Firefox dumps Google for default U.S. search, switches to Yahoo/Bing

“In a major departure for both Mozilla and Yahoo, Firefox’s default search engine is switching from Google to Yahoo in the United States,” Stephen Shankland reports for CNET. “‘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,” Shankland reports. “The Yahoo-Mozilla deal is an alliance of underdogs. Mozilla’s share of browser usage has been slipping in recent months, and Yahoo is third place with 10 percent of US searches in October, according to ComScore. For Yahoo, that was still enough for quarterly search revenue of $450 million, after payments to the affiliates that helped drive some of that search traffic. That was a 6 percent year-over-year increase, Yahoo said.”

“Yahoo sold off its search business to Microsoft five years ago, and Microsoft powers Yahoo search results. However, Yahoo keeps some of the revenue — indeed, all of it for mobile searches,” Shankland reports. “Yahoo declined to comment on specific revenue share terms of that deal.”

Read more in the full article here.

31 Comments

  1. I did the exact same thing three years ago.

    I also ditched Firefox and Chrome around four years ago.

    Safari rules….still waiting for Apple to release a search engine. Then I can dump Bing too. Until then…..

    1. Firefox remains the winner by virtue of user customization — something Apple seems to have completely forgotten about these last few years. In comparison, Safari plug-ins and themes are a joke.

      1. OK, I am open minded. Take your best shot and tell me ONE thing that is so incredible about Firefox that Safari cannot touch. I will take that and go and try it. If it is really as drastic a life changers as you say, I will change over to firefox. Just ONE….

        1. I already gave you a reason: Firefox remains more customizable than Safari.

          It is more secure and more private thanks to many of those plug-ins. It is more legible or more attractive thanks to themes that the user can select.

          Moreover, Mozilla does an impressive job on standards compliance. On HTML5test, Firefox recently outscored all other browsers, blowing Safari out of the water on standard adherence. On Sunspider tests, Firefox comes in right behind Chrome and Opera, whereas Safari can’t even complete the test.

          Safari speed is nice, but it’s not the best browser for everyone.

        2. What mumbo jumbo!!

          Safari has built in private browsing.
          Safari does not need any of your plugins……otherwise just NAME ONE!

          HTML5 runs fine in Safari..I use it everyday. So why you LIE about this?

          Apple is a proponent of HTML5.

          Instead of NEBULOUS MUMBO JUMBO (such as “…it is more customizable”) give us ONE example where FOX is so much better.

          Just ONE!

        3. I have no interest in continuing a discussion with someone who claims I lie when my claims are easily verifiable. That’s beyond rude, Paul.

          If you can’t understand the advantages of customization, then by all means, just buy one single size & cut of clothing for everyone in your family. After all, who needs customization in clothing either?

          Review the Firefox extensions for yourself, most of which offer great functions that no default browser offers.

  2. DuckDuckGo works well enough for general web searches.

    However, no other search engine can beat google right now for specialized searches — images, videos, scholar articles.

  3. I believe Marissa will take back their search engine when the contract with MS expires. There were gyrations about that when she first took over. Speaking for me, I hope that she does do it. I also think Privacy concerns will increasingly get all the search people (except MS, of course) to bring better protections to their search engines, as is even mentioned here.

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