The Justice Department’s proposal to force Google to rein in and even sell off its Chrome browser business may seem like a win for competitors such as Mozilla’s Firefox browser. But the company says the plan risks hurting smaller browsers.
In their recommendations, federal prosecutors urged the court to ban Google from offering “something of value” to third-party companies to make Google the default search engine over their software or devices.
The problem is that Mozilla earns most of its revenue from royalty deals—nearly 86% in 2022—making Google the default Firefox browser search engine.
"If implemented, the prohibition on search agreements with all browsers regardless of size and business model will negatively impact independent browsers like Firefox and have knock-on effects for an open and accessible internet,” Mozilla says. “As written, the remedies will harm independent browsers without material benefit to search competition.”
It’s certainly better than the status quo. Sure, Mozilla will hurt at first because they’ve put their revenue source in the same basket, but it’s an opportunity to grow back.
You’ve just given a great summary of the history of breaking monopolies, really. History says you are correct. For example, AT&T is still kicking.
The AT&T of today is not the same one from pre-breakup. That AT&T is decidedly not still kicking.
Well yeah, thankfully.
Well, Bell Labs isn’t the magical place that it used to be, and that was originally an R&D shop basically enabled by the economics of the AT&T monopoly.