Mozilla renews deal with Google for search engine in Firefox

Mozilla recently renewed its agreement with Google to keep Google as the default search engine in the Firefox browser. It is rumored to be a three-year extension, for which Mozilla would receive about $ 400 million a year.

Mozilla confirms the renewal of the lucrative partnership with Google vis-à-vis ZDNet, without providing details on the duration of the agreement and the amount involved. “Mozilla’s partnership with Google is ongoing, with Google being the default search provider in the Firefox browser in many parts of the world. We’ve recently expanded the partnership, and the relationship is not changing,” the statement said.

According to sources from ZDNet, this is an agreement that will make Google the Firefox search engine until 2023. Mozilla would receive 400-450 million dollars a year for that. Clarity about this information will probably not follow until November, when Mozilla publishes its financial report. Mozilla has been working with Google, intermittently, since 2006 and relies in large part on the revenue generated from its sizeable deals.

Mozilla announced on Tuesday that it would lay off a quarter of its staff. Mozilla cited the reason that it needed to focus more on commercially viable products and services. The new announcement shows that at least sufficient income is still coming in via Google. The existing agreement was due to expire at the end of this year.

ZDNet writes, based on information from its sources, that the layoffs concern functions of divisions that the organization will not prioritize in the coming years. This would include staff on the threat management security team, developers for the Servo browser engine, administrators of the Mozilla Developer Network portal, and the team behind the Firefox developer tools. In the long run, Mozilla would like to become less dependent on Google’s revenue by making money from its own services.