Of late Mozilla, the second best browser that has partnered with the Internet giant Google to include its search engine in Firefox, is experiencing a strained relationship with the former. Google recently turned to be a rival for Mozilla as it unveiled its own browser Chrome. Now, Mozilla is confidently speculating over its reliance on a rival's search engine for revenues.

Internet Explorer, which holds the highest share in the browser market, has witnessed its shares slip below 70 percent for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20 percent barrier for the first time in its history in 2008. Currently, analysts believe that the software giant Microsoft has no effective tool to stop losing its shares against Mozilla winning two out of every three users, who leave IE. It is the free browser, courtesy Google, which is enabling Firefox to swiftly pile on the cash. The Internet giant accounts for 88 percent of its total revenue, while the browser on its own stands with a mere 20 percent.

The stronghold of Google over Firefox does not deter Mozilla from mulling over ending the partnership and consider other options to generate revenue. Mitchell Baker, CEO, Mozilla Foundation spoke of an anonymous search-engine that recently offered a blank check to replace Google. The company also plans to partner with country-specific search developers and to gain more revenue from mobile browsing. It is working on plans to develop a browser capable of running on smartphones on either Windows Mobile or Linux.

The split of Google and Mozilla, however, will diminish the latter's competitive edge over IE, and Google with one percent market share by far stands no competition to Microsoft that still flaunts 68 percent of share in the market. Google's strong base in the Internet world will have no impact with the split and Microsoft, which is currently upgrading its browsing system to retain its current users, can gain better mileage out of the situation.