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Mark T. Tomczak

@thomasfuchs Trouble, of course, is there's no money in web browsers.

15 April at 3:11 | Wall-to-wall | Open on mastodon.fixermark.com
4 comments
Thomas 🔭🕹️

@mark they’re literally making most of their money with their browser (via referral fees from Google and other search engines)

15 April at 3:49 | Open on hachyderm.io
Mark T. Tomczak

@thomasfuchs That sounds like they're literally making most of their money by having search engine companies arm-wrestle each other to get Firefox to default to their engine.

Firefox has an install base of something around 4%. What happens if Google just decides that 4% isn't worth ~$400 million / year? As of 2023 that's like half their budget.

I mean that nobody makes money by selling a web browser. Mozilla is pursuing those other projects for the same reason Google has itself in mobile, Chrome OS, and Cloud... They know their revenue is basically mono-sourced (ads for Google, getting paid by search engine vendors for Mozilla) and they're trying to develop another tent-pole so that if the weather changes they don't just go out of business.

@thomasfuchs That sounds like they're literally making most of their money by having search engine companies arm-wrestle each other to get Firefox to default to their engine.

Firefox has an install base of something around 4%. What happens if Google just decides that 4% isn't worth ~$400 million / year? As of 2023 that's like half their budget.

15 April at 5:55 | Open on mastodon.fixermark.com
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