Why does Google continue to work with Mozilla while developing a product which is competition with it?
We’ve got a lot of people wondering why Google recently renewed the search deal with Firefox when they had plans to release their own browser. Why the answer to isn’t obvious is beyond me but hey I’ll take my own shot at the obvious answer anyway. So how do I put this simple, let’s see. How about, urm, because it makes damn business sense. Firefox drives a lot of traffic through Google. If Google were to decide to not extend the deal, it would lose anywhere between 15-30% - depends on what continent and service you’re looking at - of the browser share market.
Getclicky reports usage of Chrome at about 2.6% at the time of writing this post. Obviously a great chunk of this are the early adopter and alpha geeks like you and me who will have downloaded the browser to give it a spin. As the shortcomings of the browser become clear (lack of extensions, touchpad scrolling bugs) most are likely to return to their regular browsers and stick to it atleast for a few iterations of Chrome. Optimists believe Google could achieve upto 20% market share in just about 2 years. Even if that turns out true we’re talking about a possible loss of revenue that Google might have otherwise made if they decide to cancel on the deal.
So there you go, explained in the simplest manner why Google continues to work with Mozilla while continuing to develop a product which is partly in competition with it.
Tags: browser, chrome, firefox, google, mozilla