From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from lists.gentoo.org ([140.105.134.102] helo=robin.gentoo.org) by nuthatch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1E2tlt-0005qq-9N for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:49:41 +0000 Received: from robin.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.4/8.13.4) with SMTP id j7AGm4rr019383; Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:48:06 GMT Received: from smtp19.wxs.nl (smtp19.wxs.nl [195.121.6.15]) by robin.gentoo.org (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id j7AGhFVk008349 for ; Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:43:15 GMT Received: from [10.0.0.150] (ip3e83ab52.speed.planet.nl [62.131.171.82]) by smtp19.wxs.nl (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.2 Patch 2 (built Jul 14 2004)) with ESMTP id <0IL000EH6MH9LT@smtp19.wxs.nl> for gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org; Wed, 10 Aug 2005 18:43:57 +0200 (CEST) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 18:43:34 +0200 From: Holly Bostick Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Mozilla & Google behind the scenes payola In-reply-to: <42FA2881.4050603@gonoph.net> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Message-id: <42FA2EB6.2030103@planet.nl> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Accept-Language: nl-NL, nl, en User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (X11/20050803) X-Enigmail-Version: 0.92.0.0 References: <20050809195210.GA15338@may.frognet.net> <20050809210534.GZ792@quillandmouse.com> <42FA2881.4050603@gonoph.net> X-Archives-Salt: 4330d52c-d7fb-4724-994f-23ad2903b060 X-Archives-Hash: 76ed404d4241dd59245d0716d404d3bd Billy Holmes schreef: > Paul M Foster wrote: > >> I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with this. Google pays Mozilla >> to make Google the default search engine for Firefox. Mozilla could >> have made it Yahoo or someone else, but Google paid them and that's >> bad? This > > > Some people have this idea that making money from OSS is wrong. Perhaps > if they gave Mozilla a bunch of cows and goats it would be better... Aside from the previously-made point that no one has actually "said" that Mozilla is "making money" from this transaction (if I download and burn a Linux CD and sell such CDs to others who cannot due to lack of broadband, asking only the cost of the blank CD and shipping, I am not "making money"; I am only recouping my costs), has anyone actually "proven" that Google's position as default search engine is because Google 'paid' Mozilla for that position? I mean, Google is arguably the best search engine, so it would have presumably been the default anyway. Heaven knows that if it was a question of money, Microsoft has enough to throw around that if that was the only determining factor, the default would likely be MSN search. It does happen that you do me an honor (making my search engine the default), and I show my appreciation for that by doing you a favor (donating some money to your project). We call it 'professional courtesy', and it's not the same as 'payola', although it can look that way to the extremely suspicious. Even if Google did buy their position, if in some burst of insanity I decided that AltaVista was better, I could change my default to AltaVista. So Mozilla still gets their money (and I do want them to have some money, btw), and I still get the default search engine I want. Of course I have 50 search engines available in my search box, so 'default search engine' is not as meaningful in my case as it might be to others who don't feel the need to use the appropriate specific engine for each individual search, as I do. Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list