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Kind of curious: what is mozilla spending (or plan to) all of this cash on? Wikipedia says the MozCo has ~600 employees. Even if they are paying average $200k per person and spending another 80 million on rent, hosting, equipment, etc. that still leaves ~$100mil. Executive compensation? Rainy day fund?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google's product is not Chrome. Google's product is not search. Google's product is advertising. Search is how they deliver it, and browsers are how they deliver THAT. Google doesn't care, financially speaking, if Chrome or Firefox does better in the marketplace. They care about the eyeballs that Firefox, Chrome, and any other browser can deliver to Google ads.
This is very wrong. Google cares deeply if Chrome wins. You are being way too narrow in your focus. Advertising is not their product, it's their revenue stream. Their product is _everything_ that sits between a user and monetizing an ad. Just look at what they have done from an engineering, offensive and defensive position here. It's all about that ethereal space between users and monetization. That's the battlefield…
That and that they can use Chrome to lock people into Google services in the future.
What's actually being paid for, here? It could be the case that having Google as the default in Firefox will pay for itself through advertising. Anyone have any feel for how likely that is? If it isn't, is it an attempt to buy good will? Trying to gain some leverage over Mozilla when it comes to taking sides in the standards war? Or just the idea that any time Firefox gains a user is a time that Safari or IE isn't ga…
It could be the case that having Google as the default in Firefox will pay for itself through advertising. Of course it will, easily (Seriously - people should understand that Google's business is search (and advertising), and they want to commoditize its complements - browsers and phones with browsers on them). Google does roughly 1 billion searches a day[1], and makes conservatively $0.08 per search[2]. Firefox has…
First, I think it's only fair to attribute ~1/2 of their revenue to search. You've got to give a lot to web ads, gmail ads, etc.
Second, I'm not sure it's quite fair to give FF 25% of their total search. It may be 25% of their desktop search, but mobile search is getting bigger and bigger. I'd say 25% is at best an upper bound.
Third, I think a large number of FF users would use Google search even if that required changing the default. I'd guess that it's on the order of 50%. The value of the deal is only the value of the searches they gain.
That said, even if you divide by 10, spending $300M to making $700M and get goodwill with developers is a great deal.
The dynamics behind the deal are interesting. Google probably paid just enough to outbid Bing, the second highest bidder. Or Firefox played a great hand of poker with Google. In either case it should trouble Mozilla that they are dependent on not only Google, but Bing (by extension) for the majority of their revenue. Finding a sustainable way to reduce reliance on these companies should be the #1 job of the Mozilla b…
There is no share holder. No one has to be worried, except people who support Mozilla's point of view.
That's why it's a company worth supporting. If you support it, you win. If you don't, well, they might eventually die, and there aren't really many (read: any) replacement. It's pretty atypical.
The dynamics behind the deal are interesting. Google probably paid just enough to outbid Bing, the second highest bidder. Or Firefox played a great hand of poker with Google. In either case it should trouble Mozilla that they are dependent on not only Google, but Bing (by extension) for the majority of their revenue. Finding a sustainable way to reduce reliance on these companies should be the #1 job of the Mozilla b…
Not really. If Google or Bing hadn't paid enough then it would be pretty easy[1] to raise the money from random investors. There are precedents for that - Lycos (I think? or Infoseek?) raised capital after buying a default slot on the original Netscape browser with money they didn't actually have. [1] Not saying that building a web scale search engine is easy, exactly, but I am saying that the default search engine f…
Thus, there's only such deals and donations. An investor would therefore need to donate, to support Mozilla.
The dynamics behind the deal are interesting. Google probably paid just enough to outbid Bing, the second highest bidder. Or Firefox played a great hand of poker with Google. In either case it should trouble Mozilla that they are dependent on not only Google, but Bing (by extension) for the majority of their revenue. Finding a sustainable way to reduce reliance on these companies should be the #1 job of the Mozilla b…
I hope mozilla can now afford H.264 licenses. They are the last holdout to make web video easy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really. If Google or Bing hadn't paid enough then it would be pretty easy[1] to raise the money from random investors. There are precedents for that - Lycos (I think? or Infoseek?) raised capital after buying a default slot on the original Netscape browser with money they didn't actually have. [1] Not saying that building a web scale search engine is easy, exactly, but I am saying that the default search engine f…
Investors don't invest if there are no shares to get. And, there are no shares to get. And that's the whole point of Mozilla's existence. Thus, there's only such deals and donations. An investor would therefore need to donate, to support Mozilla.
The dynamics behind the deal are interesting. Google probably paid just enough to outbid Bing, the second highest bidder. Or Firefox played a great hand of poker with Google. In either case it should trouble Mozilla that they are dependent on not only Google, but Bing (by extension) for the majority of their revenue. Finding a sustainable way to reduce reliance on these companies should be the #1 job of the Mozilla b…
Mozilla is not your traditional corporation. Money always comes second. Openess and such values always come first. Always. There is no share holder. No one has to be worried, except people who support Mozilla's point of view. That's why it's a company worth supporting. If you support it, you win. If you don't, well, they might eventually die, and there aren't really many (read: any) replacement. It's pretty atypical.
Per the new business arrangement between Mozilla & Yandex
in Russia, we need to make some changes to the ru build's
search defaults.
...
This bug is marked confidential until the agreement
has been announced publicly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It could be the case that having Google as the default in Firefox will pay for itself through advertising. Of course it will, easily (Seriously - people should understand that Google's business is search (and advertising), and they want to commoditize its complements - browsers and phones with browsers on them). Google does roughly 1 billion searches a day[1], and makes conservatively $0.08 per search[2]. Firefox has…
That estimate seems pretty far off. First, I think it's only fair to attribute ~1/2 of their revenue to search. You've got to give a lot to web ads, gmail ads, etc. Second, I'm not sure it's quite fair to give FF 25% of their total search. It may be 25% of their desktop search, but mobile search is getting bigger and bigger. I'd say 25% is at best an upper bound. Third, I think a large number of FF users would use Go…
I think you're overestimating the degree to which the average user is willing to make any changes to any default functionality. Remember, these are the people who google "google".