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

Posted by samzenpus on from the new-couple dept.

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.

6 of 400 comments (clear)

  1. Ba Da ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Bing!

    1. Re:Ba Da ... by linear+a · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yahoo has a search engine?

  2. 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.

    --
    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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Google has no reason to help Firefox at this point and money in is money in, regardless of who is providing it. Yahoo! is currently a much better choice than Google, they might even promote Firefox in the way Google pushes Chrome.

  3. Re:should be easy enough to change it back by rogoshen1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    doesn't Bing supply yahoo's search results now? so it is.. literally Bing -- right?

  4. Re:Scrap heap by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Funny; FF has been my default browser for almost a decade now. Why? The plugins and the ability to control it all myself. Chrome/Chromium are too tied to the mothership for me -- and I say that as someone who uses 8.8.8.8 for DNS.

    That said, if NoScript starts working on Chrome, I'd likely switch eventually -- and no, NoScripts isn't a real replacement.