14 DAY TRIAL // The weekend is the best time for speculation, with no real news, anything put out there reverberates all over the web, everyone has an opinion, everyone goes a little further out on a limb and so on. While all of this is good brain exercise, it helps to have at least something to go on.
Case in point, everyone worrying about the "fate of Firefox" now that (it has been decided that) Google is no longer paying the bills.
Ever since Firefox came about, Google has been paying to be the default search option in most countries and also gives Mozilla a cut for every search originating from the Firefox search box.
This has amounted for most of Mozilla's revenue and it's what keeps Firefox and the other Mozilla projects going.
If, somehow, Google were to stop paying Mozilla, a huge chunk of its revenue would be gone, there would be no way to pay the bills, Firefox would die, etc.
Doomsday scenarios are always fun and interesting, but this particular one makes quite a lot of assumptions. Too many perhaps for it to hold water.
For one, neither Google nor Mozilla have said that the deal which funded most of Firefox's development is dead. It was up for renewal in November, as the current three-year deal expired. Of course, neither Google nor Mozilla are saying that they did renew the deal.
Which could, very well, mean that the deal is indeed dead. It wouldn't be beyond Google either, it didn't renew a deal with Twitter earlier this year.
But it seems unlikely for Google to be giving up a huge chunk of traffic, some earlier reports indicated that there were more searches originating from Firefox than there were on Bing or Yahoo in total.
The only reason it would do that would be because Chrome is doing quite well and has even surpassed Firefox's market share globally according to some measurements.
But giving up on Firefox would mean Google would be the default search engine on half as many people's browsers all of a sudden. Google can afford that, but it would be shooting itself in the foot.
Chrome doesn't pay the bills at Google, advertising, much of it on its search engine, does.
And it's not like Google is Mozilla's only choice. If Google were to stop paying, Firefox isn't going to just die off, leaving Chrome the only alternative browser.
Microsoft would jump at the chance to have Bing the default search engine, even as Firefox competes with Internet Explorer. These days, it's not Firefox that's luring IE users away, it's Chrome.
And if not Microsoft, it would be someone else. Perhaps the revenue figures would be smaller than what Google is providing, but Firefox would go on. If push comes to shove, Mozilla could simply ask for donations, Wikipedia style.
Google pulling its money would not hurt Firefox enough for it to be worth it for the search company. Not to mention going very much against the "Don't be evil" mantra. If Google really does this, it will be the one that has the most to lose.