Verizon must pay even if Mozilla walks from Yahoo search deal

From InfoWorld: Verizon, which today announced its intention to purchase Yahoo for $4.8 billion, will be on the hook to Mozilla for more than $1 billion through 2019.

According to Yahoo's CEO, Marissa Mayer, Verizon may be liable for partial payments even if Mozilla cuts ties to Yahoo and seeks another search provider.

Earlier this month, Recode and the New York Times claimed that the 2014 Yahoo-Mozilla contact gave Mozilla the right to switch to another search provider if Yahoo was sold.

The contract, signed in November 2014, made Yahoo the default search provider for Mozilla's Firefox browser in the U.S. market. In return, Mozilla would receive $375 million annually for five years, or through the end of 2019.

Yahoo's annual payment was about $100 million more than Google paid Mozilla during their last deal, which ran just three years, from late 2012 to late 2014.

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