14 DAY TRIAL // Everyone can relax now, Google and Mozilla have announced that they've reached an agreement over the Firefox search deal, ensuring that Google remains the default search engine in Firefox in most countries for three more years and ensuring that Mozilla has the money to continue to develop and improve its browser.
The previous deal ended in November and, when neither Google nor Mozilla made any announcements about it, it became "obvious" that such a deal was never going to happen and that Firefox was dead.
Never mind the fact that, if the deal fell through, Google would have had the most to lose, not only that, Microsoft would have had plenty to gain; Firefox fans must have had plenty of sleepless nights as the fate of their favorite browser hang in the balance.
As expected, Mozilla and Google have reached an agreement
Luckily, they can put it all behind now, as Mozilla will have plenty of money to fund Firefox development for several years to come.
"We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google," Mozilla announced.
"This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years," it said.
Despite obvious facts, some claimed Firefox was dead
Considering the relationship between Google and Firefox over the years, the fact that Google gets a huge chunk of traffic from Firefox users and the fact that failing to fund Mozilla didn't mean the end the Firefox but it did mean that Bing would be getting a lot of new traffic, there was little reason to doubt that such a deal would come through, even if delayed.
That didn't stop some from predicting the end days for Firefox, naively believing (or perhaps not) that Google needed to stop giving money to Firefox so that Chrome would thrive and that Firefox would completely vanish were it not for Google money.
Chrome has been doing a great job overtaking Firefox even with Google paying Mozilla. What's more, Chrome is not making Google any money, advertising is.
The search traffic that Google gets from Firefox is just as valuable as the one it gets from Chrome, though Google would still prefer you use Chrome rather than Firefox.
Finally, Firefox is one of the most popular and successful open source projects out there, believing that it would simply wither away without Google money is more wishful thinking than anything else.
If you wish it hard enough, you can make anything true
We all know people that, even in face of the clearest evidence, won't admit they were wrong but rather try to interpret their original claims in some new tangled way which, in their mind, still makes them 100 percent accurate.
Applying the same logic as in his initial report, Ed Bott now concludes that, because Mozilla and Google are not saying how much money will exchange hands, it must definitely mean that the sum is significantly smaller; therefore, his previous claims are still true, Firefox is still dead.
On a completely unrelated note, Microsoft probably had the most to gain from a Mozilla - Google fallout since it would have most likely swallowed its pride and paid Mozilla to place Bing as the default search engine.
There's a History Channel show that 'proves' that aliens have been visiting us from ancient times simply because there is no evidence that they haven't been visiting us.