this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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I'm not a fan of Mozilla accepting money from Google, but it's absolutely preferable to having a clause in their privacy policy that allows them to sell geolocation data directly to advertising partners. Pre-2023, I don't think they did that.
And where did that Google money come from?
(It's a rhetorical question of course: it came from Firefox users clicking on ads.)
This isn't the first time a company funded its competitor to avoid monopoly accusations. Microsoft did it to Apple. So it's not like Google is simply returning the wealth Mozilla is providing it out of some generosity. Maybe they are, but I find the desire to remain out of the clutches of regulators to be an equally compelling explanation.
And given the fact that (despite Mozilla's best attempts to the contrary) Firefox users tend to be on the nerdy and privacy oriented side, and they have both the proclivity and capacity to block ads, I imagine that Google probably pulls from the revenue sucked out of Chrome users rather than Firefox ones. But that's just a theory, a browser theory.
It's conspiratorial that Google gets ad clicks through Firefox, and pays Mozilla some of the money it makes from that?
And I suppose it's also conspiratorial to claim it's doing the same for Safari users - instead it's more likely that it's paying Apple 20 billion a year to remain out of the clutches of regulators?
Language removed so I can elaborate:
I don't believe Google sets aside the money made through Firefox exclusively for Firefox. (If you believe this is the case, good luck demonstrating it, I guess.) Google's money probably goes into a big pool named "ad revenue", and that pool is probably filled disproportionately with Google's own Chrome users.
Again, Google is doing to Mozilla what Microsoft did for Apple: hurling money at them with the facade of an exchange of something, in order to stave off regulators.