Since a Federal Judge has declared that Google is a monopoly and specifically that it paying other companies for the top search spot in browsers like Safari and Firefox is monopolistic, I see a serious unintended consequence. People are wondering what will happen to Google, but I wonder what will happen to Mozilla and specifically Firefox, which I have long considered the best desktop browser around (I specify desktop as I am forced to use Safari on my iPhone and iPad, or at least a WebKit browser).
Mozilla releases Firefox for free and the company has long struggled to make money in any way besides selling Google its prime search engine spot. And since it is likely that the Judge will stop Google from making such payments, I wonder how long Mozilla will survive.
And ironically this will also benefit Google’s chrome browser, as without Mozilla there will be so few alternatives to Chrome, especially that run their own separate engine as Microsoft’s Edge, Vivaldi, Opera and Brave are all already based on Chromium. And sure these other chromium browsers don’t all share your data with Google as Chrome does, but the internet should not all be controlled by one company! And right now there is basically chromium, Gecko from Mozilla and WebKit for Safari, so breaking this monopoly could actually leave only Chromium and WebKit left.
And I prefer Mozilla because of its customization. Unfortunately they now have the same plugin architecture, but I can still customize Mozilla much more and am not having more of my data used by Google to make money off it.
And the less competition, the less chance of google improving Chomium.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-rules-google-broke-antitrust-law-search-case-2024-08-05