Mozilla missed the opportunity to regain some of their authentic voice with this announcement.
“This is part of our ongoing search strategy, announced in 2014 to evaluate and select the best search experience in each region as opposed to having a single global default.” is revisionist. I worked on a competing browser, Flock, in 2005 and Mozilla already had a strong and wonderful commitment to use the (local) best search engine for Firefox in a region. When they switched to “Yahoo!” without additional transparency about the economic factor it made it easier for me to use Chrome without feeling moral regret. With the exception of this blog post / announcement I’m really excited overall to see Mozilla back in the game.
The deal before the Yahoo one made Google the default everywhere (even China and Russia and other places where Google wasn't the best search engine).
I don't work there so I don't know if they could've gotten the same amount that Yahoo agreed to without continuing to make Google default in all localities.
I don't disagree. But that doesn't change the fact that the parent post's idea that they "choose the best search engine" is completely false. Mozilla has been paid for search settings consistently since 2004.
The feedback in the responses leads me to believe my ear may have been too close to the loudspeaker, but here is a quote attributed to Mozilla Marketing leader Asa Dotzler in 2009: “Firefox users have their choice of several built-in and popular search services including Google’s number 1 competitor and the second most popular, Yahoo!. Google is the default for most Firefox locales because it’s the best search service available for the largest number of Firefox users (and was years before there was any revenue associated with default status).”
https://searchengineland.com/will-bing-finally-be-admitted-i...
I also think I remember Firefox’s default search engine in Japan regularly being used as an example of doing right by users.
Google used to be the default search engine in Russia too (though I can't comment on whether they were paying for that). When it became clear that Yandex generally delivered better search results for queries in Russian, Mozilla switched to Yandex.
Are you 100% sure Yandex has not provided any funding to Mozilla? "Following our review in 2014, Google remained the default provider outside the US, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkey, China, and other regions where we had search agreements."
> Are you 100% sure Yandex has not provided any funding to Mozilla?
I am 100% sure it has. But the point is that all search engines are willing to create these funding deals, so that leaves the freedom to pick the ones that you think are best for users.
I don't think Bing has ever been the default search on Firefox. Google paid for the spot from 2004-2014, and Yahoo paid for it between 2014-2017. Google is almost certainly paying for the spot again now. At least here in the US, Bing has never been the default as far as I know.
“This is part of our ongoing search strategy, announced in 2014 to evaluate and select the best search experience in each region as opposed to having a single global default.” is revisionist. I worked on a competing browser, Flock, in 2005 and Mozilla already had a strong and wonderful commitment to use the (local) best search engine for Firefox in a region. When they switched to “Yahoo!” without additional transparency about the economic factor it made it easier for me to use Chrome without feeling moral regret. With the exception of this blog post / announcement I’m really excited overall to see Mozilla back in the game.