After a long period of uncertainty, today Mozilla announced that they have renewed their search deal with Google, signing an agreement to keep Google as the default search engine in their Firefox browser for at least three more years.
The deal comes at a critical time for the Mozilla Foundation. Revenue from the deal with Google made up the vast majority of the nonprofit foundation’s budget in the past year. The browser market is becoming ever more competitive, and with Firefox recently losing its spot as the world’s second most used browser, having secure footing is vital so that Mozilla can continue to improve their browser and continue to put out a competitive product.
The deal is a strategic move for Google, as well. Though they have a highly used browser of their own, Firefox has dropped behind Chrome but it still commands a significant section of the browser market, and holding on to Firefox’s user base fortifies Google’s search market share. Without the Google deal, Mozilla may have had to rely more heavily on their partnership with Bing; the continued Mozilla/Google partnership renders that less of a worry.
Chitika Insights will continue to keep an eye on the changes in the browser and search markets into the future. A future which looks a lot more stable for Firefox, for now.
Thanks for the update! It would be interesting to see what Opera’s reaction would be in 2012 🙂