Mozilla, which in 2023 received about 75 percent of its revenue from royalties paid by Google and other search providers for search engine usage in Firefox, worries that the US Justice Department's proposed ban on the very same Google Search payments would be rather harmful.
American federal prosecutors last week filed their revised proposed remedies [PDF] in their case against Google to restore competition in the web search market, which the internet titan was found to have unlawfully monopolized.
The Feds dropped a prior recommendation to force Google to sell off its AI investments, but still want Google to shed its Chrome browser and to prohibit the mega-corp's search-related payments to distribution partners such as Apple and Mozilla – their browsers "distribute" Google Search by making it the default search engine.
Google's payments to Apple for making its search service the default in the Safari browser, which reached around $20 billion in 2022, discouraged competition, as the Justice Department argued and the court agreed. However, by banning such payments to browser makers, the government's remedy could choke off Mozilla's primary revenue source, putting its operations (and non-trivial executive paychecks) at risk.
"These proposed remedies prohibiting search payments to small and independent browsers miss the bigger picture – and the people who will suffer most are everyday internet users,” said Mark Surman, president of Mozilla, in a statement Monday.
Instead of promoting a fair fight, the DOJ's remedies would tilt the playing field further into the hands of a few dominant players
"Independent browsers like Firefox are on the frontlines of protecting consumer privacy, driving browser innovation, and giving people real choice on how they experience the web. But instead of promoting a fair fight, the DOJ’s remedies would tilt the playing field further into the hands of a few dominant players, diminishing consumer choice and weakening the broader internet ecosystem."
We note Mozilla's recent ventures into the advertising business and its revisions to the language describing its privacy commitments and data handling have shifted its stance on people's privacy. These changes may be viewed as necessary from a revenue standpoint but appear to contradict the expectations of many Firefox users who chose the open source browser specifically to avoid the intrusive practices of the online ad industry.
Surman argues that the DOJ's search payment ban disproportionately hurts smaller browser makers because Apple has other sources of revenue, such as hardware sales and its App Store. And he contends that the DOJ's plan will just hand power from one dominant player to another, namely Microsoft and its Bing search engine.
In theory, Mozilla could negotiate a search revenue agreement with Microsoft for making Bing the default search engine – assuming Firefox users accept that default – but it may be that Microsoft would low-ball any such offer, knowing that Google has been prohibited from bidding and that small search rivals can't offer much.
Surman also points out that starving Mozilla of revenue threatens the development of Gecko, one of only three browser engines in mainstream usage, the others being Chromium's Blink and Safari's WebKit. There's a potential wild card entrant, Servo, but it's not yet widely used.
"This isn’t just about Firefox," said Surman. "If we lose our ability to maintain Gecko, it’s game over for an open, independent web. Look, Microsoft – a $3 trillion company – already gave up its browser engine in 2019 and Opera gave up theirs in 2013. If Mozilla is forced out, Google’s Chromium becomes the only cross-platform browser engine left."
Mozilla argues that independent browsers are already struggling, not just due to search revenue dependence but also because of restrictions like Apple's WebKit-only policy on iOS.
The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (which in January launched an investigation into Google Search) reports [PDF] that Apple's browser engine restriction in iOS "actually prevents mobile browsers competing and innovating on security and privacy features."
According to the watchdog, Mozilla's Gecko engine holds just three percent of the Android market and zero presence on iOS, because Firefox on iOS is forced to use Apple's WebKit engine.
Regardless, the message from Surman is that regulators and policymakers should cut Mozilla and other independent browser makers some slack when crafting competition remedies. ®