Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox Web browser, on Tuesday afternoon announced on its blog that it had renewed its “lucrative” revenue sharing deal with Google for “at least three additional years.”
Under the terms of the deal, Google will remain the default search option Mozilla Firefox. In exchange, Mozilla reportedly receives royalties for every Google search performed using the Firefox browser.
That’s a “lucrative” relationship indeed, as Mozilla netted some $121 million in royalties in 2010 alone, 86 percent of which came from Google, according to the non-profit company’s annual financial report.
The relationship between the two companies had been called into question, though due to Google’s success with its own competing Web browser, Chrome, which in November overtook Firefox in terms of global popularity, at least according to one Web market tracking firm, StatCounter.
Mozilla also previously acknowledged that its deal with Google was due to expire in November 2011.
Still, after the new StatCounter numbers came in and we asked about the state of the deal, Google told TPM: “We can confirm that we still have a deal with Mozilla, but have nothing new to share at this time.”
Mozilla was even cagier, telling TPM nothing about the deal per se, only that: “Firefox is holding its own in the face of increased competition, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide choosing a web browser that answers only to them.”
When asked about the new deal, both companies were tight-lipped:
Alan Eustace, Google SVP of Search, said in a statement to TPM: “Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come.”
A Mozilla spokesperson told TPM: “We do not have anything else to share beyond the blog post.”
But the nonprofit company wasn’t much more forthcoming about this new deal on its website, writing: “The specific terms of this commercial agreement are subject to traditional confidentiality requirements, and we’re not at liberty to disclose them.”
Still, it is clear that Mozilla and Google are committed to remaining partners for the foreseeable future.
And yet, with Google reportedly working on bringing its Chrome browser to Android phones, and with Android the only platform supporting a Firefox mobile browser at this time, it remains to be seen just how contentious the relationship becomes on the next battleground in the browser wars — mobile.
