Then there’s Chrome. For all practical purposes, the web runs on Chrome. According to the best information I know of for web browser popularity, the US federal government’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which provides a running count of the last 90 days of US government website visits, only 2% of PC users are using Firefox. Everyone is using Chrome or a Chromium variant, like Microsoft Edge.
Don’t think for a moment, though, that if the judge had forced Google to cut Chrome away, Firefox developers would be cheering. They’d be miserable. As Mark Surman, Mozilla’s president, said, without the millions Google pays Firefox to be its default search engine, Firefox would go out of business. “It’s game over for an open, independent web.” Firefox requires this search revenue to survive.
Well, Mozilla has nothing to worry about now. Google gets to keep Chrome and, more importantly, it can still pay Mozilla to be Firefox’s search engine of choice. It just can’t pay them to be its “only” search engine. The same holds for Apple, Samsung, and all the other Android companies.
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