Will Mozilla be in danger if it lose its biggest financial supporter – Google? Well, the Firefox team has realized that this situation may happen possible because most of the funds are from the deep-pocket Google. Google can also support the search function for Firefox, and this plays the most important role of generating revenues for Firefox.
In total, Google provides 90% of the money for Mozilla. Mozilla was put in a diffcult position because of Google Chrome. Google has already released their own web browser, so it doesn’t have to give any money to Mozilla to support them to develop Firefox. The current agreement between Google and Mozilla will end in 2011, and Google doesn’t have any plans of deciding whether to continue or not. Anyway, Firefox still have lots of marketplace, and Chrome is also growing up rapidly too.
To solve the problem, Mozilla can have another choice too. For example, they can co-operate with another search service provider, such as Yahoo! or Live.com (Kumo.com in the future). In this way, Mozilla do not need to worry much since Firefox has millions of users worldwide and I think any search corporation will get a very good income from that.
My opinion is really special, I think Google cannot survive without Mozilla, isn’t it strange? But I have my own reason. According to my previous post in my personal blog – Chrome is not a browser, it has further meanings for Google, this is a very long post, you can find also my reasons there. I think that Chrome and Firefox are equally important for Google as Chrome may become an Internet Develop Platform in the future. Also, many developers will develop Rich Internet Applications for Chrome, but Firefox may be different. As a main force for Internet, World Wide Web is still important, Firefox may become a standard HTML browser with lots of add-ons.
In conclusion, Chrome may be used to run Internet Applications based on Web, and Firefox may be used to visit the standard website. If Google release their own Operating System, I believe that it will be installed both Chrome and Firefox. In this way, Google have to continue the agreement with Mozilla, if Mozilla will not, Google can also acquire the Firefox software.