Will Firefox die for good if Google is forced to sell off Chrome?
Currently, Google pays Firefox's bill by having them set their default search engine to Google.
This will no longer be when Chrome is in the hands of another party. DOJ is currently advocating for this forced sellout.
So will Firefox be no more after that?
Google search is not the same thing as google Chrome. Search still sees a benefit in paying to be the default search provider in Firefox.
Part of the DOJ ask is that the Google search business should be enjoined from paying for preferential default status on other platforms.
They want to prohibit the Firefox arrangement as part of the anti trust matter.
Which is justified in all fairness, firefox is too dependent on monopoly for support to be competitive going forward
Google literally only pays firefox so it can point at firefox and go "Look, see, not anti-competitive/monopoly!"
The main reason of Google's financing is probably because they don't want to be accused of a browser monopoly. So this will stop, leaving Firefox with very little income.
I'm not sure if the reason you said is enough for them to keep paying.
I never said that
Google has been paying Firefox since before Chrome existed.
And the reason has to stay static?
Google pays Firefox to have Google Search as the default search engine. Chrome is not the major money maker. It doesn't even earn any money.
Neither do the rotisserie chickens at the store. Or Costco's $1.50 hot dog and soda combo.
Chrome isn't intended to make money, it's a loss leader.
It's a side point, but the costco hotdogs do absolutely turn a profit. $1.50 seems unreasonably low because of how much we're used to paying for food these days, but its hotdogs and a fountain drink, the cost of ingredients is next to nothing.
It still takes way more than a $1.50 to produce the bun, dog and drink. They're selling them for absolutely no profit, and have been even before the recent bout of inflated prices.
Sorry, you're correct - I should have said they do not make a loss on the sales (turn a profit is obviously a bit of a stretch) since they use their existing infrastructure to offset the operational expenses, and the actual ingredient cost is literally pennies per unit.
Yeah, and that's exactly what a "loss leader" is defined by. They make no profit off the hotdog combo itself but the hotdog combo may be enough of an incentive for someone to come to Coscto in the first place and end up buying more shit that does make a profit.
costco's business model is to sell everything at cost and only profit from subscriptions. hence the name.
Poor chicken.
You're missing the point as to why Google is paying Firefox and @dysprosium said it
Chrome is there to collect data in order to target adds, sell them, and show them. It's a vehicle.
The opposite. Google won't be able to leverage chrome to drive website design and Internet policy anymore and it'll give smaller companies an opportunity to get a better foothold in the market. That's the whole point in breaking them off from Google in the first place.
Well, depends on who buys it and what happens to Chromium, the open source thing that is not chrome.
Why does Alphabet not controlling Chrome mean Alphabet would suddenly stop paying Mozilla to make Google Search the default search in Firefox? That's totally unrelated.
(Saying Alphabet instead of Google to help differentiate between Google and its products.)
It's another clause in the anti trust case that paying FF and Safari for being the default search engine is anticompetitive
Then say that in the post lmao
Quite the opposite. The death of Mozilla Corp will drive the community to greater heights. I expect to see Floorp, Librefox, and even Basilisk/Pale Moon having a voice in the conversation of post-MozCo Firefox.
I've got to say, Librewolf has been a breath of fresh air. It even is compatible with Firefox sync with a little poking around.
I switched to it some time ago. Took a while to find all the dials to turn to get some (trusted) sites to work, but the fact that it’s free of telemetry and has Ublock makes it worth it.
You know what awaits us at greater heights? The state sponsored APT groups and ransomware operators.
I just can't see how cutting the funding for both chrome and firefox is going to make the web a better place.
Please Mozilla Corp, just die already and leave Firefox to the community.
The community has always been free to step in. How is the end of Mozilla corp going to help?
Because the money flows to them and where money flows does attention and thus contributors.
Even if Google stopped paying Mozilla, the organization has enough in savings to operate for several years. That’s plenty of time to cut back on spending and find other revenue sources. My only concern would be that they cut back on Firefox development rather than what I would consider a side project.
The majority cost of Firefox is engineering.
Any cutbacks will negatively affect the ability for Firefox to keep up and will probably start a slow decline towards collapse and irrelevance.
I don't follow your logic. It'll be even more important for them to get exposure through Firefox if they lose control of Chrome, not less.
They were doing fine before they started taking money from Google, I'm sure they'll do okay after they stop.
Is there even a "before"? The very first release of Firefox was in 2004. Google started paying Mozilla in 2004. The only time there was no funding from Google was 2014-2017. In that time Yahoo took over that part.
There was however the 2 year period from 2002 - 2004 when Firefox was still "Phoenix" which was mostly funded by AOL.
To my knowledge, there is not a single moment in the life of Firefox when it has had to get by completely without external funding. And 95% of that time, it was Google.
Mozilla existed before Firefox.
Well kinda. The Mozilla "Project" goes back to 1998. The Mozilla "Foundation" to 2003. As said, Phoenix was released in 2002 and then renamed to Firefox in 2004.
But in that 4 years they worked on the Netscape code to make Phoenix, they were as well funded by AOL, or not?
It probably won't die in the next decade...
But also Internet standards are only getting more complicated... Eventually there will be no browsers left, and we'll have shifted to an app-only paradigm. Isn't that exciting.
FFs user base is at a bad place already. I suspect it will live, maybe have some healthy shrinkage in the feature set