this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Privacy
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Google is their biggest donor. They pay $$$ to be the default search engine in Firefox.
But Microsoft would happily give a not-insignificant amount to have Bing be the default search engine, and everyone knows it.
It's a symbiotic relationship. Google sorta need to pay up. Firefox needs the funding.
Google does not control the running of Firefox.
If you rely on Google donation in order to survive, at the end of the day you are under some sort of control. I'm not saying that Google is running Firefox directly, of course, but if Firefox would grow enough to became a problematic competitor for Chrome, they would definitively have the power to step in. So, how really free can they be?
Mozilla's definitely aware of this, but since all the competitors' browsers are free it's hard to make inroads on other means of profit.
I thought Google funding Firefox was the cheapest way to fend off an antitrust issue?