Yahoo to replace Google as Firefox's default search engine Wednesday Nov 19,2014

 

Yahoo will supplant Google's search engine on Firefox's Web browser in the US, signalling Yahoo's resolve to regain some of the ground that it has lost in the most lucrative part of the Internet's ad market.

The 5-year alliance announced Wednesday Nov 19,2014 will end a decade-old partnership in the US between Google and the Mozilla Foundation, which oversees the Firefox browser.

Yahoo Inc. CEO Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive, hailed the Firefox agreement as Yahoo's most significant partnership since forging the Microsoft deal in 2009

"We believe deeply in search - it's an area of investment and opportunity for us,"

Besides dropping Google in the U.S., Mozilla is also shifting Firefox to Baidu's search engine in China and Yandex in Russia. Firefox users still have the option to pull down a tab to pick Google and other search engines as their preferred way for looking up information online. 

Google's current contract with Mozilla expires at the end of this month, opening an opportunity for Yahoo to pounce.

Even though Chrome is now more widely used, Firefox still has a loyal audience that makes more than 100 billion worldwide search requests annually