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Mozilla Firefox Leans Toward Yahoo Search Powered by Bing
Mozilla announced a five-year partnership deal today with Yahoo on browser search integration for the U.S. market.
Under the terms of the deal, the Mozilla Firefox browser will have Yahoo Search set as the default search option for mobile and desktop use. Yahoo's search is powered underneath by Microsoft's Bing search technology per a 2009 deal that Yahoo struck with Microsoft.
Mozilla explained in a blog post that it had partnered with Google as the default search choice for its Firefox browser for the past 10 years. Mozilla considered its options on renewing that partnership, but decided to go with Yahoo Search instead.
U.S. Firefox users will still have the option to select a different default search engine, including Google Search. Mozilla expects to surface a new Yahoo Search user interface in Firefox beginning sometime in December.
The deal possibly could boost Microsoft's U.S. search rankings. Microsoft has long labored behind No. 1 search-advertising company Google, which held 68.3 percent of the U.S. desktop search market in October, compared with 28.0 percent of searches "powered by Bing," according to measurements by comScore.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.