New Search Strategy for Firefox

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/yahoo-and-mozilla-form-strategic-partnership/

by Osmose • 12 years ago

430 338 12 years ago

blog.mozilla.org

s4sharpie• 12 years ago

Looks like a smart move by Yahoo to be the default search for a major browser: google/chrome, bing/ie. This also means that Firefox will likely get some serious support from Yahoo in $$s to build back market share. Question is can they catch Google?

huhtenberg2• 12 years ago

Don't forget though that Yahoo Search runs off Bing.

chuhnk2• 12 years ago

But for how long? They've reached the mid-point on the Bing deal. Yahoo has been working on two search projects internally. They want to own search once again.

mightykan2• 12 years ago

It'll be very interesting to see what this does to Bing's marketshare in six months or so, since Yahoo's search runs through Bing.

Although we might never find out, I'm very curious to find out the terms of the deal. Did Yahoo pay more? What about Microsoft? Were MS as motivated since they, essentially had two horses in the race (Bing and Yahoo) vs. Google? Lots of fun little details.

Edit: Typos

graeme• 12 years ago

It'll be very interesting to see what this does to Bing's marketshare in six months or so, since Yahoo's search runs through Bing.

Does Yahoo do their own tweaks? I just checked my site's ranking for a few terms in Bing vs. Yahoo. Bing gave much the same results as Google, whereas my site ranked significantly worse in Yahoo.

capkutay• 12 years ago

"Question is can they catch Google?"

I don't think so...but maybe in Yahoo's next 3 or 4 earnings reports they can say 'search revenues are up 50% this quarter' which will boost their stock price and lead to financial articles titled 'Will $YHOO kill $GOOG?'

fhd22• 12 years ago

Question is can they catch Google?

I suppose they could, if they went for the same questionable bundling [1] and SEO [2] tactics as Google :)

Adding to that the fact that Google occasionally promotes Chrome on their various products (search engine et. al.), they haven't been particularly fair all in all. I doubt Mozilla will go that low, and I doubt they could gain significant ground even if they did.

[1] https://blog.avast.com/2009/12/03/avast-and-google-chrome

[2] https://plus.google.com/+MattCutts/posts/NAWunDzJSHC

MLR• 12 years ago

I hadn't thought about it before, but I wonder if Yahoo would be willing to front a Firefox advertising campaign across its portals; similar to how Google used to (stil does?) promote Chrome across its own properties.

briholt• 12 years ago

Anyone have any insights into this? From the outside it looks like Mozilla is parting ways with Google because of Chrome. Interesting they went with Yahoo and not Bing.

dragonwriter9• 12 years ago

Anyone have any insights into this? From the outside it looks like Mozilla is parting ways with Google because of Chrome.

Looks more like Mozilla is parting ways with Google because of money -- whether Yahoo! offering more than Google has in the past or Google offering less.

(Though, looking at historical usage share measures, there's a good argument that if Google is offering less, its likely because Chrome eclipsing Firefox -- and by some measures IE -- has reduced the value of default search placement in Firefox.)

gcp12• 12 years ago

if Google is offering less, its likely because Chrome eclipsing Firefox -- and by some measures IE -- has reduced the value of default search placement in Firefox

Yahoo is looking at the same marketshare numbers, so that actually can't be the reason.

ngokevin4• 12 years ago

Mozilla is parting ways with Google because it is in line with their values, to promote choice and show that the web is for everyone.

Although it may seem so from the outside, the whole Firefox vs. Chrome rivalry is blown out of proportion. Many people at Mozilla are happy that there is choice in what browser you can use, instead of the IE monopoly there used to be.

blumkvist3• 12 years ago

What's interesting about it? Microsoft killed the company which mozilla originated from. And they were created for the sole purpose not to let Microsoft has a monopoly on the gateway to the Internet...

ExpiredLink• 12 years ago

they were created for the sole purpose not to let Microsoft has a monopoly on the gateway to the Internet...

Created by Google. People often forget (or don't know) that Microsoft's IE once almost had a browser monopoly. Many online applications accepted only IE as browser. Surprisingly, Microsoft did not fight hard to keep the monopoly and even dissolved their team of IE developers. Google and 'their' Firefox took the opportunity. I never understood why Google created their own browser instead of tightening their already strong relationship to Mozilla.

Contrary to most opinions here, I think that Mozilla's decision is more likely the beginning of the end than a promising "strategic partnership".

blumkvist3• 12 years ago

What's interesting about it? Microsoft killed the company which mozilla originated from. \

jfoster3• 12 years ago

I don't have any internal knowledge, but I would like to point out that it can be more than one thing.

There's Chrome, in competition with Firefox, Mozilla's core business. There's also Google increasingly looking like a search monopoly, whereas Mozilla's mission is to "promote choice and innovation on the Internet." There's also the fact that Google are now feeling so secure about their grip on search that they were looking to reduce the amount they were paying to Mozilla in their partnership.

Individually, perhaps none of the reasons was quite enough for Mozilla to ditch their partnership with Google, but combined, it makes a whole lot of sense.

pwnna2• 12 years ago

One question: wasn't Yahoo supposed to be a part of Bing at some point?

metzman• 12 years ago

I think they made a deal that Yahoo search results would be provided by bing

acdha• 12 years ago

Yahoo has used Bing's search infrastructure for awhile but they've kept the independent front-end and, based on my logs, some level of crawling, presumably to keep their options open so they could switch in the future.

dec0dedab0de7• 12 years ago

I think yahoo is/was sending off search results to Bing. A long time ago they used to send them to Google. Before that they would refer to themselves as a web directory, not a search engine. And WAYY before that every result page had a link to search on different sites, web crawler, lycos, maybe even google my memory is kind of fuzzy.

The point is that Yahoo cares more about getting people to their portal, not so much what technology it happens to be using.

mightykan2• 12 years ago

When Microsoft failed to purchase Yahoo to $47.5bn billion in 2008, they reached a 10-year deal in 2009 for Yahoo to use Bing's infrastructure and "backend" for search [1]. Yahoo provides their own UI/UX and Microsoft provides the actual data.

So, technically, Firefox will be showing very similar (if not identical) results to Bing.

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8174763.stm

AshleysBrain• 12 years ago

Does this mean Yahoo outbid Google for being the new default search? How much is the deal worth? What about outside the US?

gcp12• 12 years ago

Outside the US it's Yandex and Baidu for their respective locales.

fpgeek2• 12 years ago

Um, there's more to the world outside the US than Russia and China...

agapos• 12 years ago

Doesn't that mean that Google giving up on one of the biggest markets means they no longer need Mozilla and it can ditch it's support altogether? Will Yahoo be able to support Moz as Google did? Will this became precedence for other countries too (aside from exceptions like Russia's yandex)?

todesschaf2• 12 years ago

You're assuming Google gave up on Mozilla, and not the other way around. Your assumption is incorrect.

sp3322• 12 years ago

I'd swear this happened already... I updated Firefox on an old Android tablet yesterday and the default search was already switched to Yahoo. Edit: ah, now that you mention it, it was a Beta version.

cpeterso6• 12 years ago

Firefox for Android has been testing Yahoo as the default search engine for a few months. Mozilla's search deal with Google did not cover mobile browsers. Firefox OS uses Bing.

soapdog• 12 years ago

Firefox OS does not use Bing. It used Bing a long time ago but all consumer devices are set to Google these days.

mythmon_9• 12 years ago

Pre-release versions (Beta, Aurrora, Nightly) on Android have been running experiments with Yahoo for a while.

dec0dedab0de7• 12 years ago

The real question is did Google stop paying? did Yahoo offer way more? Or did Mozilla want to break out from Google's shadow?

Edit: I mean to say did Google decide to end it, or did Mozilla, and why?

lzecon• 12 years ago

Yup, they didn't renew the google contract

potch• 12 years ago

Mozilla was the one who decided not to renew.

mnemonik2• 12 years ago

All of the potential partnerships (including going with Google again) offered an improvement economically over the last deal partnership.

Mozilla chose not to go with Google again.

mythmon_9• 12 years ago

Mozilla's deal with Google ran it's course. Instead of inking a new deal with Google, Mozilla decided to go with another option.

ngokevin4• 12 years ago

There was a strong option in place from Google, but Mozilla decided not to go with them as a global default in order to promote choice.

anExcitedBeast• 12 years ago

I don't think I follow this argument. Can you explain it further? It feels like Yahoo probably just offered more money.

MichaelGG2• 12 years ago

If Mozilla wanted to promote choice, why not present the user with an option of some sort? I fail to see how picking s default provider counts as "choice".

victor27• 12 years ago

Curious - do people here view the Yahoo! Search Experience to be better or worse than Google Search?

mythmon_9• 12 years ago

This is kind of a moot point. If you read the article carefully, you'll notice that Yahoo will be bringing "a new, re-imagined Yahoo search experience to Firefox users in the U.S"

cpeterso6• 12 years ago

"a new, re-imagined Yahoo search experience to Firefox users in the U.S"

I wonder if or how Yahoo's "re-imagined" search experience will be affected for non-Firefox users.

UPDATE: Yahoo's press release says their "clean, modern, and immersive search experience that will launch first to Firefox’s U.S. users in December and then to all Yahoo users in early 2015."

http://yahoo.tumblr.com/1313

jonknee• 12 years ago

That's just corporate non-sense. It will be Bing's results with a different stylesheet and different set of ads.

huhtenberg2• 12 years ago

Here's the option to suppress the change - http://i.imgur.com/HwHqQU9.png

chuckharmston2• 12 years ago

It's worth noting that Google isn't disappearing from Firefox; you will still be able to manage your search engines as you have before.

Ntrails2• 12 years ago

But not in the "new tab" page I assume?

aluhut• 12 years ago

I was already unchecked in mine.

sp3322• 12 years ago

Clicking the search drop-down and picking the engine you want takes even less time.

mbrubeck10• 12 years ago

I'm not sure that will affect this. I believe that's for updates to user-installed search engines, which are distributed and updated separately from the browser. Default search engines are part of the browser code itself, so they update when the application does.

Note that Google will still be included as an option, so all you need to do is click on the search box icon to choose it.

(I'm an occasional Firefox contributor and I once worked on the search engine and add-on manager code a little bit, but I'm not an expert so take this with a grain of salt.)

andrewl-hn• 12 years ago

Note that is affects only U.S.-based users of Firefox. Good move for both parties, and I hope they can struck deals with regional search engines in other locations as well. Diversification is good for everybody.

y0ghur7_xxx2• 12 years ago

I too think that diversity helps: google has a monopoly in search, and a push for yahoo in search queries may even help them make the search engine better, and maybe they will become a much needed google competitor.

freehunter• 12 years ago

Does Yahoo still operate a search engine? I thought they used Bing.

cpeterso6• 12 years ago

Mozilla and Google have been "frenemies" for a while. Now that Firefox is no longer supporting Google's search monopoly, I wonder how Google's search traffic (and stock price) will look in six months. I think Mozilla's decision is good for increasing search competition.

rdl2• 12 years ago

This makes me less likely to use Mozilla, but I was already a Chrome or Safari user (despite supporting the Mozilla mission).

Seems like a bad decision for Mozilla.

cpeterso6• 12 years ago

Yahoo will just replace Google as the default search engine for Firefox users in the US. Like Yahoo and Bing in today's Firefox, Google will still be an option.

mythmon_9• 12 years ago

Why does this make you less likely to use Firefox? The default search engine is just that: the default. You can change it to something else, and always have been able to. If you care enough to know what search engine you use, you should be able to change it.

dingaling• 12 years ago

You can change it to something else, and always have been able to.

You can't change the default search engine in Firefox for Android, at least through the UI. And mobile is a high-frequency user of search, which makes that decision even more interesting.

callahad• 12 years ago

Why would this be a bad decision, or make you less likely to use Firefox? Mozilla exists in large part due to the abuses that come with monopolistic control over the Internet. Google is dangerously close to that line.

Choosing a different partner seems like the most mission-aligned option for Mozilla.

rdl2• 12 years ago

Making the product worse, from the perspective users care about, for ideals.

FF, for instance, made their multi-browser "sync" horribly complicated for users, to preserve zero knowledge, which is the opposite of what 99% of users wanted.

Chrome made it simple (and THEN added a fairly decent ZK option buried in advanced).

What makes Mozilla/Firefox relevant is having enough users that it can't be ignored. Mozilla is already increasingly irrelevant due to mobile (Firefox OS is nice promise, but Safari and Chrome are dominating the space); marginalizing their desktop product doesn't help.

bad_user2• 12 years ago

That doesn't make sense.

You can switch the default search engine if you want, you can choose between them, you can even add keywords for fast access so "g query" searches on Google and "s query" searches on StackOverflow (I don't really get why DuckDuckGo users prefer their queries to go through DDG). Like open Firefox, go to StackOverflow.com, highlight their search input, right click and choose "Add Keyword for this Search". That's what power users are doing.

Plus Firefox has the Awesome Bar which has brought me back to it after using Chrome for some time - as it does a great job of doing full-text searches in your history if you only remember a word or two in the title. By comparison Chrome wants you to do searches on Google and that's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

As for the move to Yahoo! - well, whatever keeps them doing the awesome work that they are doing. Plus people bitched and moaned about Mozilla being dependent on Google's cash flow. Apparently not.

Myself, I'll try it out (haven't been using Yahoo! in a long time) and if it doesn't work out then that's OK, I'll just switch back to Google, though DDG is starting to grow on me.

andreastt2• 12 years ago

The correct link is https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-an.... Seems the link was changed.

Osmose3• 12 years ago

They're separate posts, I hadn't seen that one until you shared it. I think it's a better article than this one, and would be happy if a mod changed the link and title. :D

andreastt2• 12 years ago

Oh, my mistake entirely.

tn132• 12 years ago

It is hard to figure out what a "strategic partnership" really means at the moment but ..

- I hope this strategic partnership does not mean 0 organic search results above the fold. That is what Yahoo is doing at the moment. - I hope FF does not come up with any Yahoo spyware/Toolbars etc.

Search is a weird thing on internet.

ngokevin4• 12 years ago

I don't believe that will be the case. I personally believe Yahoo can step up and deliver an improved search experience.

mnemonik2• 12 years ago

More details, Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China, etc.

nnethercote6• 12 years ago

Some more details:

* This is a new, more flexible partnership strategy.

* Continuing the existing relationship with Google was an option, but Mozilla chose to end the Google relationship.

* All the options Mozilla considered had strong, improved economic terms (but the concrete numbers are not public). Because all the options had improved economics, that allowed Mozilla to really consider the strategic outlook.

* The Yahoo agreement in the US is for five years.

* Yahoo will be rolling out a new, improved search tool soon.

* Mozilla has agreements with Yandex and Baidu for Russia and China.

* Google will remain an included option in Firefox and Mozilla will continue to support its use.

chuckharmston2• 12 years ago

Some details of the new Yahoo experience are available on their corporate Tumblr: http://yahoo.tumblr.com/1313

mbrubeck10• 12 years ago

Note: nnethercote is a Mozilla employee (as am I). These details are straight from the horse's mouth (dino's mouth?).

olssy• 12 years ago

As long as the horse is in the house, has Mozilla ever given any thought to creating its own search service?

ChuckMcM• 12 years ago

Nice. Sometimes watching the search business is like watching "Game of Thrones".

yohui2• 12 years ago

How does promoting Yandex and Baidu in regions where they are already dominant (Russia and China, respectively) align with Mozilla's new mission? I'm not sure how entrenching their hold on their home markets promotes user choice, innovation, or privacy.

dec0dedab0de7• 12 years ago

At least it provides diversity of income for Mozilla.

gcp12• 12 years ago

Because it prevents the worldwide biggest search provider from eventually also taking over those remaining holdouts?

eatitraw• 12 years ago

What should they do in Russia? Help the second biggest player, which is Google? :)

Although TBH, in Russia there are mail.ru(with their search engine) and sputnik.ru (a search engine funded by company called Rostelekom. The majority of it is owned by state/government).

wodenokoto6• 12 years ago

Nowhere does it say that Mozillas new mission is to break up market dominant players.

Their new search strategy is to globally have more search partners than before, while continueing to serve regions with default search that are good/best for that region.

There is no doubt that Baidu gives better result than Google for most Chinese users. I dont know much about Yandex, but Im sure they have a better grasp of the Russian users than Google does right now and thus provides better service.

justinschuh• 12 years ago

Will the settings be changed for existing users, or only for new installs?

eamsen• 12 years ago

The new default search engine is changing, so if you are using the current default engine for your country (Google in the US), then your search engine will change to the new default (Yahoo in the US). It will not affect users who are not using the default search engine.

jlebar• 12 years ago

I'm getting 500 errors. Google cache:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:oALd2oT...

Osmose3• 12 years ago

FYI blog.mozilla.org is down, IT people are working on it.

DevX101• 12 years ago

This is why Google built Chrome. Google's strategy has been to remove the layers between the user's intent to search and Google's own server. Every intermediate layer that Google does not control is a risk to their business.

When viewed through these lens, many of the seemingly ancillary Google business units start to make strategic sense. Android (control the device), Chrome (control the browser), Fiber (control the tubes).

Each of these channels is an opportunity for disruption by some competitor search engine and Google wants to make sure they don't get blindsided. Or one of the gateways could demand a massive tribute for Google to pass through (cable companies are pushing for this via the war against net neutrality).

If Google didn't have Chrome and Firefox was the leading browser, they'd be in big trouble with this news. Lucky for them they thought about this a long time ago and built a browser which now accounts for 50% of market share.

Yahoo NEEDS this deal. For Google, it's a nice to have.

pillowpants2• 12 years ago

You forgot Google Glass (control the eyes).

threeseed• 12 years ago

From all indications Google Glass is being shifted towards being an enterprise product e.g. helping people pack shelves.

So in this case it doesn't really apply.

chrischen• 12 years ago

Yes maybe through polarized lenses that filter out all their failed products.

math0ne2• 12 years ago

If google didn't have chrome they would have just paid FF whatever was necessary to remain the main search partner.

gcp12• 12 years ago

It's also possible they'd be looking at a stronger and for them untouchable IE->Bing marketshare instead.

bad_user2• 12 years ago

Every intermediate layer that Google does not control is a risk to their business.

Every intermediate layer that Google does control is also an opportunity for lock-in. Which is seriously starting to piss me off, as they are increasingly turning their back on open standards.

geekam3• 12 years ago

I remember I started moving out of Google's claws when they started pushing Google+ everywhere. Today my primary browser is Firefox, Search engine is DDG (with occassional Google search), Email is FastMail. The dependency on Google had started to annoy me.

haberman5• 12 years ago

As a Googler who cares very much about open standards, I don't think that assessment is fair or accurate.

Perdition• 12 years ago

I've refused to get into any Google product beyond GMail, YouTube, and search. I'm trying to ween myself off Google search and I block YouTube cookies (though I doubt that throws Googles behavioural monitoring off).

hrktb• 12 years ago

Yahoo's main business is not search, so I don't know how bad it needs it. Of course more money is always good, and Yahoo is not a super growing company,

Alaso, this is the same strategy that turned Google from "best buddy" to "arch rival" in the eyes of Apple and pushed Apple to have its own mapping service and offer other search options.

This is also the level of control that motivates people to try Duckduckgo, or switch to firefox.

In the end I think Google has a net win, but the reaction of the partner companies seems to be more negative than neutral.

groovecoder2• 12 years ago

Indeed - Yahoo is also powering Weather and Stocks apps on iOS. All the competition is good for everyone.

warbaker• 12 years ago

Yahoo's main business is its investments in Asian companies. It's a hedge fund with a side business in tech. It's not crazy for them to try to break out of that.

ke7ofi2• 12 years ago

I’m not sure why they haven’t made DDG the default yet.

enneff2• 12 years ago

This is why Google built Chrome.

Seriously? Do you remember what browsers were like before Chrome?

ricardobeat• 12 years ago

Maybe your memory is failing you, but FF and Safari were still great browsers when Chrome first came out. Chrome took over slowly because of constant improvement, it wasn't much different except for some technical details and clean UI.

mbrubeck10• 12 years ago

I'm a Firefox user and contributor, but I'm happy to agree that Chrome advanced (and continues to advance) the state of the art in all sorts of ways.

But that still doesn't explain why Google thinks that building a web browser is an important business for Google to be in, especially at an annual cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. To answer that question, you do need to look at how it intersects with Google's other businesses and revenue streams.

pcwalton2• 12 years ago

Safari and Firefox were (and are) pretty darn good. Given that Chrome used Safari's rendering engine, I wouldn't expect otherwise.

Shorel• 12 years ago

Yes, I used Opera back then.

Only Chrome finally made a faster/better/stronger browser.

ryanhuff• 12 years ago

The state of the browser market provided Google the opportunity to be successful with controlling more of the distribution channel. Its clear corporate strategy that when you depend on a small number of others to deliver your product (search), you are in a weaker strategic position. Google offering a high quality browser helps reduce risk. The same goes for Android with mobile search, maps, etc.

jfoster3• 12 years ago

It can be both. The opportunity was there because browsers weren't good. The incentive to make Chrome was that it improved both Google's defensive position (Microsoft couldn't make Bing #1 through force) & offensive position. (Google can tie search & Chrome together)

legohead• 12 years ago

You're giving Google way too much credit for forward thinking. Your rhetoric reeks of conspiracy theories. For one thing, Eric Schmidt was actually against building a browser.

spiralpolitik• 12 years ago

Every intermediate layer that Google does not control is a risk to their business.

Every intermediate layer that Google does not control is less access to information that they can use to build an advertising profile on you. Hence their strategy of attempting to control the network edges to gain as much visibility as possible (see Chrome, Android, Google Fiber etc).

contingencies• 12 years ago

You forgot Gmail/Picasa/Google Plus/Google Drive/Google Cloud/Youtube type services (control the server), Google Glass (control the user's visual conception).

hessenwolf• 12 years ago

So, Google is pursuing vertical integration.

Mahn• 12 years ago

If Google didn't have Chrome and Firefox was the leading browser, they'd be in big trouble with this news.

One could argue Mozilla wouldn't necessarily consider switching if Google wasn't in the browser market at all, though. Much like Apple wouldn't have dropped Google Maps from iOS if it wasn't for Android.

throwawaymoz4• 12 years ago

(throwaway account)

While I believe the party line is probably true ("Mozilla decided not to go with Google"), it's also disingenuous.

Mozilla chose not to go with Google because Google wasn't willing to pay what they were before. They straight up told Mozilla this 3 years ago when they signed the billion dollar contract; Mozilla had 3 years to become profitable. That's why they switched focus to FirefoxOS; they thought that by now they'd be profitable via selling phones and the app store. (At the time, Bing was bidding against Google, however Mozilla went with the smaller check from Google because they knew using Bing would seem like selling out.)

For the record, Google made billions off being Firefox's default search engine. They paid Firefox $300mil a year for three years, but that was only a small fraction of how much Google profited from Firefox searches. Not sure if it's still true, but three years ago they made more from Firefox than they did from Chrome.

So, yes, Mozilla could have gone with Google still. It's not like Google said "nope, you can't use us as the default!". However, they went with Yahoo! because Google wasn't willing to pay what Mozilla needed. The whole "Mozilla picked Yahoo! to enable choice" has been tweeted by every Mozillian I know (and said multiple times in this thread), but it's a meaningless statement. If they really meant that, you'd be prompted when you opened Firefox the first time to pick a search engine.

dragonwriter9• 12 years ago

For the record, Google made billions off being Firefox's default search engine. They paid Firefox $300mil a year for three years, but that was only a small fraction of how much Google profited from Firefox searches. Not sure if it's still true, but three years ago they made more from Firefox than they did from Chrome.

Google doesn't really make money from Firefox or Chrome (the browser), per se (except insofar as Chrome increases the value of things that Google does sell that include it, like Chromebooks, Nexus devices, etc.), it makes money from searches, whether default or not. 3 years ago, sure, more searches -- to Google or any other search provider -- came from Firefox than Chrome because Firefox had more usage share than Chrome. That's rather dramatically reversed since then.

throwawaymoz4• 12 years ago

Don't forget that Chrome users are more tech savvy on average than Firefox users, meaning they click ads less.

zobzu6• 12 years ago

which is the point. they get money through firefox/chrome. if they didnt have the firefox search deal, then a lot - lot - lot - less money.

gcp12• 12 years ago

They straight up told Mozilla this 3 years ago when they signed the billion dollar contract; Mozilla had 3 years to become profitable

Source? Sounds like total bullshit because the default search provider obviously gets traffic, which drives ad revenue, from the browser vendors. Why would they need alternate revenue streams, let alone those be required by a search vendor? That does not make any sense.

However, they went with Yahoo! because Google wasn't willing to pay what Mozilla needed. The whole "Mozilla picked Yahoo! to enable choice" has been tweeted by every Mozillian I know (and said multiple times in this thread), but it's a meaningless statement

It is possible Mozilla choose Yahoo because they outbid Google. But economically, that seems questionable. What is not questionable is that this change will drive a lot of users to alternate search engines.

nnethercote6• 12 years ago

Mozilla chose not to go with Google because Google wasn't willing to pay what they were before.

I was at the internal Mozilla meeting where this was announced (about an hour ago), and Chris Beard (Mozilla's CEO) said very clearly that all the options this time around were economically stronger than the current Google deal.

Maybe that's not true and you have better information than I do, but since you're posting anonymously it's hard to know.

Yoric10• 12 years ago

Is there any monetary reason to pick many search providers instead of just Google? This is possible, your guess is as good as mine. Regardless, I believe that not going with Google is a very sound strategy. If Mozilla has the choice between an alliance with a competitor with overwhelming firepower and whose clear interest is making Mozilla obsolete and an underdog with an interest in growing along with Mozilla, why pick the competitor?

Also, regarding your comment on FirefoxOS: I don't know where you heard that Mozilla expected to support itself through Firefox OS / Firefox Marketplace revenue, but I never heard anybody claiming this (I work at Mozilla). The main reason to introduce Firefox OS was (and still is) to promote openness on the mobile world (i.e. "wrestle duoplogy from Apple and Google"), just as Mozilla/Phoenix/Firefox was introduced to promote openness on the web (i.e. "wrestle monopoly from Microsoft").

Edit: clarifications.

kibwen3• 12 years ago

I also see FirefoxOS as Mozilla's long-shot hedge against the spectre of walled gardens. With first iOS and then WinRT disallowing third-party browsers, a world dominated by locked-down platforms would be a death sentence for Firefox.

gsnedders3• 12 years ago

It's worthwhile to note that Yandex are, in principle, also a competitor. (They ship their own branded version of Chromium; I'm not sure what level it's built at, whether it's just a different theme and some minor additions, or built from scratch on the Chromium Content API. It is, however, frequently out of date and with known security issues, le sigh…)

kibwen3• 12 years ago

Philosophy doesn't put food on the table, so I have no doubt that this deal was motivated by more than a desire to increase choice. But that doesn't necessarily mean that philosophy and financial strategy are in opposition, or that decisions cannot be sought which strike a balance between both (although generally I wouldn't begrudge them if they favored the latter; see my first sentence).

In any case, Mozilla is a public nonprofit and releases public financial statements every year. Even if the numbers regarding this deal aren't public now, they will be by the end of the next fiscal year.

cpeterso6• 12 years ago

If Mozilla didn't "pick Yahoo! to enable choice", why didn't Yahoo pay for default search placement in all regions? Russia, China, and other countries will have different default search engines.

bjz_4• 12 years ago

If they can successfully juggle marketing a good 'party line' and be holding onto their core values and be looking out for their bottom line all at the same time, then I have much more confidence in Mozilla's long term viability going forward. Mozilla's continuing existence is of huge importance to the free and open internet, and this announcement certainly gives me hope that they will do so for at least several more years. Good on them!

hackuser2• 12 years ago

I understand you want to remain anonymous, but care to give us a clue about your credibility? Do you work for Mozilla? Google?

zobzu6• 12 years ago

Given his comment i can say he works for Mozilla or worked for Mozilla or have good contacts there. What he wrote is 100% truth as far as I'm concerned. (i have good friends at Mozilla myself and that echo their exact words from 3 y ago)

gorhill2• 12 years ago

They paid Firefox $300mil a year for three years

Mozilla's 990 forms are public. For 2012 I see a bit more than $9 million in revenue, of which $5.4 million came from contributions [1]. "$300mil a year" makes no sense -- unless there is something I don't know about how non-profits are supposed to report their revenue.

[1] https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2012_Mozilla_Form_...

bzbarsky2• 12 years ago

There's a difference between the Mozilla Corporation and the Mozilla Foundation. The latter owns the former. Revenue for the former is not revenue for the latter, though dividend payments from the former to the latter are revenues for the latter.

The Form 990 is for the Foundation. You probably want to look at https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi... instead, since that includes the subsidiary Mozilla Corporation. Page number 4 (sixth page of the PDF), the "Revenues and other support" table.

zobzu6• 12 years ago

You may be right (hint) - but that doesn't change the outcome and why Mozillians are retweeting that it enables choice. It actually does.

Thanksfully a company is more than a CEO, CTO, and Legal affairs. In this case the mission matters more than a temporary set of positions - I would think. And either choice wasn't bad for the mission - in fact, more money so that employees can still be paid is probably a smart choice.

Thus you're complaining about the non-openeness about the decision and the slightly twist of words - and that's fair. But again, it may not matter that much.

justinreeves• 12 years ago

They straight up told Mozilla this 3 years ago when they signed the billion dollar contract; Mozilla had 3 years to become profitable.

Wait, why does Google care if Mozilla is profitable?

discardorama• 12 years ago

Mozilla had 3 years to become profitable.

Mozilla is a non-profit. This doesn't make sense. Google was paying $300M/year to Mozilla, and I seriously doubt that Mozilla's expenses would be more than that. Most of the work is done by unpaid coders anyways; they don't need vast teams of sales people selling Mozilla, it sells by itself.

neurobro• 12 years ago

Mozilla Corporation is a taxable entity owned by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. The tax system in the US apparently doesn't take kindly to non-profits funding open-source projects because they "can" be used commercially. e.g. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/open-source-madness

$300 million revenue with ~1,000 employees is about $300,000/employee. Pretty good but no guarantee of profitability.

throwaway863434• 12 years ago

Mozilla Corporation--the wholly-owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation and that has gutted Mozilla into a support community that's as organic and empowered as the support communities for any other pseudo-grassroots company--is absolutely a for-profit company.

Most of the work is done by unpaid coders anyways

The only proper response to this is "lol". If you did a comparison, the skew of Mozilla employee versus non-employee contributions would be even more stark than the respective ones from the stats for the Linux kernel that everyone bandies about all the time.

they don't need vast teams of sales people selling Mozilla, it sells by itself

Wish you could've got this through to Mozilla this when they were facing the prospects of looking for replacement for John Lilly and everybody seemed to be jumping ship to Facebook. They could've saved a ton of cash on the incompetent business folks they brought in and whose only contribution has been to shit on the Mozilla brand and to "other" the existing volunteer community.

Or are you on some sort of [delay](http://olduse.net/)?

_pius• 12 years ago

Note that Mozilla is making Yahoo reinstate support for Do-Not-Track, which it had dropped earlier this year.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2150981/yahoo-drops-do-not-tr...

mythmon_9• 12 years ago

Yahoo will only respect DNT for Firefox users. This is because DNT was essentially ruined after Microsoft turned DNT on by default in IE. Since it didn't represent an explicit user choice, it carried much less weight. It is an explicit choice in Firefox.

thezilch• 12 years ago

And how will they target only Firefox users? Should we expect IE to start masquerading as <insert Mozilla browser> again?

Ntrails2• 12 years ago

What if, and this is crazy I know, you needed an explicit action to track me instead of relying on users not knowing such a thing exists to avoid.

drdaeman14• 12 years ago

DNT was a terribly flawed idea anyway.

If you don't want to be tracked — just don't allow to track yourself. Make your digital fingerprint as indistinguishable as possible and don't persist anything for any longer that's required to work.

ihuman• 12 years ago

Haven't they done something like this before? I remember Yahoo promoting a Yahoo-branded Firefox. It's default search and homepage were Yahoo, and every titlebar had "Firefox and Yahoo" at the end instead of just "Firefox."

Yoric10• 12 years ago

Yeah, there was an experimental Firefox + Yahoo distro, for download on Yahoo's servers. There was also a Firefox + Bing distro, iirc.

kibwen3• 12 years ago

It's always seemed as though Google's and Mozilla's relationship would weaken over the years, though honestly I expected Bing rather than Yahoo to be the one to step up and fill Google's shoes. Also surprising is that apparently Mozilla was the one to initiate the switch.

As a Firefox user, all in all I'm rather pleased. I've just tried a few of my typical searches on Yahoo and though the expected links aren't the top results (seeing links for Rust-the-game instead of Rust-the-language...), they're on the first page. Let's see if that improves with time as I use it more. And I'm happy to support some more diversity in this space.

nnethercote6• 12 years ago

The new Yahoo search that's coming soon is meant to be much better. So I suggest you reserve your judgment until then :)

modeless• 12 years ago

Is it still based on Bing?

riffraff• 12 years ago

isn't yahoo search powered by bing anyway?

tempestn• 12 years ago

It uses the Bing index, but there are at least some differences in how it retrieves and prioritizes results. (If you run the same search on yahoo and bing, even with fresh cookies, you won't normally get identical results.)

Yahoo may do some spidering of their own as well, although not to my knowledge. I know at least the above is true though. Also as an aside the Yahoo BOSS API is significantly more powerful than the comparable Azure Bing web search API. Unfortunately, they also just doubled the access price this month.

dec0dedab0de7• 12 years ago

honestly I expected Bing

That would have been a twist that noone in 2001 would have seen coming.

bjz_4• 12 years ago

As a long time Mozilla lover, I have been quite concerned about their dependence on Google for quite some time now. I'm really thankful that they have had the courage to cut ties. Must have been a scary decision.

digitalnalogika• 12 years ago

What will be the default engine in countries not listed in post? It is not exactly clear, apart from saying that Google will be pre-installed (but not default?).

sroerick2• 12 years ago

Mozilla is making some major moves these days. They've ditched Google as their main revenue source, partnering with Tor and Yahoo.

Yahoo is angling to be a digital magazine, which I like as a business model much more than Google's.

Firefox is making a strong case for itself as the privacy centric browser.

I still remember when Firefox started gaining market share. Even non-tech-savvy people were getting firefox, because IE was so bad for security, and so hard to maintain.

Excited to see what the next few months brings.

joosters3• 12 years ago

I thought that Google was still far and away their main revenue source?

mbrubeck10• 12 years ago

It has been for the last three years, but Mozilla decided to go with Yahoo/Yandex/Baidu rather than renew the deal with Google. So Yahoo (and others) will replace Google as the main revenue source.

nnethercote6• 12 years ago

Not any more. That's exactly what this story is about! :)

blumkvist3• 12 years ago

Yahoo is angling to be a digital magazine, which I like as a business model much more than Google's.

not sure if srs

drdaeman14• 12 years ago

Firefox is making a strong case for itself as the privacy centric browser.

They try their best to market themselves as a privacy-centric browser. To promote themselves as so they add some shiny things like making clearing browser history a two mouse clicks more accessible. But I'm still worried.

I'm really nitpicking but... That 3rd party cookie controversy that lasted for almost an year, the "oh, we're full of FLOSS ideals and are firmly against DRM but... hey, wait, users want Netflix, gotta support DRM" controversy, the recent "sponsored tiles" controversy, the update of over-engineered and undocumented proprietary Firefox Sync/Accounts that makes it even harder to not depend on their servers, the complete ignorance on TLS client certificates' UI and usability (which is why we're still stuck with passwords), the BrowserID/Persona thingy that happily continued the trend that makes your identity owned by a third party, and so on. I know, it's not good to complain in such rude manner, but the issues do exist. Personally, I wouldn't really trust Firefox. Not without lots of addons, at least.

Unfortunately, I guess this can't be helped. A large project like Firefox seems to be impossible without steady and fairly big money income, and since this money comes from advertisers whose interests are in complete opposite of users' privacy, Mozilla just have to make some sacrifices.

Still, among the mainstream browsers they're better than competitors.

zaachary• 12 years ago

I'm not going to rebut each mischaracterization, but I did work on Persona, so:

the BrowserID/Persona thingy that happily continued the trend that makes your identity owned by a third party

Nah. You could happily choose any Identity Provider that implemented the protocol, including a self-hosted one.

nnethercote6• 12 years ago

You'll find some recently-announced privacy initiatives interesting:

* http://blog.mozilla.org/privacy/2014/11/10/introducing-polar...

* http://monica-at-mozilla.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/tracking-pr...

* http://blog.mozilla.org/nnethercote/2014/11/12/quantifying-t...

wodenokoto6• 12 years ago

Yes it sucks that Mozilla loses some battles, but you surely must understand that there are stronger players around the world and it is impossible to win every battle.

Firefox today is full of DRM features. They are called plug-ins. What theyre doing is cutting it down to one, secure plugin instead of a few insecure ones. Seems like a step up, though of course you can always wish for more. But again, stronger foes.

I still dont understand the controversy about the tiles. Everybody freaks out that a browser which take in more than 300 million dollars a year in advertisement is going to show an ad. I actually thought selling that space is a good idea. Why should Mozilla give away free traffic like that? They can still quality control the links.

Perfection is the enemy of good.

sogen• 12 years ago

Also let's remember the humble bundle, and the new Mozilla Developer Browser

jimmaswell• 12 years ago

Is this why Firefox mobile started using Yahoo as the default and I can't change it? I tried changing it and it just kept using Yahoo.

gcp12• 12 years ago

Yes and no. Changeable search engines were obviously a prerequisite for this kind of deal, and Yahoo was one of the first ones to offer the needed APIs (and IIRC, over HTTPS which was required by Mozilla).

Changing search engines can be done via Customize->Search->Installed search engines. Click the one you want and you'll get a popup offering to remove it or make it the default.

zobzu6• 12 years ago

I use mobile firefox as well and it switched to yahoo as well. i could change it back without any issue. i think they changed defaults - but if you had put your own engine yourself it didnt.

math0ne2• 12 years ago

For me at least then moving away from google is a huge selling point. I think if they marketed themselves as a googless web experience it could be really good for them.

drewda• 12 years ago

"Google will also continue to power the Safe Browsing and Geolocation features of Firefox."

It's disappointing to hear that Firefox isn't yet using Mozilla's location services project [1].

Background: These are the services that will, say, take the SSID of your current WiFI access point and map that to a latitude/longitude. My understanding is that almost all commercial users subscribe to Skyhook Wireless's database[2], other than Google, which has built its own WiFi AP maps using its StreetView trucks.

I think Mozilla's "open" service, contributed by individual users, is a welcome alternative, since it means you no longer have to send your location to a large corporation on every look-up.

[1] https://location.services.mozilla.com/

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skyhook_Wireless

gsnedders3• 12 years ago

It's almost certainly down to the fact the Mozilla project just doesn't have the coverage yet.

panabee• 12 years ago

google has been apple's greatest competitor for a while. apple has > $160B in cash. mobile bing is comparable to mobile google. the strategic value of weakening google seems to far outweigh the financial value of defaulting to google search (assuming google is willing to outbid microsoft). so why hasn't apple defaulted to bing yet, and when will it?

kevincox• 12 years ago

I'm really curious about the financial angle of this. I'm wondering how much was gained/lost based on the decision they made versus making a deal with Google for a similar system as in the past.

opinali2• 12 years ago

Yahoo! is OK, but... Yandex and Baidu are not exactly recommended company for an organization that pretends to hold the Open Web's moral higher ground. They practice large-scale censorship, they are instruments of repressive regimes. How does that make any sense?

mbrubeck10• 12 years ago

Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself.

hackuser2• 12 years ago

Note that Mozilla has had revenue arrangements with Yandex and Baidu previously. And Google doesn't exactly have clean hands in China itself.

What did Google do in China? I remember them pulling out of China, declining to participate further in censorship there, and being attacked (hacked) by the Chinese government. What am I forgetting?

opinali2• 12 years ago

As you mention with the Wikipedia ref, there was controversy with Google's early attempts to work in China. What happens here is that Google tried to do a "best-effort" service for Chinese users, with the assumption that partial service would be much better than no service (and certainly WAY better than what Chinese users get from their own web companies like Baidu, that not only enforce censorship but also report "bad users" to the government, actively help to spy on dissidents etc.--something Google never considered doing). The search UI would notify users that some results were excluded due to government-enforced restriction, which was at least transparent--and not unlike what Google has to do today in the EU with the "right to be forgotten" censorship. But this wasn't good enough for the PRC, their firewall would impose harsh punishment to users who tried to browse forbidden things; I don't remember details now but it was like: you try to search for certain words, you'd be cut off the internet and not only your IP but other people too. So in a later attempt, Google search tried to warn users in advance, with a customized Google Instant so the user could avoid submitting a "bad" query that could result in blocking. This idea didn't work because the firewall was quickly updated to crack down on it, and I think that was the last attempt, then Google desisted to fight this battle because any progress would clearly require too much compromising, more than could be justified by an attempt to provide a pragmatic, partial service.

[Disclaimer: Googler, but not especially intimate with the events above; none of this is internal info either, it's all widely reported stuff.]

inikulin2• 12 years ago

I'm completely against current behavior of the russian government and I use Google on daily basis. However, I can't see how Yandex should be considered to be the company "that practice large-scale censorship, they are instruments of repressive regimes"? This is a great company, which contributes both to open source and science (numerous collaborations with CERN, etc.). And it really tries to fight for the web freedom here in Russia, which involves a huge risk for their business. Speaking of censorship: I'm often see message regarding DMCA in Google search results, nearly never seen them in Yandex.

Grue3• 12 years ago

Because Yandex is based in Russia, it has no alternative but to share its data with the government. If you value your privacy, avoid using any Russian-based search engines or social networks if you live in Russia.

mrschwabe• 12 years ago

This seems like a positive step forward for Mozilla (away from Google) but there's no denying how much more awesome this announcement would have been if the new default search provider was DuckDuckGo :)

cwyers• 12 years ago

I can't get at the post, so maybe they answer this, but... in this thread, I'm seeing that it's Yahoo! in the U.S., Yandex in Russia, Baidu in China. That seems to leave... a lot of the globe unspoken for. What's the default search for those places?

fpgeek2• 12 years ago

I can get at the post and I also couldn't see anything about the default outside of US/Russia/China.

What makes this particularly interesting is the rest of the globe includes some of Firefox's strongest markets. My gut suggests this is obscure because Google will remain the default there, but that's just a guess.

EDIT: My gut seems to be wrong. The Yahoo post on this ( http://yahoo.tumblr.com/1313 ) mentions "the long-term framework we developed with Mozilla for future product integrations and expansion into international markets". I think that means Yahoo will end up being the default outside Russia and China, though the rollout may take some time.

tn132• 12 years ago

Honestly I dont see how this is a "choice". In fact this sounds exactly opposite of the choice. In this particular case Firefox has made the choice on our behalf that we are better off using Yahoo's crappy search results instead of market leader Google.

If you are making a browser which is focused on giving freedom to users you are supposed to :

1. Either let the users chose the search engine as an on-boarding step. 2. Offer industry best/leader as default.

In this particular case Firefox has made a suboptimal choice on our behalf in the name of "choice".

How exactly is this different from :

1. Comcast taking more money from Netflix to give them better bandwidth ?

Now my grandmother will end up seeing 0 organic search results above the fold and will have to learn to either change the search settings or simply use that icon with Red Green and Yellow around a blue dot (Chrome).

userbinator• 12 years ago

Mozilla are known for their doublespeak (best example to-date being https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...), but this is one of their more honest pieces - they are giving users a choice of search engines; nonetheless, I can see why the title rubs you the wrong way, and I'd also prefer the original one which was "Yahoo and Mozilla form Strategic Partnership".

bzbarsky2• 12 years ago

Now my grandmother will end up seeing 0 organic search results above the fold

Part of the deal is that Yahoo improves the presentation of search results so that this doesn't happen.

mcintyre1994• 12 years ago

To be blunt, where's the innovation in Yahoo! Search? They're using Bing data and the result page images in the article look like a clone of Google's.

spikels3• 12 years ago

Yikes I never realized Mozilla was so dependent on Google

  % of Revenue from Google Search Royalties:

  2013 Not released yet (usually 11 months! after end of year)
  2012 88% (90% of 304,539/311,005)
  2011 84% (85% of 161,904/163,474)
  2010 83% (84% of 121,109/123,206)
  2009 84% (86% of 101,537/104,305)
  2008 98% (91% of 83,600/77,737)
  2007 80% (88% of 68,238,803/75,125,640)
  2006 78% (85% of 61,561,496/66,840,850)
  2005 91% (95% of 50,516,268/52,906,602)

Sources:

2012 - https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi...

2011 - http://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundatio...

2010 - http://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundatio...

2009 - http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2009-audit...

2008 - http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2008-audit...

2007 - http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2007-audit...

2006 - http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2006-audit...

2005 - http://static.mozilla.com/foundation/documents/mf-2005-audit...

glomph• 12 years ago

Where else did you imagine their money coming from?

spikels3• 12 years ago

It's a non-profit serving the public interest so I had assumed donations from individuals and foundations would be a bigger source of revenue. It looks like they have collected less than $2.2 million in the 8 years covered by the financials. This is nothing for a organization that spent $150 million last year.

I hope they got a generous deal from Yahoo - who has a ton of Alibaba cash burning a hole in their pocket - but the fundamentals of a shrinking desktop advertising market and share don't look good.

patcon2• 12 years ago

Anyone interested in search engine alternatives should look into yacy! Its distributed and runs locally. You can share your node with others of you really want to help :)

agumonkey2• 12 years ago

It would be nice to have search engine keybindings too. Stupid example Ctrl+K Ctrl+<Initial> to pick an engine (hopefully not too many starts with the same letter).

Even better, hell revolutionary : multiple search at once. /s/m

Yoric10• 12 years ago

I do * Ctrl + L to use DDG (my default search engine); * Ctrl + L "go" to use Google; * Ctrl + L "tlf" to search in my dictionary; * etc.

To set this up, lookup the documentation of "keywords" in Firefox.

agumonkey2• 12 years ago

Pardon my french, but Dude, where did you learn about that ? I'm not the finest follower but I care about this kind of features and scroll through changelogs and missed this entirely. This is beautiful.

damn, the abstracted bookmark url is at least from 2006 http://www-archive.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html

#dumbfounded

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