According to Mozilla CEO Chris Beard, it wasn’t money that allowed Yahoo to win the Firefox search deal away from Google. Simply put, it was the better strategic partner for them. When interviewed by Marketing Land, Beard said that the deals it was looking at had to do with “equivalent economics” but Yahoo had the best strategy for Yahoo, and was more aligned than Microsoft.
“When we went and looked at the options in front of us, we saw two equivalent economics that were both really good for us and reflective of the value that we’re providing in the marketplace. So then we really shifted and focused on the strategic opportunity and alignment of our strategy.
This is in parallel to us doing a deep strategic review and really looking at our competitive strategy and how we were going to move forward. And so we adopted this approach of really looking by country and region, what’s the best approach is.
Again, it comes back to more choice and opportunity in the web ecosystem. So the economics were all good, and it really came across and came back to the strategic opportunity.”
You can find the what Mozzilla has to say officially in their blog post about the deal and what being a good strategic partner seems to be in their eyes.
To Mozilla, Yahoo is “aligned with our values of choice and independence.” Could this mean that Google was too controlling or wanted too much control over Firefox? Or is it that Google isn’t as much into supporting the web, and instead more about supporting itself in the present. Who knows. Only Mozilla could tell you for sure.
But Mozilla would know, since Google had been Firefox’s default search partner for 10 years. No comments from Google have been issued.