Mozilla's Firefox can still bounce back

Firefox web browser from Mozilla cannot yet be written off, despite the fact that Google ended its advertising relationship with it in November 2014. 

There is no denying the fact that Google was responsible for around 90% of Mozilla’s earnings, but its deal with Yahoo will ensure that it may still survive.

Google, on the other hand, saw no reason to continue its pact with Mozilla as its own browser Chrome is flourishing.  

As Firefox browser’s share was on the decline and its revenues fell, Mozilla’s epitaph was being written by many people.

The year 2014 was not a great year for Mozilla, which saw its CEO Brendan Eich putting in his papers and the users of its browser not taking kindly to the fact the company decided to give its first-time users pre-packaged content. It also announced that ads from popular websites in a particular geographic location and some others taken from its close would be placed in its browser.

But Mozilla astounded everybody by entering into a five-year contract with Yahoo, where Bing-powered Yahoo would be the default search engine for Firefox on PCs and mobile devices in the US. 

It has not been great going for Yahoo of late. After all, it yielded to Microsoft to make Bing its default search engine in 2010. But whether this deal will be able to eat a bit of Google’s market share is a matter of conjecture. 

It is ironical that Firefox, which had fought for the search engine market share with Internet Explorer of Microsoft, will now sincerely hope that the Redmond-based company’s Bing will do well. 

It is also a fact that Yahoo's chief executive Marissa Mayer went on record to say in 2013 that the contract for search between Microsoft and their company did not deliver the expected results.

But experts aver that mobile operating system of Mozilla will make a dent and appeal to the low-end users. Since Firefox OS, a mobile operating system, is an open-source operating system, it enables conventional phone users to transition to smartphones without having to spend a lot of money. It could also prove a threat to Android and iOS, the operating systems which are currently the most wanted OSs in the smartphone market.

Also, it is expected to give a tough fight to Android One, priced around $100, which is considerably higher than the target price of Mozilla that was set at $25.

Meanwhile, the Firefox OS is to be used in Panasonic’s 4K TVs to be launched in 2015. CES 2015 saw Mozilla say that it wanted to expand its OS also to home appliances and wearables.