Slashdot Mirror
Google Returns As Default Search Engine In Firefox (techcrunch.com)
Mozilla today launched Firefox Quantum, which the company is calling "the biggest update since Firefox 1.0 in 2004." It brings massive performance improvements and a visual redesign. It also sets Google as the default search engine again if you live in the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan. TechCrunch reports: In 2014, Mozilla struck a deal with Yahoo to make it the default search engine provider for users in the U.S., with Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and others as options. While it was a small change, it was part of a number of moves that turned users against Firefox because it didn't always feel as if Mozilla had the user's best interests in mind. Firefox Quantum (aka, Firefox 57), is the company's effort to correct its mistakes and it's good to see that Google is back in the default slot. When Mozilla announced the Yahoo deal in 2014, it said that this was a five-year deal. Those five years are obviously not up yet. We asked Mozilla for a bit more information about what happened here.
"We exercised our contractual right to terminate our agreement with Yahoo! based on a number of factors including doing what's best for our brand, our effort to provide quality web search, and the broader content experience for our users. We believe there are opportunities to work with Oath and Verizon outside of search," Mozilla Chief Business and Legal Officer Denelle Dixon said in a statement. "As part of our focus on user experience and performance in Firefox Quantum, Google will also become our new default search provider in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan. With over 60 search providers pre-installed as defaults or secondary options across more than 90 language versions, Firefox has more choice in search providers than any other browser."
"We exercised our contractual right to terminate our agreement with Yahoo! based on a number of factors including doing what's best for our brand, our effort to provide quality web search, and the broader content experience for our users. We believe there are opportunities to work with Oath and Verizon outside of search," Mozilla Chief Business and Legal Officer Denelle Dixon said in a statement. "As part of our focus on user experience and performance in Firefox Quantum, Google will also become our new default search provider in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan. With over 60 search providers pre-installed as defaults or secondary options across more than 90 language versions, Firefox has more choice in search providers than any other browser."
57 is disappointing. Default color scheme was horrible, but that's fixable. But it's now slower than it used to be for all the hype of being faster. And legacy extensions are disallowed with no replacement for noscript yet. Even more preference settings have vanished, and some preferences were changed on me. The new tabs page is horrid (was in 56 also) and you can't get the old style back (ie, I prefer my home page in new tabs). New icons are ridiculous looking. I normally never update this soon, waiting for a dot release instead, but I thought it would fix a problem I was having that turns out to be fault of an updated extension instead.
So far, nothing is an improvement in any way. If they were smart, they'd add a "rollback" button.
Most people probably only know about Google, so like or not, it is the obvious default choice. DuckDuckGo is available and easily set as default if you want to. Personably I'm impressed by FF 57.
NoScript's current release state. It was going to be released today but now it's a couple of days away.
If that's where it gets it search results from, then it is garbage too, and I wouldn't use it.
Google dominates search because they have the best search engine.
Sure. Until you search for torrents. Try the following (with quotes) in Google, and then in Bing.
+magnet +torrent +"Oz the great and powerful"
I tried that last night on google and bing. Google returned 3 results, none of which were a link to a page that had the torrent. Bing's first 5 results were all valid.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.