Mozilla Ditches Google, Makes Yahoo Default Search Engine

Mozilla and Google have had a long-standing relationship of about 10 years. Google was paying hefty sums of money (reportedly around $100 million) every year to be the default search engine in Firefox. Google’s contribution covered something like 85% of the overall Mozilla’s income, and the Mountain View company was one the Mozilla Foundation’s biggest sponsors.

The most recent deal between Mozilla and Google was made in 2011, when Google agreed to pay for its search engine being default in Firefox until 2014. This deal just came to a close, as it was not renewed this year. Mozilla announced that Firefox will be using some smaller search offerings in various regions as their default search engines including Yahoo in the USA, Yandex in Russia, and Baidu in China. Google will be still available to select, but not as the default search engine.

The Mozilla Foundation has partnered with Yahoo. As part of the deal, Yahoo will not track Firefox users activity through advertisements. Yahoo will also prepare a new search engine, based on Microsoft’s Bing, that will be introduced in December. The financial terms of the deal aren’t known, but it’s more than likely that Yahoo will not pay $100 million per year like Google once did.

Google’s decision to not renew is a shocker for Mozilla. According to W3 Counter, Firefox’s market share is nearly 18%, while Google Chrome crossed the 40% mark. Without Google as a default search engine, these numbers will likely change in favor to Chrome of course.

[via Ars Technica | Thanks to XDA OEM Relation Manager jerdog for the tip!]

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source: xdadevelopers