Firefox 34 Launches with Yahoo as Its Default Search Engine

http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/01/firefox-34-launches-with-yahoo-as-its-default-search-engine/

by lettergram • 12 years ago

81 68 12 years ago

mmastrac• 12 years ago

The search change doesn't bother me at all -- Google search is just three (?) clicks away and it took zero effort to reset it for me.

What I was really looking forward to in this release was:

  - JS template strings: `Hello ${'world'}`
  - Direct jQuery event in the inspector

antihero• 12 years ago

For the former, there's this tiny little library that I use for everything:

https://github.com/davidchambers/string-format

monk_e_boy• 12 years ago

JS Template strings (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...):

Template strings are enclosed by the back-tick, `string text ${expression} string text`

  var a = 5;
  var b = 10;
  console.log(`Fifteen is ${a + b} and not ${2 * a + b}.`);
  // "Fifteen is 15 and not 20."

You can also 'tag' a template string:

  tag`Hello ${ a + b } world ${ a * b}`;

where the 'tag' is a preprocessor function.

unicornporn• 12 years ago

For you, yes. I work in an organisation with over 100000 non savvy users and I've not seen a single person that has successfully switched default search engine from Bing to Google in IE. They just complain about search "being bad".

_lce02• 12 years ago

why dont DuckDuckGo? IMHO it would be a better fit

themartorana• 12 years ago

Money.

Google splits advertising revenue with browsers that send users to Google (to some degree). Mozilla made a good deal of money from their relationship with Google, but for several reasons (that include Chrome and no payment for truly anonymous searches) Mozilla decided to jump ship - but they still need that sweet search $.

Yahoo! is likely paying well. I can't imagine DDG could come close to competing with the money Yahoo! or Google could pay.

geoka9• 12 years ago

no payment for truly anonymous searches

What's a "truly anonymous search"?

spikels• 12 years ago

I like DDG too but I bet thay can't afford to pay Mozilla enough to survive. Google was paying them close to $300 million. Hopefully Yahoo can afford something similar or Mozilla will need to cut back on spending.

Long-term given the switch to mobile where FireFox is almost nonexistent (and to a lesser degree their decline in desktop market share) they may need to cut back if they can't find new sources of funds.

dpcan2• 12 years ago

Serious question, what are they burning $300 mil on? AND, if they are getting $300 mil from Google every year, why on earth is it asking me for donations on my Firefox start tab?

To help answer my own question, Googled it. Got this:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2012/f...

tribaal• 12 years ago

Yahoo is only in the US. Baidu is now default in China, and Yandex in Russia, likely to have similar deals in place.

So instead of one source of income, they now have 3. And I don't see why people switching their search engines back to Google (with all the Europeans whose defaults don't change AFAIK) would not still generate revenue from Google.

I think it's a pretty wise move.

51Cards• 12 years ago

So effectively it's Bing results?

chadzawistowski• 12 years ago

Only for five more years.

frik2• 12 years ago

Yahoo web search is now powered by Bing, so yes.

what_ever• 12 years ago

Doesn't Yahoo just use Bing index but has own search engine running on top of it?

Larrikin• 12 years ago

The new search bar is in no way improved. I have to always keep in mind what my default search engine is now since they removed the icon, and I can no longer do multiple searches on a different search engine without having do a lot of extra clicking. Any way to fix it?

PetitPrince• 12 years ago

Use Yubnub or Duckduckgo as your search provider, and take advantage of the command line nature of Yubnub or the bang operators in DuckDuckGo.

__Joker• 12 years ago

Bang operator and "feeling lucky" search is one of the reason I started using DDG and I am happy with it. Google has removed the "feeling lucky" due to advertising reasons may be. Need to try out Yubnub.

conradfr• 12 years ago

I don't why but I never got the habit to use the search bar going all the way back to Phoenix. I guess I prefer clicking on a link and using a real website. On the other hand I LOVED the "Search [search engine] for [selected text]" in the context menu, which use the search engine selected in the search bar.

patresi• 12 years ago

And the old keyboard shortcuts to change search providers don't even work (ctrl+up & ctrl+down). Worst FF update in quite a while...

I imagine they only hid the icon so people don't know they're searching with Yahoo instead of Google...

shmerl3• 12 years ago

For some reason I don't see "Hello" client in the Linux version.

And I don't like the new search bar - it's too cluttered and not really useful for those who rely on DDG search bangs which offer way more direct search options and don't require mouse clicks.

You can revert the search bar to classic style by setting this key in about:config

    browser.search.showOneOffButtons = false

What could be good however if Firefox somehow could integrate DDG search bangs in the browser search bar itself. That would be awesome since it would save an extra trip to DDG. But that would require Mozilla to synchronize bangs list with DDG periodically.

ploxiln• 12 years ago

Isn't it funny, these "search bangs" were first available in browsers, way back around the time of firefox 1.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...

edit: better link http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

shmerl3• 12 years ago

Very interesting, I didn't know about this. But it's more manual (while DDG offers a huge list of predefined bangs already).

zidar• 12 years ago

These were nice, but you had to configure each one yourself. I had one for google and youtube, but that was it. With DDG, the bangs come quite nicely preconfigured.

carey• 12 years ago

The "Hello" client seems to be getting rolled out incrementally. You can force it by setting loop.throttled to false in about:config.

shmerl3• 12 years ago

I see, thanks for the tip. Is it because there is some load on Mozilla services with it?

Also I wonder what signalling protocol does it use on top of WebRTC.

broodbucket• 12 years ago

Try not to read the comments on this article, they're around YouTube quality.

vinothtimes• 12 years ago

this is bad move by mozilla ,

Iuz• 12 years ago

The best thing there is this one comment:

    "NOOOOOOOO.not that HORRID, irrelevant Yahoo? I may go back to , gulp, Google."

what.

mrmondo• 12 years ago

Poor move by Mozilla IMO - clearly a profit driven decision and not one in be best interest of their users.

hosay123• 12 years ago

Financial independence from a company that increasingly seems to be little more than an extension of US intelligence apparatus is very much in the best interest of their users

klipt• 12 years ago

Any information Google can be subpoenaed for, Yahoo can also be subpoenaed for.

ck2• 12 years ago

I don't get the yahoo search business model - aren't they just showing Bing results?

Didn't they retire all their indexing bots years ago?

For awhile they were the only contender to google with most of their search options and apis

wodenokoto2• 12 years ago

I wouldn't mind this if it would direct me to the new Yahoo search.

No, I am not in the US.

nikbackm2• 12 years ago

Looks like you now can sync saved passwords also if you have a master password set. Previously it was disabled in that case.

bad_user8• 12 years ago

The only thing I don't like about this is that I'm not seeing myself using Yahoo! for my searches, because I'm not living in the US and everything else I tried has poor local results. This is OK for me, because switching search engines is easy in Firefox.

However, this means that the searches I'm doing will not generate revenue for Mozilla anymore. And I feel bad about that. I hope they'll cut a deal with Google for Europe.

cpeterso• 12 years ago

How much worse are Yahoo! or Bing search results compared to Google in Europe? Is the problem that Yahoo! or Bing don't crawl enough European language sites?

bad_user8• 12 years ago

I'm a Romanian and speaking from personal experience, they are much, much worse.

For example I just searched for "restaurante" (the Romanian word for "restaurants"). Google gives me nearby restaurants in Google Maps plus links to Romanian guides to restaurants, whereas Yahoo is giving me the Spanish Wikipedia page for the Spanish definition as the first result (WTF!) and the results are complete bullshit. And look, DuckDuckGo is also returning the same bullshit (yes, even with regional searches turned on, I still get Spanish results): https://duckduckgo.com/?q=restaurante

I could think of other blunders, as whenever I tried using alternatives it's been very painful for me (i.e. fixing the individual example above won't solve my needs) and Google is also often able to infer what I want based on my profile. For example when I search for Ruby I get a different set of results than my wife does ;-)

You can say what you want about Google's privacy invading tactics, but their search results are really the best and if people wonder why they have a monopoly in search, well this is why.

hrvbr• 12 years ago

I don't like the French version of Bing. One of the reasons is that it assumes I'm monolingual. Like, if I search for a film, I'll get the result for Allociné instead of IMDb. I much prefer IMDb.

dagw• 12 years ago

Pretty terrible. I made an effort to try Bing and ddg a while back, and while it was good enough for searching for English language sites using English words, it fell down heavily when searching in Swedish.

I think the problem isn't just crawling, it's parsing. Google does a lot of clever stuff where it tries to understand the site and handle things like alternate spelling, synonyms and typos. From what I've seen Bing at least is far behind on this front for non-english sites and I don't know if they're even really trying.

MildlySerious• 12 years ago

As most others, I mostly use search when I know where I want to end up, but can't be bothered clicking my way there. German Bing just doesn't show the relevant results on top, so the effect of saving time by using search is lost. I doubt it doesn't have the right sites indexed, it's just bad performance in delivering at the right time. At least in my case.

k-mcgrady2• 12 years ago

> The only thing I don't like about this is that I'm not seeing myself using Yahoo! for my searches, because I'm not living in the US and everything else I tried has poor local results.

I was under the impression Yahoo was going to be US only.

bad_user8• 12 years ago

Maybe, but if it works out in the US they could expand. Also, my desktop browser remained with its settings intact after the update, but my Android Firefox converted to Yahoo as the default, even though I'm not in the US - maybe it has something to do with Google Play, I don't know.

It's fine for me, as converting back to Google as the default is easy. But as I've said, I hope they'll still struck a deal with Google for non-US markets that do not have an alternative to Google (like China or Russia do). Because that way users like myself can keep supporting them indirectly.

wodenokoto2• 12 years ago

A lot of people outside of the US don't want to use translated software. I grew up on English software and prefer it that way, so I never download the Danish translated version of Firefox.

This is not uncommon at all.

So given the broad usage of the US version of Firefox around the globe there need to be some level of localization in the services that are more sophisticated than simply assuming that a Yahoo search from the search bar must originate from the US.

ExpiredLink3• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, FlashBlock doesn't work any more.

zyx321• 12 years ago

Well, between the built-in click to play for simple use cases and noscript for more advanced setups, do you even still need FlashBlock?

ExpiredLink3• 12 years ago

Maybe Flashblock actually isn't needed any more.

nikbackm2• 12 years ago

Have you considered uninstalling Flash instead of merely blocking it?

Works well for me, but I don't regularly visit any site that depends on Flash. Easy enough to open the occasional Flash-using page in Chrome or IE instead - they both have embedded, auto-updated Flash-plugins that don't need to be kept up-to-date separately.

ExpiredLink3• 12 years ago

Uninstalling Flash means uninstalling video. Flash in browsers nowadays is probably less obnoxious than it was years ago.

Firefox 34 Launches with Yahoo as Its Default Search Engine

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