Mozilla and Yahoo have started a legal spat about the deal that existed between the two companies regarding the use of the Yahoo search engine in the Firefox browser.
Mozilla and Yahoo have started a legal spat about the deal that existed between the two companies regarding the use of the Yahoo search engine in the Firefox browser.
On December 1, Yahoo fired the first shot filing a complaint that alleges Mozilla breached a contract that existed between the two companies by terminating the arrangement early. In a counter complaint, Mozilla says that it was not only justified in terminating the contract early, but that Yahoo Holdings and Oath still have a bill that needs to be settled.
Yahoo’s complaint centers on « breach of contract » and « breach of covenant of good faith and fair dealing. » Mozilla’s counter complaint concerns « declaratory relief, » « breach of contract re payments, » and « breach of contract re search performance. »
As this is an on-going legal battle between the two tech giants, the complaint documents are fairly heavily redacted — but there’s enough still visible to get a good handle on what’s going on.
Mozilla terminated the agreement that it had in place with Yahoo in early November, with Yahoo having allegedly ceased payments after the end of October. Mozilla says that it was unhappy with Yahoo search performance, and made a number of suggestions to owners Oath — suggestions that seemingly were not well-received, as the cross-complaint reveals:
Drawing attention to its legal action in a blog post, Mozilla points out that while it is not possible to reveal full details of what is going on, it would like to try to be as transparent as possible. Denelle Dixon shares the company’s official statement on the matter:
