It wasn’t long ago that we examined the curious case of Google, Firefox and Bing when it came to the search royalties that were to be paid. To give you a bit of a history lesson, Firefox has had Google as a default search provider for quite some time, but a recently-released version of Firefox with Bing and an expired contract with Google left the future up to question.
Now, according to All Things Digital, the contract has been renewed:
“Mozilla is set to announce that it has signed a new three-year agreement for Google to be the default search option in Firefox, which is a key renewal of the browser maker’s major source of revenue to date.”
It’s good news for Mozilla, obviously, as up to 84% of the company’s revenue came from the search revenue deal. In a blog post, the company explains that the agreement is wrapped in secrecy as to its details:
“The specific terms of this commercial agreement are subject to traditional confidentiality requirements, and we’re not at liberty to disclose them.”
Given Google’s recent market share climb with Chrome, it’s almost surprising to see the company move forward with the deal. We posited, back in the original look, that Google was buying itself a runway with the deal for the first three years, and no longer needed it now because of the increased market share of Chrome.
Chalk that one up as a lost call, unless Google is considering the deal to be part of its philanthropic arm.
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