Mozilla recently informed a US appeals court that strict antitrust penalties against Google could push Firefox out of the browser business.

In a “friend-of-the-court” brief filed this month, Mozilla warned that a ban on payments/funds from Google could force Mozilla and other independent browser developers to exit the browser market entirely. The info first showed up on MediaPost, which is the key source of the information presented in this article.

For those unaware, Google pays Mozilla and several other companies for making Google Search the default search engine in their respective browsers.

The dispute traces all the way back to 2020, when the US Department of Justice and a group of states sued Google. They claimed that Google broke competition law by securing deals with companies and making its search engine the default. Google has deals with Safari, Firefox, and more. In 2024, Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google had unlawfully maintained monopolies in general search services and ads.

Five years later, in September 2025, Mehta issued a remedies order. It banned Google from exclusive distribution deals for Google Search, Chrome, Google Assistant, and the Gemini app for six years.

However, the order still allowed Google to continue paying Apple, Mozilla, and other partners for default placement of its engine. Mehta noted earlier that cutting these payments would have serious effects on the companies involved and the markets around them, potentially leaving them with poor revenue, and it could force distributors toward lower-quality alternatives.

What could be another major issue: it doesn’t just threaten the independent browser market. It also affects the development of Mozilla’s Gecko browser engine.

This is not Mozilla’s first intervention in the appeal. In a separate friend-of-the-court brief filed in early June, the company told the same appeals court that its Google Search deal for Firefox was never “exclusive,” arguing the agreement contained no exclusivity requirement. More on that here.

Recently, federal and state antitrust officials asked the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to overturn the part of Mehta’s order that permits payments to Mozilla, Apple, and other companies.

Mozilla responded with its brief, saying that the judge’s decision to continue allowing payments was backed by evidence. The company also pointed to its own research, showing that its revenue would plummet if it had to replace Google with something like Bing as the default search engine. Mozilla also stressed that the company isn’t taking any sides in the overall case, and also has no position on any of the major questions.

Google is expected to file its next set of arguments with the appeals court next month, and the outcome will determine whether the payments to companies like Mozilla can continue or not.

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