Relationship with Google

Relationship with Google

The Mozilla Corporation's corporate relationship with Google[63][64] has been noted in the media, especially with regards to use of Firefox to provide revenues and data for Google. The release of the anti-phishing protection in Firefox 2 especially raised controversy.[65] Enabled by default anti-phishing protection is based on a list that is regularly (approximately each half hour) updated and downloaded to the user's computer[66] from Google's server (the user cannot change the data provider within the GUI[67] nor is informed who the default data provider is). Browser also sends Google's cookie with each request for update.[68] The "advanced" security feature of builds by the Mozilla Foundation activate an anti-phishing feature to provide live protection and, according to the Mozilla Wiki,[69] send each visited URL to Google[70] (the user must explicitly opt-in for it). Barring Internet privacy issues over such anti-phishing protection, there are concerns on how Google may use the data, even though Firefox's privacy policy states that Google may not use personal information for any purposes other than the anti-phishing protection feature.[66] On the other hand, Google admits that it "may share aggregated non-personal information with third parties outside of Google".[71]
In 2005, the Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation had a combined revenue of US$52.9 million. Approximately 95 percent of this revenue[72] was related to their search engine relationships.[73]