Mozilla has announced that Yahoo will soon become be the default search engine for FireFox users in the United States. The current contract with Google as the default search engine has not been extended.
Google has been the default search engine in FireFox since 2004 for which the company paid a large fee every year. The money involved was the largest share of the revenue for Mozilla. Instead of continuing to use the Google search engine, Mozilla has now announced to use Yahoo as the default search engine for users in the United States. Google will be replaced by the local search engine Yandex for Russian users and the Chinese version continues to use the Baidu search engine as default.
It's unknown what Yahoo pays to Mozilla for the deal. Mozilla ensures users that they can continue to use other search engines like Google, Bing or DuckDuckGo. It's unclear what the default search engine for users outside America, Russia or China will be.
Mozilla hints that the organisation itself didn't want to extend the contract with Google. It states on the choice for Yahoo that other parties offered more money but that the current deal is inline with the organisation's value for choice and independence.
The deal with Yahoo is for five years and includes the promise of Yahoo to follow the "do not track" standard which should ensure that advertisers don't follow users through their advertisements. Firefox users searching with Yahoo will also be routed through a special designed Yahoo search page designed together with Mozilla.
