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Makes sense I guess. Nobody wants Yahoo search as a default.
And, to be fair, most users probably want Google to be their default. Considering how heavily Mozilla’s been recently touting Firefox as the privacy-oriented alternative to Chrome (in Facebook ads, and probably elsewhere), to me it makes Mozilla appear flippant.
DuckDuckGo, Start Page, or Qwant might have been a little more in the spirit of Mozilla and privacy. Then again it takes about half a second to change the default search to your own preference. Google is probably the most approachable for the vast majority of users. It is a sensible move in that regard.
Your right on a privacy front from an absolute perspective. But, it's almost certain that Google paid for this change. A stronger Mozilla (financially speaking) is good for privacy and free software. Also, normal users expect Google. So, having it in the default provides a more familiar experience for them to possibly switch to Firefox.
While I understand exactly what you mean, surely there's a point at which accepting money from privacy-violating organisations (and bundling a privacy-violating extension, and who knows what else is coming?) means that Mozilla is no longer good for privacy?
DuckDuckGo, Start Page, or Qwant might have been a little more in the spirit of Mozilla and privacy. Then again it takes about half a second to change the default search to your own preference. Google is probably the most approachable for the vast majority of users. It is a sensible move in that regard.
If you are allowed. My work machine is locked into bing. I can bookmark google.com or duckduckgo.com but default/quick searches go through bing. (Google.com redirects to google.ca which drives me crazy sometimes.) I'd bet the majority of bing traffic comes from such workplaces.
I'd agree with you on that bet. I stumbled onto that revelation when I was running PPC campaigns for B2B software. Bing is a hidden goldmine when it comes to that demographic, thanks to the captive market and the fact that essentially all marketing agencies blatantly ignore Bing's existence so there's no keyword competition.
Mozilla missed the opportunity to regain some of their authentic voice with this announcement. “This is part of our ongoing search strategy, announced in 2014 to evaluate and select the best search experience in each region as opposed to having a single global default.” is revisionist. I worked on a competing browser, Flock, in 2005 and Mozilla already had a strong and wonderful commitment to use the (local) best sea…
There was never any real commitment to the "best" search engine in a region. Mozilla has been paid by Google to be the default search since 2004.
Shortened title is misleading: Firefox Features Google as Default Search Provider... "in the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan" EDIT title updated (within HN title length constraints, I guess), thanks admins :)
It's already the default in Europe from what I've seen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was never any real commitment to the "best" search engine in a region. Mozilla has been paid by Google to be the default search since 2004.
How do you reconcile your claim with the fact that Yandex has been the default search engine in the Russian localization of Firefox for years?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you reconcile your claim with the fact that Yandex has been the default search engine in the Russian localization of Firefox for years?
Google paid Mozilla to be the default search engine in the United States.
So Mozilla backed out of their 5-year contract with Yahoo then [1]. Do they have a new agreement with Google that I'm not seeing anywhere? [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-an...
My guess is the other way around: Yahoo backed out of their contract with Mozilla. The biggest difference for either of these companies this year is that Verizon now owns Yahoo, and probably doesn't want to pay for search market share. If the deal's a yearly cost or something similar, the bill's coming up in December.
There will likely be some people errantly suggesting this is due to search quality. It is not. Yahoo previously outbid Google approximately three years ago for that default search offering, and it's likely their arrangement has come to an end. One of Mozilla's strongest sources of funding comes from selling the default search engine spot to the highest bidder. EDIT: As an interesting note: Yahoo's deal was for five y…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it changed a long time ago. It used to be instead of the magnifying glass icon it had the icon of the current search provider. Then you could click a drop down and change it at any time, and it would stay there until you changed it again.
So it's still there, it just doesn't prominently feature search engine branding at rest.