
Mozilla terminates its deal with Yahoo and makes Google the default in Firefox - pob1234
https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/14/mozilla-terminates-its-deal-with-yahoo-and-makes-google-the-default-in-firefox-again/
======
sctb
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15695114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15695114)

------
shubhamjain
> As Recode reported last year, there was a clause in the Mozilla deal that
> would have the potential Yahoo acquirer pay $375 million per year through
> 2019 if Mozilla didn’t want to work with the buyer. This clause also allowed
> Mozilla to walk away at its sole discretion. We don’t know if Mozilla
> invoked this clause to terminate the agreement, but it seems likely.

Am I understanding this correctly? Mozilla will get paid $374M by invoking a
clause at their own discretion. Sounds like a horrible deal to ratify. Was
Yahoo that desperate?

~~~
kenhwang
In 2014, Yahoo looked to be in much better shape than it it is today. Sweeten
the deal with a scenario that you don't think will happen and at the same time
drop off a poison pill to defend against takeovers. Only problem was that
Yahoo had to be better than Google at search. I'd say it was hubris, not
desperation.

------
JepZ
> (Disclaimer: TechCrunch is part of Oath, Verizon’s roll-up of AOL and Yahoo,
> though nobody at TechCrunch that I know has ever willingly used Yahoo
> Search).

Just awesome :D

~~~
CobrastanJorji
I guess it speaks well of Oath that TechCrunch writers feel so safe dissing
other branches of their conglomerate.

------
vim_wannabe
Firefox forwards people to Google, Google guides people to installing Chrome.
Hmm...

It's not like Mozilla had a choice but its still pretty funny when you think
about it.

~~~
ekianjo
Mozilla is also trying to stand for privacy on the web and making Google the
default search provider is a pretty bad idea for their brand.

~~~
bad_user
You can't stand up for anything if you don't survive in the marketplace.
Mozilla needs a revenue stream. I donated last month. When was the last time
that you did?

Not trying to shame you, but developers need to put food on the table and
there's nothing wrong with finding a reliable revenue source.

I'm _very privacy aware_ , I don't publish pictures of my son on Facebook, the
minimum I tolerate for serious chats is WhatsApp due to having E2E encryption
and wishing for Signal or better, I disabled location tracking and ads
personalization in Google, I encrypt my backups, I keep my passwords in
1Password, I have a sticker on my laptop's camera, I vote and publicly argue
against privacy invading laws.

However DuckDuckGo and Bing are simply unusable for me — it is true that in
many cases in order to get the results that you want, you simply have to
modify your query, however I discovered that many times it doesn't work. The
situation is improving, they keep patching local searches to be barely usable
and if you're not feeling pain when doing local searches, then you're probably
not living in Europe. But besides local searches, the software development
related searches are poor as well.

Not trying to disregard the fine work that DuckDuckGo is doing, I'm glad that
it exists, but I could not tolerate it for more than a week, every time I
tried, including only a month ago.

Mozilla switching to Yahoo was actually shooting themselves in the foot,
because as a matter of fact people want to use Google's search engine because
it is superior to everything else.

Firefox is also the best browser if you want to use multiple search engines at
the same time. On mobile as well. It's just a freaking default, you can always
change it.

~~~
ggus
I bit the bullet and I'm using DuckDuckGo as default.

Every time the results will be poor I add _!g_ to the search and DuckDuckGo
sends me to google. (or _!guk_ for google uk, _!so_ for stackoverflow, _!wes_
for spanish wikipedia, _!amde_ for german amazon, and so on)

It's easy to do, and I enjoy the privacy for all the other searches.

~~~
bamboozled
DuckDuckGo is ok, I don't know if it's me but I feel like it's getting worse,
for a period there I was hardly resorting to use "bags".

It's kind of interesting that no one can seem to build a really great privacy
focused search engine. I'd pay for a product like Google but that respected my
privacy. In fact, I'd gladly pay for it over some of the other subscriptions I
pay for.

Maybe a hole in the market?

~~~
hjek
Give Searx a look, for example at [https://searx.me](https://searx.me) , but
there's many other public instances running, because -- unlike DDG -- it's
fully free software,
[https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/](https://asciimoo.github.io/searx/)

Of course the level of privacy is determined by whoever is hosting it, but at
least there's a _choice_ there.

------
angrygoat
Apparently this caught Verizon by surprise:

> "Yahoo and Mozilla have enjoyed a productive relationship together since
> 2014," said Charles Stewart, a spokesman for Verizon’s digital advertising
> business, Oath. "We are surprised that Mozilla has decided to take another
> path and we are in discussions with them regarding the terms of our
> agreement."

(Source:
[https://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-OZF67R6VDKHT...](https://washpost.bloomberg.com/Story?docId=1376-OZF67R6VDKHT01-3Q1EL6333OH9NTHGDT8LPKMRI9))

~~~
sambe
That sounds a lot like "we are going to try not to pay".

~~~
pdpi
Never mind "try not to pay", that's table stakes. Likelier than not, they'll
seek some form of reparation.

~~~
foota
Sounds like having to pay even if Mozilla terminated it was built in.

~~~
pdpi
Wow. Whoever managed to get that clause in there must be pretty happy right
now.

------
qwerty456127
Who needs Google when thee is DuckDuckGo anyway? Switched to DuckDuckGo (after
getting mad of Google demanding me to solve captchas all the time) about a
year ago... 100% satisfied.

~~~
rnhmjoj
Are you using a proxy or tor? I have never been asked a CAPTCHA on Google even
with auto-deleting cookies and no javascript.

~~~
ploggingdev
Not OP, but captchas pop up when I use proxies and tor. If you're not logged
into a google account, you usually need to solve more than one captcha and it
gets frustrating quickly. Luckily DDG does not treat tor and proxy traffic
suspiciously.

------
Lxr
> Historically, search engine royalties have been the main revenue driver for
> Mozilla. Back in 2014, the last year of the Google deal, that agreement
> brought in $323 million of the foundation’s $330 million in total revenue.

So basically Google was/is funding Firefox? Seems weird given the battle with
Chrome for market share.

~~~
kenhwang
I see it as a Pepsi vs Coke or BMW vs Audi relationship. The head-to-head
competition style gives the illusion that they're the only choices (thus
removing Safari/IE from the conversation), and at the same time, both choices
are under your influence.

~~~
mtmail
But Coke doesn't give Pepsi money and Audi doesn't give BMW money. I'd compare
it to Microsoft once lending Apple [https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-to-
invest-150-million-in...](https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-to-
invest-150-million-in-apple/) to make sure it (Apple) survives.

~~~
allendoerfer
They do have joint ventures for electric car infrastructure.

------
margorczynski
Related to this - I've always wondered why Mozilla doesn't just build-in an
ad-blocker directly into the browser. The speed/security bump is significant.

Probably because they want/need the deals with the search engine companies?

~~~
porfirium
They are so big on net neutrality and whatever, they can't do that.

~~~
CoalMiner
Well, besides their strong affiliation for net neutrality, implementing an ad-
blocker in the browser seems like a hostile move.

~~~
porfirium
Safari got away with it.

------
eric_khun
I'm in Japan since 2 months now, and I see most of the people using in the
metro/street using Yahoo than Google. Is Yahoo doing a better search in
Japanese than Google? Or are they just better in marketing?

Also, seeing lot of people (also many over 30!) browsing Twitter. What
surprised me, I rarely saw it in other countries I've been.

~~~
icebraining
Yahoo Japan is a different beast from the rest of Yahoo:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Japan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Japan)

~~~
ekianjo
And they have a bunch of useful local services and since ebay does not exist
in Japanese the next big thing in Japan is Yahoo auctions which is pretty,
pretty big.

------
agjmills
Somewhat important to note that its only the default in the US, India and a
few other countries - presumably not the EU because of the whole Internet
Explorer setting Bing as the default debacle a couple of years ago

~~~
jlgaddis
> _Somewhat important to note ..._

Yep, important enough that they noted it twice in TFA, including in the first
paragraph:

> _"... at least if you live in the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan."_

~~~
jwilk
How and when they decide whether I'm in US etc. or not?

~~~
robin_reala
When you download an en-US localisation of the browser.

------
throw2016
You can't stand for privacy and promote Google at the same time. That's
disingenuous and the 'explanations' are transparently self serving.

If Mozilla needs that money from Google then they should own up to it and get
off the privacy bandwagon rather than trivialize it.

------
jlgaddis
A bit of related discussion a day or two ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15696915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15696915)

------
gamla
One thing Mozilla should consider is shifting to a non-commercial operational
model entirely. Assume a Patreon-like campaign that attracts 500k patrons
paying $10 / month each. That results in a $60M annual revenue, enough to
sustain a meaningful company.

It's still only 10% of their current annual revenue (which is closer to half a
billion USD), but I would argue that becoming completely independent from any
commercial incentives might be worth this sacrifice.

~~~
jldugger
That is... a very ambitious assumption.

------
Grollicus
I do believe money means influence, so I think this will mean a whole slew of
new bad decisions by Mozilla. Very worrysome. It's 73% of used browsers under
the control of Google. Also the best alternative to Google Chrome under their
control.

------
k__
I liked the idea of Mozilla not being paid by Google. Sad, but not surprising
when looking at Yahoos "success" in the last years :/

------
dep_b
What happened with Bing? They weren't interested?

------
tryingagainbro
Headline: Mozilla terminate$ its deal with Yahoo...

if we had a functioning government a company with 70+% market share would not
be able to buy even more market-share. Monopoly and all...

------
olivermarks
Seems to be the result of a competitiveness between Mayer and Google. This was
very visible during Yahoo selloff so shouldn't be a surprise given Mozilla
rely on income from search engines....and this is an easy payout...

[https://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer-
deal-...](https://www.recode.net/2016/7/7/12116296/marissa-mayer-deal-mozilla-
yahoo-payment)

~~~
jpatokal
Marissa Mayer resigned in July.

