It can definitely be both at once. Could be paying an inflated amount, or they could just be doing it to keep FF alive. It’s not like helping their direct competitor provides a direct advantage, and FF would be in a lot worse of a situation without the Google money.
Plus firefox mostly exists because google pays them, probably so there’s no anti-trust action against them.
Google pays them the make Goigle the default search engine.
It can definitely be both at once. Could be paying an inflated amount, or they could just be doing it to keep FF alive. It’s not like helping their direct competitor provides a direct advantage, and FF would be in a lot worse of a situation without the Google money.
Pretty sure I remember hearing that Microsoft was also the biggest funder for Netscape back in the day.