>is that people who were official mouthpieces for Mozilla said for years that the default search engine simply wasn't up for sale to just whomever would pay for it.
This is untrue. They openly stated they sold it to Google in 2008, and in 2011 a bidding war between Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo saw the price triple from 100 million to 300 million.[1]
Maybe at some point following a contract they had a generic "Google was the best choice" PR statement, but they've never hid that it was up for sale to whoever wanted it or that it made up most of their budget.
And even if they did say the royalties were icing on the cake, what would be wrong with then changing their policy to generate as much money for development as possible?
This is untrue. They openly stated they sold it to Google in 2008, and in 2011 a bidding war between Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo saw the price triple from 100 million to 300 million.[1]
Maybe at some point following a contract they had a generic "Google was the best choice" PR statement, but they've never hid that it was up for sale to whoever wanted it or that it made up most of their budget.
And even if they did say the royalties were icing on the cake, what would be wrong with then changing their policy to generate as much money for development as possible?
http://allthingsd.com/20111222/google-will-pay-mozilla-almos...