If you look at the history of Mozilla's revenue, this conspiracy is ridiculous. Why would Yahoo compete over the Firefox contract if they serve as a hedge against a lawsuit?

Why would you (Google) not prefer for someone else (yahoo!) to pay for something that benefits you? That Yahoo! leadership didn't renew the contract should tell you how much being a default search engine is actually worth. Why would you (actual you) believe that Google would provide nearly all of a "competitor's" revenue? that somehow makes more sense? The pontificating about privacy Mozilla does is total nonsense. They serve their users up to Google's surveillance enterprise without hesitation. They're a puppet to fool gullible hipsters with fashionable social statements.

Yahoo was bought out during the term of the contact. And I don't know the details, but I believe Google pays Apple for the same thing, paying Mozilla isn't surprising.