Google’s Cash Makes Rivals Less Eager for Antitrust Crackdown

After the government sued Google as a monopolist, Mozilla Corp., you’d think, might have celebrated. Mozilla makes Firefox, a web browser that Google undercut by using massive engineering resources, financial muscle, and—according to ex-Mozilla staffers—dirty tricks to promote its own Chrome. The smaller company has periodically raised alarms about Google’s business practices and once even put up a billboard in the Bay Area that read, “Big Browser Is Watching You,” with the word “browser” fashioned to resemble Google’s logo.

Yet within hours of the federal Department of Justice filing its antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc.’s Google on Oct. 20, Mozilla published a blog post offering a stern warning to the government: Please don’t go too far. The Justice Department’s case centers on Google’s practice of spending billions of dollars a year to become the default search engine on browsers, smartphones, and other gadgets. Google pays Mozilla for it to be the default search engine on Firefox, and the money accounts for the vast majority of Mozilla’s revenue.