RealNetworks Mozilla and Google agreements attack Microsoft

Stan Beer
Thursday, 03 August 2006 06:04

Your IT - Home IT

A web site with a product that has two million downloads a day is an attractive venue for any would be advertiser or marketing partner that can offer a synergistic product. Thus, RealNetworks has forged agreements with the owner of the Firefox browser Mozilla and search king Google to offer their products along with every download of a RealNetworks product.

Under the agreements, both Firefox and Google's search toolbar and desktop products would be offered together with RealNetworks downloads.

What makes RealNetworks doubly attractive for Mozilla and Google is that it competes directly with their major competitor Microsoft.

The flagship product of RealNetworks, RealPlayer, is the major competitor to Windows Media Player, while the Rhapsody online music store is a competitor to Microsoft's current partnership offering with MTV.

The Firefox browser has managed to gain a steadily growing following worldwide and has taken serious market share of Microsoft's ageing Internet Explorer 6, with the latest intelligence showing that the Mozilla browser has somewhere between a 11% and 15% share globally.

Google pays Mozilla a substantial fee to have its search box in the default position in the top right hand corner of the Firefox toolbar. In addition, Google has been a strong supporter of Firefox, offering web site publishers financial incentives to get their visitors to switch to Firefox from Internet Explorer.

For Mozilla, the agreement with RealNetworks, which will see 2 million users a day offered Firefox with downloads, will provide an added boost to its market share building efforts.

For Microsoft, competitors in the internet space which are able to form synergistic alliances, such as the troika of Real, Google and Mozilla, is a growing concern. In the past month, we have already seen former Microsoft ally turned competitor Symantec form a marketing alliance with the number one internet content provider Yahoo.

The problem for Microsoft is that it does not have the dominance on the internet in traffic terms that it has on the desktop. Thus, it is hard to counter joint marketing efforts that involve bigger internet players such as Google and Yahoo.