Haha. I respect Mozilla but this was totally expected reaction - since lawsuit directly touches on the fact that Google "bribes" it's way to the monopoly, then of course Mozilla will be affected. So they cry "do anything but only if it won't affect our Google money".
And the phrase "look at the ecosystem in its entirety" means "do nothing". IT people should know this better than anyone - waiting for the perfect solution with zero drawbacks mean never getting that solution at all.
I thought this was a thoughtful and reasoned reaction. They didn't take a stance apart from asking for action to think through consequences.
Mozilla is (1) 100% dependent on Google for it's survival (2) competing with Google in the browser space, with unfair tactics by Google (3) Critical to the free Internet.
That places them in a tough position.
I suspect if they didn't have unfair competition from Chrome, they could have more marketshare, and ultimately, more revenue from Bing/DDG/etc. (perhaps at lower per-user prices).
Let's imagine you have a barrel with a burning person inside and a barrel on top with a water. You can a) watch person to burn, or pull a lever and empty a water barrel on it, and risk that person will drown. Then someone cries "wait, you have to think it through so that there will be definitely no negative outcome!", knowing full well that waiting = burning.
This may be not the best comparison, but I think it is close enough. Mozilla spent decades to put themselves into a corner but voluntarily getting 100% dependent on a money coming from a shady entity, hoping that said shady entity would exist forever. Now regulator came to that entity and in the process all symbionts will suffer, and Mozilla the most because they are completely dependent. And now they ask to stop and think.
Ok, we are thinking - do what exactly? What does Mozilla seriously expect? Any action except for doing nothing will hurt them. Or do they expect that DoJ will conjure "free" hundreds of millions to compensate Google feed?
tl;dr
Mozilla ask us to "think about consequences". Ok, we did. Now what?
Breaking up Google, for example, would help, not hurt Mozilla. It would eliminate monopolistic nonsense around Chrome, while not removing incentives for Google Search to pay Mozilla.
A lot of intermediate approaches -- such as firewalling business units at Google -- would achieve similar effects.
I didn't read this as "do nothing." I read this as "think through consequences."
That will be determined by DoJ, I hope. Personally I see way too many ultra rich corporation's behaviors get a pass just because they strictly don't equal definition of a "bribe". Or how 95% of the whole word market is not a "monopoly" because "look, there is that 2% competitor, free market works".
Exactly. All sorts of BD deals get caught up in this line of thinking. Basically it's anti-competitive when there's already a monopoly and you get money for it? "Give your users a worse experience because they can't pay us, and we need the money."
And the phrase "look at the ecosystem in its entirety" means "do nothing". IT people should know this better than anyone - waiting for the perfect solution with zero drawbacks mean never getting that solution at all.