Just days after we reported that the Mozilla Firefox web browser would get ads in the near future, the saga continues. Mozilla has officially announced that the future versions of the popular browser will use Yahoo as the default search engine instead of Google, which was the case until now.
Google will remain an integrated search engine inside Firefox but users will have to manually change the browser settings. The change is a result of a deal between Mozilla and Yahoo signed for a period of five years. The deal goes into effect in December of this year so expect the Yahoo logo to shine inside your version of Firefox really soon.
“In evaluating our search partnerships, our primary consideration was to ensure our strategy aligned with our values of choice and independence, and positions us to innovate and advance our mission in ways that best serve our users and the Web,” Mozilla’s CEO Chris Beard wrote. He added that Yahoo’s strategy “stood out from the rest.”
This bold move comes in times when Google is de facto the search engine of the Internet. Really, how many other search engines can you count now? Try and find out! To make the change a bit softer on consumers Yahoo Search will have a new interface in Firefox that will look exactly like Google and will also support Do Not Track.
The catch is that the deal covers only US users of Firefox for sure, while in other countries the default search engine will vary. It is not clear as of now which countries apart from the US will get Yahoo but we will soon find out. Let’s hope the change, if you can call it that way, is for the good of consumers – we will find out that too.
Source: Mozilla