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Google Can Continue Paying for Firefox Search Deal, Judge Rules
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this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2025
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Wait... that contradicts other parts of the article...
They are actually saying Google can't pay to be the default, but they can strike deals to share revenue.
What does "prefer its services" mean? is Mozilla still able to set them as default even if they are not being paid for it?
If they use a selection window like you imply: would they be allowed to set a pre-selected "default" there? would it just affect the order/placement of the available options? a "preferred/recommended" underline? would Google be willing to pay the same amount for that kind of deal?
I feel this is very unclear, and it's hard to tell whether it's actually a perfectly valid punitive approach that effectively would fix the issue or just a slap in the wrist.
Similarly, it's unclear whether this is really something that won't affect Mozilla or not. "Revenue sharing" implies that they will get less money than they would otherwise when users don't choose Google (which I bet would be a higher percentage than those who go with a chrome based browser, like say.. Opera)
I understand "exclusive" to mean you can only use or set as search engine google. Essentially the default with the install can be google but Firefox can't block users from setting another search engine as the new default
Oh, the way I understood "exclusive deal" was that the deal is exclusively with Google alone, not that Google is the only option for the user (which has never been the case, you were always able to change the default).
This would mean the new non-exclusive deal for revenue sharing implies Mozilla can have deals with other search engines or services (eg. Bing, ddg, etc) and get paid for featuring their search in the selection, joining the group of "recommended" options alongside Google. Google cant contractually tie Mozilla to exclusively recommend/prefer/set-as-default Google alone.
but again, depending on what is interpreted by "prefer" and whether the browsers are actually forced to not set a default (even when they are not getting paid for it) this can be an important change or no change at all.