Mozilla Grows with Google

First appeared in eWeek
Google will pay Mozilla $300 million a year for the next three years in a search deal it renewed earlier this week. The deal will give Mozilla much-needed cash to grow its business.

The Christmas holiday isn't the only thing Mozilla employees have to be cheerful about these days.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) is paying the software maker $300 million a year over the next three year to feature its search engine in its Firefox Web browser, AllThingsDigital learned Dec. 22.

If true, Mozilla will take in nearly three times as much in 2012 as it took in 2010, when nearly $100 million of its $123 million in revenues came from its previous search deal with Google.

AllThingsDigital said Mozilla was able to command such a handsome sum by including Google search rivals Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO) in the bidding process for the coveted slot in Firefox, which has anywhere from 22 to 25 percent market share, or hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

Google and Mozilla declined to comment on the financial terms of the new agreement, which Mozilla announced Dec. 20 and confirmed was good for at least the next three years.

In the arrangement, Mozilla drives searches to Google.com from the search box in Firefox and Google pays Mozilla a portion of ad revenues generated from those searches.

The arrangement is certainly interesting because it's not without some tension. Google launched its Chrome Web browser in September 2008, when Firefox was on its way to garnering 25 percent share by nibbling away at Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Internet Explorer share.

Chrome commands anywhere from 18 percent to 25 percent market share, depending on whether you believe the more conservative number from Net Applications, or the loftier number from StatCounter.

By tripling its revenue with Google's search deal alone, Mozilla is the big winner in this deal. The company gets the cash to fund other projects beyond Firefox, which, while popular and steadily improving, is no longer growing.

Mozilla Messaging CEO David Ascher identified some of those projects as Boot2Gecko, a Firefox OS for smartphones; the identity-based BrowserID alternative to Facebook Connect and Google Account credentials; and Apps initiative, which is intended to help developers write programs that work on all devices.

Google wins on multiple fronts. One, it benefits from millions of searches driven by millions of Firefox users. Two, it keeps those searches away from Bing , which at only 15 percent market share is more desperate to have them.

Three, Google comes off as a benevolent benefactor, providing the majority of funds for a leading, fellow open-source Web browser with which it shares a lot of common interests.

Finally, Firefox and Chrome both win because together they account for anywhere from 40 to 50 percent market share, providing a nice pair of open-source alternatives to market leader Microsoft Internet Explorer, which has dominated the market for the last 15 years since stamping out Netscape.

Are Google's Prospects Threatened by Firefox?
As Originally Posted at The Wall Street Journal

It's no secret that Mozilla's Firefox Web browser is emerging as a potent competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. What may not be fully appreciated is the impact that Firefox could have on Web-browsing habits -- and the number of searches people perform.

The most recent version of Firefox, released last June, makes it much easier for Web surfers to return to a site they've previously visited. They won't need to know the site's address -- the browser's address bar offers what's essentially an automated bookmarks list. This is likely to reduce the number of searches per person over time.

The feature is likely to become standard. Microsoft is adding something similar in its upcoming version of Internet Explorer. Google isn't sitting still. Three months after the new Firefox version was released, Google came out with its Chrome browser, which also has a similar feature.

Search will remain a vibrant market. Firefox's new feature won't help someone searching for the first time. And the importance to ad revenues of people getting to sites they already know is unclear.

That said, anything that could undermine the number of searches each Web user has to perform only adds uncertainty to the category's growth prospects. For Google, the dominant player, the implications can't be good.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Is the Best Browser for Web — For Now

If you buy a new Windows Vista PC, it comes with a decent built-in Web browser, Internet Explorer 7. If you buy a new Macintosh computer, it comes with a decent built-in Web browser, Safari 3.0. So why would you want or need a different Web browser?

That is the question that Mozilla, the nonprofit organization that makes the leading alternative browser, hopes to answer this month when it releases version 3.0 of its Firefox Web browser. In some tech-industry circles, Firefox already is preferred over Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer and Apple’s (AAPL) Safari, but it still isn’t used by most people, and Mozilla is hoping to broaden its appeal.

The new version will be released simultaneously for Windows and the Mac’s OS X operating system, as well as for Linux. While each of the three editions will have the visual style of the operating system on which it runs, all three will have the same features.

I’ve been using prerelease versions of Firefox 3.0 for months, and have recently been testing a near-final version and comparing it closely to IE and to Safari. I have tested it on multiple Windows PCs and Macs, on desktops and laptops, over slow connections and fast ones. I have tried it with well over 100 Web sites.

My verdict is that Firefox 3.0 is the best Web browser out there right now, and that it tops the current versions of both IE and Safari in features, speed and security. It is easy to install and easy to use, even for a mainstream, non-technical user. It can be downloaded, free, at mozilla.com by clicking on “Firefox 3 Sneak Peek.”

This situation may change. Microsoft is working on a new version of IE, scheduled to be unveiled later this year, with some impressive new features. And Apple is always working on new iterations of Safari, though it is secretive and hasn’t disclosed its plans. But for now, in my view, Firefox 3.0 rules on both Windows and Mac.

I couldn’t find any significant downsides to Firefox 3.0. Every page I tried rendered properly and rapidly on both platforms. I ran into only one glitch, in a preference setting. That problem appeared on only one of my four test machines and was fixable with the help of Mozilla, albeit via a geeky method.

In the one or two cases where Firefox lacked a feature I thought important, such as the “auto fill” feature in Safari that can quickly fill out an online form, I was able to find an add-on that did the trick from Mozilla’s vast library of add-ons, which are written by people all over the world. (One caution: Some existing add-ons won’t work with the new version until their authors update them.)

When Firefox first came out, it was the fastest browser, but it lost that title over the years. However, in my tests, this new third version of Firefox regained the speed crown. It beat IE 7 handily on my test Windows computers and edged Safari slightly on my test Macs.

For example, using a new Dell (DELL) XPS One desktop, I opened identical folders containing the same 16 bookmarks on both IE 7 and Firefox 3.0. IE took 37 seconds to completely display the 16 pages, but the new Firefox did it in just 23 seconds. On a new Apple iMac, I did a similar, but more daunting, test — opening identical folders containing 24 bookmarks. Safari rendered all of the pages in 36 seconds, but the new Firefox finished the job in 32 seconds.

The latest Firefox has a number of new and improved features. If you type any word or phrase into its address bar, the browser instantly searches your history and bookmarks for a possible match, to save you from typing or combing through your bookmark list.

The whole process of managing bookmarks has been vastly simplified. Every Web address is accompanied by a star icon at the right. To bookmark the site, you just click the star once. No other action is required. To specify where to file the bookmark, you click the star twice. You also can remove bookmarks by clicking the star. And you can tag bookmarks with key words, to make it easier to find them.

There are also smart bookmark folders, which gather your most visited sites, or most recently bookmarked sites, automatically into folders. You also now can more easily back up and restore your bookmarks, complete with tags.

Security is also improved. The old version of Firefox would warn you when a site you were visiting appeared to be a fake, designed to steal your identity. (IE has a similar feature, though Safari doesn’t.) But Firefox 3.0 now warns you about sites that are known for trying to plant viruses, spyware and other malicious software on your computer, a warning the other big browsers don’t yet provide.

With one click, Firefox 3.0 also provides details about who owns the site you’re visiting, and whether it’s encrypted, if the site owner has adopted a special type of security certificate.

My bottom line: Even though you already have a built-in browser, Firefox 3.0 can improve your Web experience.


By: Walter S. Mossberg
Wall Street Journal; June 5, 2008