Yahoo to become the default search engine for U.S. Firefox Users

[brotherhood of LAN]

Under a new five-year strategic partnership announced today, Yahoo Search will become the default search experience for Firefox in the U.S.

[blog.mozilla.org...]

[Swanny007]

Google has been the Firefox global search default since 2004. Our agreement came up for renewal this year, and we took this as an opportunity to review our competitive strategy and explore our options.

Holy cow, were they locked in with Google for a decade!?

This is really nice to see, yet another company choosing something besides Google, although this really doesn't affect me, I've switched all my searches to DuckDuckGo as of a few months ago. I search maybe twice a week using another engine.

I'm just waiting for Apple to change the default search provider in iOS and Safari... I think it's coming...

[incrediBILL]

I don't get the Yahoo connection since it's Bing's results but Yahoo must've been willing to subsidize Firefox which MS obviously would have no interest in doing.

[Leosghost]

MS ( due to IE ) can could hardly be seen to directly back FF, But Via Yahoo MS can back FF..against G who have Chrome, which threatens both IE and FF..

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or something like that :)

Or..as with most "products"..it is all merely a semblance of choice..and the same people will gain whatever the market "split" is ..

Marissa ( the "maybe ex" Googler ) will be amongst those who gain..thanks to Jack..


Reminds me of the intros to Soap..

BTW..my FF ( on linux ) defaults to DDG..

[not2easy]

FF on Mac added DDG, I didn't think I had Yahoo search, but I see it is there.

[Robert Charlton]

This might also be another sign that Yahoo has eventual plans to build its own engine (once again).

[micklearn]

I've seen stats of 100 billion searches a year through Firefox world wide in several articles today. Tried searching for stats on U.S. usage but gave up. Anyone found any figures about how much search share might transfer from this deal?

[Robert Charlton]

My very rough (and admittedly sloppy) guesstimate....

Figures I've seen for number of searches on Google daily (not clear whether US or worldwide) are between 3.3 billion to 3.5 billion. Going with 3.3 would probably not be excessive.

Keeping it all in billions...

3.3 x 365 = 1204.5 ~ 1205 billion Google searches per year.

If we assume that the 100 billion Firefox searches are all Google searches and they're all lost to Google, then Google would have 1105 billion searches per year.

The new search volume as a percentage of the original search volume is...

1105/1205 = .917... or approximately 92%

So, if all searches lost are Google searches, that's very roughly an 8% loss, which seems too large a figure to me. I'll be interested to see other estimates.

[engine]

To add to the balance of this story...

Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, eBay, Amazon, Twitter and Wikipedia will continue to be built-in as alternate search options.

Russia

Yandex Search will become the default search experience for Firefox in Russia

Google, DuckDuckGo, OZON.ru, Price.ru, Mail.ru, and Wikipedia will continue to be built-in as alternate search options.

China

Baidu will continue to be the default search experience for Firefox in China

Google, Bing, Youdao, Taobao and other local options will continue to be built-in as alternate search options.

While we have decided to not renew our agreement for global default placement, Google will continue to be a pre-installed search option.
Google will also continue to power the Safe Browsing and Geolocation features of Firefox.

[penders]

If we assume that the 100 billion [worldwide] Firefox searches are all Google searches...

This might be a bit of an over estimate? The Firefox/Google deal does not affect all countries and in some other countries Firefox has a much larger browser share.

...that's very roughly an 8% loss

From a BBC article (referencing StatCounter), as far as the US goes... "Google accounts for 67% of searches from US desktop computers" and "Firefox accounts for about 10% of browsers on desktop computers, mobiles and tablets". So, that would seem to give an upper figure of 6.7% for Google searches from Firefox in the US - although that would seem to assume that everyone is searching from the browser's "search box" and no-one has changed the search to use another provider. (?)

Also, note that not only is Yahoo gaining from this (as reported by the BBC)...

Along with ending its partnership with Google in the US, Mozilla is also directing Firefox to Baidu's search engine in China and Yandex in Russia

(Although Firefox would seem to have a relatively low browser share in China. EDIT: Although I note from engine's post above that Baidu is already Firefox's default search engine in China - so no change there then?!)

[aristotle]

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System: The following message was spliced on to this thread from: http://www.webmasterworld.com/firefox_browser/4716886.htm [webmasterworld.com] by engine - 1:55 pm on Nov 20, 2014 (utc 0)

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This is interesting. According to this announcement, Firefox is switching its default search engine from Google to Yahoo in the United States starting in December.

Also, it says that eventually Firefox's default search engine will vary from country to country, with Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia. But all users will have the option to change the default to another provider, including Google, from a total of 61 currently available.

[cnet.com ]

[superclown2]

I wonder what proportion of surfers know how to change a default search engine - or even care. Search is search, period, to a lot of the non-techies I know. They still call it 'googling' even it's Y! or Bing. This could be quite a major slap for Google.

[J_RaD]

UMMM what took them so long to wake up? Once chrome came out I called any goog help FF gave them was just fueling their own demise....... guess someones face really has to be put on a belt sander to make a change.


meanwhile chrome installs are SHOVED INTO EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET! next...next..next......chrome is now your default browser.....that is if it didn't come preinstalled from your OEM!

[brotherhood of LAN]

>what took them so long to wake up?

It was a 10 year agreement. A lot has changed in that time. IIRC that was still a time where Google was invariably popular.

[Chrispcritters]

I'll be curious to see if this has any real impact on my site. Should be interesting to watch and see if traffic from Yahoo jumps up or not in December.

[roshaoar]

I wonder if it uses Bing data or Slurp, which seems to be rather active still. Or both?

[aristotle]

I'll be curious to see if this has any real impact on my site. Should be interesting to watch and see if traffic from Yahoo jumps up or not in December.

Your overall traffic could go up or down depending on whether your sites rankings are better or worse in Yahoo compared to Google

[snippet]

[removed portion from my memory that was inaccurate...lol]

Good for them. This keeps them relevant for another 5 years... Hopefully they can use the funds to maintain or take back some market share...

[edited by: snippet at 7:55 pm (utc) on Nov 20, 2014]

[aristotle]

From [cnet.com ]:

Negotiating with Yahoo was simpler than with Google, Baker said. Google competes directly to try to lure users to its own Chrome browser.

"When you have a partnership that has competitive aspect to it, it does require a lot of time and attention and focus," Baker said.

Mozilla was in a good bargaining position: search engines have been placing a higher value on its search traffic, Baker said.

"Both arrangements we were looking at had very good economics," Baker said. "We're utterly confident in our stability and viability going forward."

[mrengine]

As a business decision, it was definitely wise for FireFox to go with Yahoo. Google has so many products and services, offering a competing web browser is just one area where Google takes advantage of others.

Hopefully the FireFox and Yahoo partnership work out for both parties.

[micklearn]

Thanks @Robert_Charlton and @penders.

I did some more digging around and found this today...looks like Firefox is around 17%. (graph from Clicky at the URL below: U.S. Browser Marketshare is calculated from nearly 500 million daily page views across the 500,000+ web sites that use Clicky Web Analytics.)

[clicky.com...]

According to Wikipedia, there are 254 million internet users in the U.S., so using that 17% figure would mean that ~43 million people use Firefox in the U.S.

If I understand the agreement between Yahoo! and Firefox correctly, sometime in December, those 43 million browsers will be switched to Yahoo! search as the default in version 34 of Firefox.

[mcneely]

I wonder what proportion of surfers know how to change a default search engine

Probably not very many -- We have clients that think the search form on the Google/Bing/DDG start pages are the address bars for their browsers ...

Chances are pretty good that once the new default search is set, it won't be changed.

[mcneely]

... meanwhile chrome installs are SHOVED INTO EVERYTHING ON THE INTERNET! next...next..next......chrome is now your default browser

Having Chrome pre-installed as the default browser in Linux was maddening .. I guess someone over in Linux land woke up too because on more recent builds of Linux, Chrome has been replaced by Firefox as the default -- I never trusted Chrome from the start -- memories linger of that big Google Toolbar fiasco from a few years or so ago, when Google made people think the Toolbar was shut down when it really wasn't ...

[earlpearl]

Over the course of the day I use chrome, FF, IE, and Safari. I'm going to use the FF default and switch to Yahoo.

I believe the widespread usage of Comnets statistics suggesting google has in the 65-70% range in the US with Yahoo and Bing having virtually all the rest of traffic is deceptive and not indicative of searches to websites. Websites and webmasters continuously see google traffic in or close to the 90% range for search.

I'll be interested to see if this puts a dent in Google traffic. Its a monopoly. They see it in Europe. In the US the pols don't want to see it. Are they scared? Is it about money?

[superclown2]

I've just visited yahoo.co.uk for the first time in years. It'll be years before I go again, probably. How you tell the top ads from the generic results is beyond me and a block of pretty irrelevant Yahoo Answers Results right after the first three generics is pushing the rest even further down. Beware of what you wish for ........

[J_RaD]

Having Chrome pre-installed as the default browser in Linux was maddening .. I guess someone over in Linux land woke up too

its much worse then that...its shoved into EVERY SINGLE THING... motherboard drivers... YEP, just the other day HP printer drivers tried to install.. CHROME, and hey if they missed that, GOOGLE TOOLBAR, talk about covering all bases.

next will be uninstall windows, install chrome OS.

goog is going full blast, its like legal malware / virus installations. Maybe next they'll start with injection ads, installing chrome.

graphics drivers so far are the only thing that don't try to shove goog on your computer.

[mcneely]

..its like legal malware / virus installations..

... Drive-by exploits are next on the list me thinks.

When your products or services are so bad, then we can expect this kind of behavior -- No one likes what you've got, so you have to force it on them.

[thecoalman]

If I understand the agreement between Yahoo! and Firefox correctly, sometime in December, those 43 million browsers will be switched to Yahoo! search as the default in version 34 of Firefox.

Correct and frankly I'm not too happy about them deciding to change it. Switching it back wasn't a giant hassle but that's besides the point.

<awaits inevitable call from Mom and Dad about something wrong with the computer>

[micklearn]

As with all stats, I take them with a grain of salt, but it does look like this deal might have made a somewhat of a dent in market share of search. Per the graph on the page below, Yahoo! gained 20% and Google lost 20% of Firefox searchers since the switch happened. It's still early, though, and as the article notes, many have not upgraded to version 34 of Firefox yet. Interesting times.

[searchengineland.com...]

[mcneely]

Hopefully the FireFox and Yahoo partnership work out for both parties.

I'm sure it will, but only for Windows users.

Yahoo! was default on FireFox Linux Distro's up until it's latest update, which reverted back to Google as the default search option.

Firefox kind of did an end-run with Google on the Linux systems ... So no .. Firefox didn't totally go with Yahoo! across the board in the U.S.

I double checked these findings with a buddy of mine over at RackSpace in San Antonio, as he suggested that the Firefox update might include Yahoo! as the default only from U.S. repositories, but I checked it out ... Google still comes up as the default search for Firefox from U.S. repositories, as well as other offshore/worldwide repositories ..