Mozilla receives $300 million annual paycheck from Google

Here is a little bit of trivia – did you know that Google and Mozilla do talk to one another, so much so that they have come to an agreement where the former pays the latter $300 million annually? All that moolah did not exchange hands for nothing, don’t get me wrong, but it is there so that Google will be the default choice in Mozilla’s Firefox browser as part of the search royalty agreement for three more years. Not bad for $300 million a year, no? We do know that this sum is far higher than what was originally agreed on, due to competing interest from Google’s other two rivals, Yahoo! and Microsoft.

The main rival in the bid would be Microsoft’s Bing service, which explains nearly a cool $1 billion changing hands. It is not as if Google could not afford to pony up the cash, sure they do, but it still sounds like too much to pay for. After all, if users are able to simply switch over to the default search engine with but a few mouse clicks and button keystrokes, wouldn’t all that money go to waste? Granted, I do not have any background in marketing strategies, so do correct me in the comments if you think otherwise. With that kind of money, it makes me wonder whether Google is indirectly paying the salaries of everyone working at Mozilla. Not too shabby an agreement from Mozilla’s side, either.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: Google, Mozilla, search engines