

Ask HN: How did Firefox (Mozilla) land a deal with Google? - photon_off

I'm assuming that Firefox gets money through searches performed from its default start page and through the search box on the upper right of the browser.<p>Two part question:<p>1) How did this deal come about?  Is there a program for this type of affiliate search?  (What I've found requires you use the Google watermark and traffic must come from your domain).<p>2) How did Firefox secure this deal?  It seams like Google could just decline to pay any money, and Firefox would still be reluctant to use a different search.  If users prefer Google anyway, what incentive does Google have to pay Firefox?
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yanw
Google wanted Firefox to succeed as much as Mozilla needed the money
basically, they backed them as a standard-compliant, opensource alternative to
IE, they even advertised them on the homepage back then.

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sam_in_nyc
Why would Google continue to pay them for search referrals?

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petervandijck
Coz 1. It's traffic, which is good for Google (they pay others for traffic
too)

2\. It's supporting a browser that's non-IE, which is also good for them,
strategically.

