We had recently reported about search giant Google’s deal with the Mozilla foundation that extended the reign of Google search remaining the default search provider on Mozilla’s Firefox browser.

Since the past few years, even before Google launched its Chrome browser, these two companies had signed a search deal which made Google the default search client on Firefox. The previous deal was valid till the last month and analysts were looking forward to see whether Google would renew its contract with Mozilla – especially in this situation where both the companies have competing products in the arena.

As it turned out, Google not only renewed the contract, but also paid more money to Mozilla than most people had anticipated. While both the companies haven’t officially declared how much money is being paid by Google as part of the deal, reliable sources are reporting that the sum could be as high as $300 million a year. If this does turn out to be true, it would mean that Mozilla would earn more than three times of what it did in 2010, for the next three years starting 2012. The deal would not only bring a smile to Mozilla employees, it would also help Mozilla find much needed funds for newer projects. With other search providers like Bing and Yahoo too paying money (not anywhere as close to what Google pays), Mozilla has had its cash registers ringing of late.

While Google’s Chrome might be in the spotlight as of now, there is no denying the fact that Mozilla’s most successful product, the Firefox browser is quite popular. With over 22 percent of the market it is right up there with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Google’s Chrome as the most used browsers of today. Getting the default search engine place on one of the worlds most used browsers would expose Google’s search engine to millions of users by default – a factor which all search providers see as an added advantage.

As to why Google is paying money to a company that now competes against it in the current scenario, many believe that the strategy could be to undermine Internet Explorer, which still leads the browser pie chart. With Mozilla and Chrome together accounting for 40 to 50 percent of the browser market share, Google becoming the default search provider to half the world on Internet browser users certainly goes in favor of Google. This would also help Google keep Microsoft’s Bing at bay for the next few years.

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