Mozilla is not losing out afterall. News just came in that Mozilla has signed an extension deal of 3 more years for a revenue share agreement for Google search. This means Google will continue being the default search for Mozilla the browser. Some good news for Mozilla guys as they also announce availability of a 30% faster Firefox 9 and also an optimisation of the browser for tablets.
Here is the news from the Mozilla Blog:
We’re pleased to announce that we have negotiated a significant and mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google. This new agreement extends our long term search relationship with Google for at least three additional years.
“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.
“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.
The specific terms of this commercial agreement are subject to traditional confidentiality requirements, and we’re not at liberty to disclose them.
As you just saw, there were no further details to the agreement going public.
While at it they announced Mozilla Firefox 9 and also Firefox customized for tablets, both landscape and portrait. Among the new things on the Firefox for tablets is:
- Two finger swipe gestures for Mac OS X Lion.
- Support for chunking XHR requests, allowing websites to display content as it’s downloaded instead of waiting for the entire download to complete.
- Tabs appear as thumbnails in the left panel so you can quickly switch between them while still viewing full websites on the right. You can swipe to the left to hide tabs for a full screen view.
- Optimization of Web experience for both portrait and widescreen mode.
- New HTML5 tools for developers in Firefox that make it easier to create fun and interactive mobile Web experiences for phones and tablets.
