Mozilla and Google have signed an extension to the deal that will keep Google as the default search engine within the Firefox browser until 2023.
Though the deal hasn’t been formally announced, ZDNet estimates the deal to be worth between $400 and $450 million per year and might be announced later before the year ends. The current arrangement was due to expire at the end of 2020.
Mozilla spokesperson Justin O’Kelly in an email to The Verge said, “Mozilla’s search partnership with Google is ongoing, with Google as the default search provider in the Firefox browser in many places around the world, adding: “We’ve recently extended the partnership, and the relationship isn’t changing.”
The new deal comes as Mozilla only recently announced plans to lay off 250 employees, a figure representing a quarter of its workforce. Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker in a blog post disclosed that the coronavirus pandemic had significantly impacted the company’s revenue.
Announcing changes in the blog post, Baker said that the company will focus on developing new products “that people love and want to use,” renew its focus on community, and identify new revenue streams. Mozilla also laid off about 70 people in January.
The bulk of Mozilla’s revenue comes search engine companies like Google, Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China— that pay for their search engine to be the default option in Firefox. In the past ten years, Firefox has experienced a depression in fortunes as the company’s market share declined coupled with the fact that at that time, its several larger products, such as a Firefox phone, and a Firefox OS, never came to fruition.
