We've reported that Yahoo is currently up for sale. What's not widely known is that the biggest winner in a potential sale of the company may actually be the Mozilla Foundation, which is expected to make a billion dollars!
Recode uncovered a clause in Mozilla's contract with Yahoo that states that if Yahoo's buyer doesn't like it, the Mozilla Foundation is entitled to three annual installments of $375 million through 2019.
It's part of a deal brokered by Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer in 2014, making the company the default search engine for Mozilla's Firefox browser.
In a statement, a Mozilla spokesperson said:
Each of the search partnerships is the result of a competitive process that reflects Firefox's value to the ecosystem. The relationship with Yahoo is no different.
Mozilla's main source of revenue (90 percent) is search deals, according to Recode. Google used to pay $300 million per year, but Mayer, in an effort to get Yahoo's search engine into Firefox, seems to have committed to something more.
This doesn't mean that the Mozilla Foundation will get the money, but it could. The penalty clause doesn't list any criteria for what reasons the Mozilla Foundation could use to get the money, making the agreement very loose.
It should also be mentioned that the new owner may not want to pay and that this could prevent the sale of Yahoo.
However, the deal leaves the Mozilla Foundation free to cash out the money or sign a new contract with another company (Google or Bing) immediately. Yahoo and Marissa Mayer sound like the losers in the case.
