this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
2338 points (99.3% liked)
Privacy
32120 readers
274 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Google is their biggest donor. They pay $$$ to be the default search engine in Firefox.
But Microsoft would happily give a not-insignificant amount to have Bing be the default search engine, and everyone knows it.
It's a symbiotic relationship. Google sorta need to pay up. Firefox needs the funding.
Google does not control the running of Firefox.
If you rely on Google donation in order to survive, at the end of the day you are under some sort of control. I'm not saying that Google is running Firefox directly, of course, but if Firefox would grow enough to became a problematic competitor for Chrome, they would definitively have the power to step in. So, how really free can they be?
Mozilla's definitely aware of this, but since all the competitors' browsers are free it's hard to make inroads on other means of profit.
I thought Google funding Firefox was the cheapest way to fend off an antitrust issue?