Mozilla Seemingly Prepares For Google Anti-Trust Lawsuit Fallout With New Search Partner

[Cpt.Jank]

Mozilla and Firefox have undergone a slew of changes of late, with the non-profit laying off its entire advocacy team and subsequently working with a famous design house on a branding overhaul. At the same time, Google is facing a monumental US antitrust lawsuit that could see the search giant prohibited from paying to be the default search engine on a variety of platforms. Speculation until now has predicted that if Google loses the antitrust case, it would deprive Mozilla and Firefox of a massive revenue stream, effectively ending the Firefox browser as we know it.

Perhaps in preparation for this imminent change, Mozilla has just announced a new search partnership with Ecosia, the search engine that prioritizes privacy and environmental concerns. Mozilla didn't explain what the partnership entails, but the official announcement seems to suggest that Ecosia won't become the default search engine for Firefox, although the blog post does encourage switching to Ecosia as the default search engine. Ecosia advertises that it is transparent when it comes to its earnings, and it donates all of its profits to environmental conservation efforts. It also embodies many of the privacy protections that Firefox has historically been known for. A more cynical reading of the situation might suggest that this is simply part of Mozilla trying to save face after its recent layoffs and a round of bad news.


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[Onasi]

Meh. I tried Ecosia, felt it was meh at best. Whole thing smells of greenwashing. DuckDuckGo is arguably a better search engine for people wanting to move away from big corpo ones. Arguably.

 

[windwhirl]

DuckDuckGo is arguably a better search engine for people wanting to move away from big corpo ones. Arguably.

DDG uses Bing underneath so it's more like jumping from one to another, in a roundabout way

 

[trsttte]

DDG uses Bing underneath so it's more like jumping from one to another, in a roundabout way

Bing with a few extra privacy protections. And a simple look at wikipedia shows that so does Ecosia

It's unfortunate but it's not realy feasable or reallistic to expect any upstart to be able to index the majority of world wide web and serve search results to compete with google and microsoft. Doing so would require a ton of resources that don't appear out of nowhere.

 

[lexluthermiester]

This is a bit premature. Google isn't gone or even mildly affected for the time being.

 

[AcE]

Google is extremely obnoxious nowadays so I hope they get sued successfully. While surfing on google on my phone in Safari it gives me popups to switch to Chrome, doesn’t get any more toxic than that.

 

[katzi]

This is a bit premature. Google isn't gone or even mildly affected for the time being.

It's smart to have plans already in play in case the worst happens.

 

[RaphaelOne]

Bing with a few extra privacy protections. And a simple look at wikipedia shows that so does Ecosia

It's unfortunate but it's not realy feasable or reallistic to expect any upstart to be able to index the majority of world wide web and serve search results to compete with google and microsoft. Doing so would require a ton of resources that don't appear out of nowhere.

I've been using DDG as my main engine for a long time. ~7 years ago DDG generated fewer search results than google, but that changed over time. IMO today DDG finds what I'm looking for faster, I've tried google engine a few times (on other computers) and quickly returned to DDG. You can also see it in the image search results, DDG often finds more of them.

 

[unruheherd]

Isn't Ecosia using google as well? I think they made the switch from bing to google before last christmas.

 

[Calenhad]

DDG uses Bing? That would explain all the junk hits that appear more or less by the time I hit page two.

If this uses Google, I might give it a go

 

[ScaLibBDP]

>>...Ecosia as the default search engine. Ecosia advertises that it is transparent when it comes to its earnings,
>>and it donates all of its profits to environmental conservation efforts...

This is the 1st time when I've heard about Ecosia! Seriously, how anyone could trust to a company nobody has heard about?

I've been using Bing as a search engine for a long time and it works good for me.