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Firefox lost users during “failed” Yahoo search deal, says Mozilla CEO
(arstechnica.com)
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Terms of that deal required that if it were nullified, Verizon had to pay either "the full length of the contract, or alternately, just the difference between Yahoo's $375 million and whatever Mozilla got out of a new partner," ComputerWorld reported.
On top of revenue-sharing with Google, that payment drove up Mozilla's revenue, which in 2019 reflected "an 84 percent year-over-year increase" that was "easily the most the open source developer has booked in a single year, beating the existing record by more than a quarter of billion dollars," ComputerWorld reported.
Perhaps that bonus payment made switching back to Google even more attractive at a time when Baker told the court she "felt strongly that Yahoo was not delivering the search experience we needed and had contracted for."
This user decline wasn't entirely due to the Yahoo deal, Baker said, but Mozilla's takeaway from the experiment was that Firefox "users made it clear that they look for and want and expect Google.” Meanwhile, Google was motivated to renew its Mozilla partnership, as court documents show that Google lost search ad revenue while Yahoo's deal with Firefox was in place.
Baker did not clarify how much Google pays for that deal today, only vaguely estimating that it's “hundreds of millions of dollars” annually, Bloomberg reported.
According to Dyall's thread, Baker also testified that she thought Mozilla might be forced into a "death spiral" if it is stuck partnering with Microsoft for search as an outcome of the trial.
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