Mozilla’s Chief Financial Officer, Eric Muhlheim, you get a grim warning about the future of the Firefox browser, which states that the survival is at risk if the proposed remedies of the US Department of Justice AGA Instit Google’s search monopoly are fully implemented. Muhlheim testified that the standard payments of the Google’s standard search engine payments would initiate the existence of the browser maker. “We would be really opposed to stay alive,” said Muhlheim during testimony while Google presents his defense in the antitrust case.
The US Department of Justice has proposed you to pay remedies that forbid Google to be the standard search engine in browsers such as Firefox. Firefox is currently around 90% of its turnover from such deals, with 85% only from Google. This financing COUD Force Mozilla to implement serious business-wide cutbacks, so that Firefox has to do business and influence non-profitinitiatives.
Mozilla You have investigated alternatives such as Bing, but the latter generates considerably less income. Previous attempts to change standard search engines, including a shift to Yahoo between 2014 and 2017, led to relaxation of users and browser leaving. Muhlheim argued that such results ironically could consolidate the dominance of Google by weakening Firefox, one of the few non-Big Tech-Browsermotors.
While collecting the need for diversified income and supporting browser, the company that is on a privacy-oriented approach maintains the adoption of advertising-based income models such as operas. Judge Amit Mehta acknowledged that a broader high -quality search game could benefit Mozilla, but Muhlheim indicated that achieving such a scenario could take too long to prevent harmful short -term concent.
Mozilla’s financial depends that a Google is not new. In 2021, Google paid a total of $ 26.3 billion to be the standard search engine in multiple browsers, telephones and platforms. A significant part of this amount went to Mozilla. The set -up is the backbone of the finances of Mozilla. The Google search payments were even called in in 2021-2022 for a stunning 86% of the total turnover of Mozilla. Losing this enormous income flow would book a serious financial crisis for the organization known for privacy and open web standards.
Mozilla’s CEO, Mitchell Baker, testified that the temporary switch from Mozilla to Yahoo is “The only situation in which a browser has changed the standard search engine provider.” This makes Baker Potential Vray’s testimony powerful because it is a clear example that the core argument of Google Back -Up makes the standard status of the search engine win because of the quality, not because of competitive behavior. Baker has not clarified how Google pays for that deal today, just vagudels that this is “hundreds of millions of dollars” annually, Bloomberg reported. But she was aware that her salary ‘is partly connected to the annual income from Mozilla’, which suggests that if the judge ultimately chooses with the Doj and Google orders his search activities, not only the Council of Mozilla Mozilla loses income, but the salary could also potentially take a big hit.
Mozilla has publicly expressed. In a post blog, Mozilla stated that the results of this case will have consequences that go much further than a company or market. As written, the proposed remedies will force smaller and independent browsers such as Firefox to re -examine their entire operational model. Because of JeoPardiz the income flows of critical browser competitions, these remedies risk repeating the positions of a handful of powerful players in the struggle, and making this without giving meaningful improvements to search competition.
The antitrust case of the Doj against Google is an important legal battle with far -reaching implications. The department that you have accused Google of the majoral monopoly in the online search market by closing exclusive deals with device makers such as Apple and Samsung. These agreements, which paid billions to remedy Google the standard search engine, were found to be unfairly suppressed the competition. Judge Amit Mehta still has to decide on legal remedies, which can vary from contractual tweaks to the disintegration of the company. Google is planning to appeal against the decision.
