It is quite profound when you consider that Firefox has been mostly funded by Google via the search page revenue deal.
If you take Firefox + Chrome and credit them both to Google (unfair in many respects, I know) - Google can claim "responsibility" for the majority of web browsing today. They have almost single handedly engineered a competitive marketplace in the browser space (ok, unfair again to the Mozilla devs, but it's still profound to me to contemplate it).
Mozilla got the deal when Firefox was that big, that it was a juicy deal for Google. Google won't make that sort of deal if there's nothing to gain. They're capitalists, not a non-profit organization.
Don't get the deal wrong. Mozilla as a small non-profit gets a lot of money for their size, but the deal still is the hell of a good deal for Google.
It actually played a major part into making Google the de-facto search engine among the community that matters most, us, the techs, the geeks, etc.
If you take Firefox + Chrome and credit them both to Google (unfair in many respects, I know) - Google can claim "responsibility" for the majority of web browsing today. They have almost single handedly engineered a competitive marketplace in the browser space (ok, unfair again to the Mozilla devs, but it's still profound to me to contemplate it).