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Firefox Signs Five-Year Deal With Yahoo, Drops Google as Default Search Engine

mpicpp writes with news that Yahoo will soon become the default search engine in Firefox. Google's 10-year run as Firefox's default search engine is over. Yahoo wants more search traffic, and a deal with Mozilla will bring it. In a major departure for both Mozilla and Yahoo, Firefox's default search engine is switching from Google to Yahoo in the United States. "I'm thrilled to announce that we've entered into a five-year partnership with Mozilla to make Yahoo the default search experience on Firefox across mobile and desktop," Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in a blog post Wednesday. "This is the most significant partnership for Yahoo in five years." The change will come to Firefox users in the US in December, and later Yahoo will bring that new "clean, modern and immersive search experience" to all Yahoo search users. In another part of the deal, Yahoo will support the Do Not Track technology for Firefox users, meaning that it will respect users' preferences not to be tracked for advertising purposes. With millions of users who perform about 100 billion searches a year, Firefox is a major source of the search traffic that's Google's bread and butter. Some of those searches produce search ads, and Mozilla has been funded primarily from a portion of that revenue that Google shares. In 2012, the most recent year for which figures are available, that search revenue brought in the lion's share of Mozilla's $311 million in revenue.

9 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. Murder-suicide? by mpoulton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So if two listing, burning ships strap themselves together, do they float better? Or do they just sink faster? It seems to me that if your browser market-share is dropping and you're losing relevance, the best move is probably not to attach yourself to a search engine whose market share and relevance were lost years ago.

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    I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
    1. Re:Murder-suicide? by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Most likely the fact is that their money influenced Firefox development enough to make it into a Chrome clone in terms of UI.

      As a result, it lost most of its marketshare to Chrome. After all, it looks mostly the same, might as well get the browser straight from Google. And now that the work has been done, Mozilla is getting discarded by Google as unnecessary.

      On a bright side, maybe just maybe the UI poser crowd will finally get dethroned at Mozilla in favour of saner design approach. Doubtful, but one can dream.

  2. Scrap heap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    firefox is trying to go the way of Netscape navigator. Getting more irreverent with each month that passes. Went Chrome years ago and have not looked back.

  3. Re:Market Share in 2019? by rudy_wayne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now that Google has every reason to crush Firefox, what is Mozilla's market share going to be in 2019? I sense a poll coming up.

    Google doesn't have to crush Firefox. The shitty arrogant Firefox developers are doing that on their own.

  4. Re:Yahoo! is cool again? by rockout · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not sure how you got from your first 4 points to "Yahoo is cool again"; it's pretty clear that Yahoo is so uncool at this point that they're making a desperate effort to get cool again by paying Mozilla. I have my doubts about this strategy working.

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    I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
  5. Re:I'm happy to announce by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    why would you want your employees OFF of Firefox. What else would you have them use?

    Chrome? I don't know about you but I HATE chrome on my networks. People bring in all kinds of stuff. They have all the major browser hijacks at home, it autoinstalls the toolbars/searchengines and what not at work too. fun.

    IE? Do we need to discuss IE? lolz

    I'm to the point, especially with the amount of malware coming through via ads, to push everyone ONTO Firefox and adblock.

    If your CEO is so easily pissed off, he can't change his search engine, like in IE, I imagine your life is hell.

  6. Re:Bing indeed by Tridus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The commonly thrown around number is that 90% of users never change the defaults.

    In my experience, that number might be low.

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    -- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
  7. Re: Who's using Firefox anyway ? by slaker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I use Firefox in preference to Chrome because of the superior and more permissive add on ecosystem, fine grained JavaScript controls, better tools for privacy protection and better (yes, really) memory management for my browsing habits.
    Just the fact that I can have hassle free ad blocking on Android makes it worthy of consideration.

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    -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
  8. Re:Bing indeed by bl968 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Installed != using

    I have chrome and IE installed, but I prefer to use Firefox.

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    "GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"