Mozilla Renews Firefox Deal With Google
Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox Web browser, on Tuesday afternoon announced on its blog that it had renewed its “lucrative” revenue sharing deal with Google for “at least three additional years.”
Under the terms of the deal, Google will remain the default search option Mozilla Firefox. In exchange, Mozilla reportedly receives royalties for every Google search performed using the Firefox browser.
That’s a “lucrative” relationship indeed, as Mozilla netted some $121 million in royalties in 2010 alone, 86 percent of which came from Google, according to the non-profit company’s annual financial report.
The relationship between the two companies had been called into question, though due to Google’s success with its own competing Web browser, Chrome, which in November overtook Firefox in terms of global popularity, at least according to one Web market tracking firm, StatCounter.
Mozilla also previously acknowledged that its deal with Google was due to expire in November 2011.
Still, after the new StatCounter numbers came in and we asked about the state of the deal, Google told TPM: “We can confirm that we still have a deal with Mozilla, but have nothing new to share at this time.”