“Google is a monopoly and has acted in this way to maintain its monopoly.” That was determined by federal judge Amit Mehta in a monopoly case that now leaves the future of this search engine and the companies that use it full of unknowns. There seem to be potential winners here, like Microsoft, but there is also a big loser: Mozilla.

Almost complete addictionThe Mozilla Foundation had $593 million in revenue in 2021 and 2022. Of that, $510 million came from a deal to use Google as the default search engine in the Firefox browser. So nearly 9 out of every $10 Mozilla makes comes from that deal, and that revenue is now in jeopardy.

So what about Apple and Samsung? First of all, the biggest losers of this decision should be Samsung and especially Apple, who received large amounts of money to place Google search engine as the default search engine on their devices. For example, Apple earns a real fortune of around $20 billion per year from this deal. However, both it and Samsung, which currently earns much more than memories, have many different sources of income and even if they are affected, they have room to maneuver.

Danger. Former Google executive Adam Kovacevich commented in Fortune that Mozilla could be the biggest loser of this decision. This dependency is compounded by another factor: Google has been involved in a bidding process to try to place its search engine as the default engine in browsers like Firefox. If Google is no longer involved in the lawsuit, Microsoft may not have as much incentive to pay the high price to become the default engine. The effect is clear: Mozilla’s revenue is much lower.

Mozilla stands outMozilla doesn’t seem too concerned, and a spokesperson told Fortune: “Mozilla has always supported competition and choice on the Internet, especially in search. Firefox continues to offer a wide range of search options, and we are committed to meeting the preferences of our customers and users while fostering a competitive marketplace.”

The equivalent of Yahoo! In 2014, Mozilla changed its default search engine to Yahoo! under a 5-year, $375 million deal. The 2017 release of Firefox Quantum ended that deal, citing, among other things, the poor search experience with Yahoo!. was inferior. Mozilla’s own executives later said so by canceling the deal before it was over, stating that they were canceling the partnership based on parameters such as “our efforts to deliver quality web searches.” And that’s the big question.

Apple thinks Bing is pretty badApple’s vice president of services, Eddy Cue, made a unique comment in the lawsuit filed against Google. He said that there was no significant alternative to the Mountain View search engine and, as it was recalled on the threshold, “there was no price that Microsoft could offer” to place Bing as the default search engine in Safari, the Mac Browser and above all everything that comes from iPhones. Cue insisted on this point (exaggeratedly) and said, “They offered us Bing for free. They could have given us the whole company.”

Alternatives? Of course, there is DuckDuckGo, but Kovacevic himself explained that without the resources of giants like Microsoft or Google, his product cannot compete in terms of features or usability. As he put it, “how do you force users to choose a low-quality search engine?”

Mozilla’s future is uncertainThings haven’t been going well for Mozilla for a while now, as it continues to shrink its workforce at an alarming rate and fail to grow the market share of its browser (Microsoft Edge has recently managed to do so) compared to the mighty Google Chrome. This is also troubling for another reason: Firefox is the only browser, along with Safari, to offer a non-Chromium-based technology for its browser, which would eliminate a market option that has so far supported competition.

At Xataka | Firefox vs. everyone: The browser world has been conquered by Chromium