Mozilla’s Concerns: How the US Proposal to Challenge Google’s Search Monopoly Impacts Firefox

The US government’s proposals to break Google’s search monopoly will affect Firefox and other smaller, independent browsers, and will only strengthen the position of a handful of strong players, Mozilla said. The US Department of Justice recently asked a federal court to take several measures to break Google’s monopoly on the search engine market. For example, the tech company would have to sell the Chrome browser and Google would no longer be allowed to enter into paid agreements with Apple and other parties to automatically make Google the default search engine on smartphones and browsers.

Mozilla received $528 million from search engine providers in 2021 for setting their search engine as the default search engine within Firefox. The majority of the amount came from Google. In 2022 this amounted to 510 million dollars and in 2023 around 495 million dollars. However, in several countries, Google is not the default search engine and Mozilla has concluded deals with other parties. If the Firefox developer is no longer allowed to enter into an agreement with Google, this will have major consequences for Mozilla and therefore also Firefox, Mozilla warns.

The Firefox developer says that it would like to see measures that improve competition and that people’s privacy is not sacrificed to achieve this. “Real change requires removing barriers to competition and facilitating a marketplace that promotes competition, innovation and consumer choice – in search engines, browsers, browser engines and beyond,” Mozilla said. The Firefox developer is asking the court to achieve its stated goals without affecting independent browsers and browser engines and ultimately the web.

In short: