Mozilla signs a new search deal with Google

Mozilla today announced that the company has signed a new mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. Under the deal, Mozilla will continue to offer Google as the default search engine in Firefox for at least three additional years.
“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Google’s head of search.

 

 

The vast bulk of the Mozilla’s revenue comes from the search providers, that pay Firefox for directing its users to their websites. Royalty payments accounted for 98% of the Mozilla’s revenues last year – exceeding the share of Mozilla’s income generated from search in the last two years.
Search giant Google has accounted for most of Mozilla’s search revenues. In 2008, Google’s payments made up 88% of the total revenue generated through search royalties. The Mozilla-Google deal expired last month, but Mozilla continued with Google search as itsdefault search engine.
The news of long-term partnership between the two companies, comes as a surprise, considering Google’s Chrome browser directly competes with Firefox’s Mozilla. A recent report released by website analytics company StatCounter claims that Google’s Chrome browser has overtaken Firefox, to become the second-most popular web browser after Internet Explorer. According to StatCounter, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer leads the browser market with 40.63% market share, Chrome takes the second spot with 25.69%, beating Firefox which gets a  market share of 25.23%.