Saw the news today that the Russian version of Firefox was dumping Google, switching to a Russian search engine called Yandex. This caught my eye as recently I've been contemplating how the industry would react to Microsoft taking over, effectively, the sponsorship of the Firefox project.

For those unaware, the Mozilla foundation gets almost 90% of its income — used to pay developers, run servers, do marketing, and so on — from Google: $75 million dollars in 2007 (along with some chump change from Yahoo and Amazon). This isn't an act of charity, though, and for its payment Google gets default start page space, is the default search provider, and of course gets attributed with a lot of goodwill throughout the industry for helping to keep the project alive and robust.

Now that Google is strongly pushing their own browser, however, the relationship isn't quite as solid. Shortly before Chrome's release the contract was extended through to 2011 — probably by some concerned players that wanted to stop any NIHism from undoing what they had achieved — but that's just two measly years and will pass before most people realize.

The Russian deal seems to be one sign that the Mozilla foundation is soberly planning ahead.

And while they're considering who might step in if Google decides to bow out, they might look towards the most unlikely partner of all: Microsoft.

Increasingly Microsoft has been embracing Firefox as a platform, with various divisions working towards more than just locking you into Windows (which has perverted the cause of many Microsoft products for years, destroying potential greatness). Given the relatively pathetic progress of Internet Explorer, I'd go so far as to say that they've put more work into pulling Firefox into the fold than they have improving their own browser.

It's chump change for Microsoft (despite all of the doom and gloom stories about Microsoft, the reality is that they are still disgustingly profitable), it would buy them a tremendous amount of goodwill, it would give their ignored Live Search (haven't they abandoned the whole Live thing yet? I'm waiting for the next wave of inane branding synergies from that marketing midget) some attention, and it would give them a voice on the project that is most likely to continue to enrich and improve the web. Yet it wouldn't give then undue influence or control on this project, which we know because even Google was held away from the reigns of power (which presumably is why they wanted to let Mozilla use their ball while they went and bought another ball and built their own court.)