected effects on other players of the ecosystem. Mozilla may face financial pressures while trying to maintain basic values such as user privacy and open web standards. Especially if Google’s income contribution disappears, it is clear that new strategies will be needed to survive Firefox.