14 DAY TRIAL // As (should have been) expected, Google has no plans to leave Mozilla out in the cold any time soon. Both organizations have said that, while a new search deal for Firefox hasn't been signed yet, they are in active negotiations and are working towards it.
Over the weekend, rampant speculation over the fate of Firefox, based more on wishful thinking than on thoughtful analysis, kept tech enthusiasts entertained and page view counts swelling.
The premise was that, because neither company had confirmed anything (standard practice in any business deal), it was clear that Google is not extending a deal with Mozilla.
Of course, that was quite a stretch and it didn't take into account a lot of reasons why Google would want to continue to pay Mozilla and get tens or even hundreds of millions of people send its way instead of the competition's.
Now, both Mozilla and Google have gone on the record saying that the current deal is still alive and that they are working on terms for prolonging it.
"Our search relationship with Google remains positive for both of us. We are in active negotiations and have nothing further to announce at this time," Mozilla said.
"We have every confidence that search partnerships will continue to be a strong and growing generator of revenue for the foreseeable future," it added.
The fact that Mozilla said "search partnerships" rather than "partnership" fueled a bit more speculation, but it is only natural for Mozilla to use this kind of language, implying that Google is not the only option, when it is actively negotiating with the search giant.
While Google does account for the vast majority of Mozilla's revenue, it also has search deals with Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.
Google has also confirmed that it still has a deal with Mozilla. "We generally don't disclose specific terms of business agreements. We can confirm that we still have an agreement with Mozilla, but have nothing new to share at this time," Google said. A fairly standard statement, but a lot more than it would usually say on these matters.
There is still a theoretical chance that a compromise won't be reached. But it will be as surprising to Google and Mozilla as it would be to the rest of us if a deal can't be reached.