It was only recently, after much speculation that Google and Mozilla renewed their search royalty agreement for a period of three years, after their previous agreement exhausted in November, this year. Google, as per reports has been paying Mozilla a hefty sum for being the default search engine on their Firefox browser. Initially, though, Google used to pay Mozilla close to $103 million each year to ensure prominence on their browser.
Paying thrice the amount to get visibility
Now, however, with competition getting fierce in the market with the likes of Bing trying to make more space, the rates have skyrocketed, too. AllThingsD confirms that now, to ensure the same level of visibility, Google will have to pay Mozilla thrice the amount it paid only till a year ago, i.e. roughly $300 million per year. Reportedly, last year, Google, by the way of this deal contributed to almost 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue.
The report further states that, "Google’s main rival in the bid, sources said, was Microsoft’s Bing search service, which was aggressively trying to hip-check it from the main search spot on the browser. That’s because the software giant has been spending a lot of money in efforts to grow Bing’s market share in the search market. Microsoft, of course, also owns the still-dominant Internet Explorer browser, but Google’s Chrome has recently been making major gains over both IE and Mozilla’s Firefox."
Also, despite paying such a hefty price, Google will still have to compete for space with Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay, with whom Mozilla continues to retain its partnerships
