

Why Is Google Funding Its Own Competition In The Firefox OS? - sk2code
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/01/22/so-why-is-google-funding-its-own-competition-in-the-firefox-os/

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diminoten
Google is, at heart, an ad company. As far as I understand it (and I don't pay
all that much attention to this kind of thing so feel free to correct me),
everything Google does has to eventually, at some point, theoretically, go
back to advertisement.

What this means is that they don't give a (large) hoot if the eyeballs are
looking through Firefox or Chrome (to elaborate a bit, I imagine Google would
_prefer_ if the eyeballs came through Chrome, but Firefox eyeballs still pay
the rent). So from a purely business standpoint, I suspect the "loss" of
promoting Firefox OS is less than the "loss" of not being Firefox's default
search engine.

Also, competition is, as far as I understand it, to Google, A Good Thing.
There are probably lots of reasons for this, at least one of which likely has
to do with how the Microsoft antitrust thing went down back in the 90s.

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ozten
This is a poorly conceptualized article.

Mozilla makes money off Google. Google does not hold the purse strings and
therefore cannot tell Mozilla what to build and what not to build. Of course a
business deal could be made that restricted Mozilla's options, but I'm not
aware of any such restriction and I don't think the non-profit organization
would ever accept such an offer.

There are other incorrect assumptions in the article, which are not backed up
by fact or interview sources.

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suyash
Yeah the article is pretty bad. These days even Forbes is producing garbage
content (just catchy headlines and no meat to it). You are correct, google
pays Mozilla since they use Google Search in Firefox and they have no business
otherwise in Mozilla's development. Also Firefox OS just launched and who know
what it will become so I believe that maybe another reason for Google to not
worry about it yet.

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scottbartell
That title is very misleading... Google is not funding Firefox OS. Google
basically pays Firefox for traffic. Firefox is free to do whatever they want
with their own money.

