Mozilla has ended its long-standing agreement with Google that made it the global default search engine for the Firefox web browser.
Google has been the default global search engine for Firefox for the past 10 years, but the agreement came up for renewal this year.
According to a Mozilla blog post, this prompted the company to review its competitive strategy and explore other options.
“In evaluating our search partnerships, our primary consideration was to ensure our strategy aligned with our values of choice and independence,” reads a blog post on the matter.
Mozilla’s conclusion was that there should be no global default search engine at all. Rather,
In the US, Yahoo will be the new default search engine for Firefox over the next five years, starting from December. Russia will have Yandex out front, and China will continue to have Baidu.
Though the post fails to state it, Yahoo has apparently confirmed to Marketing Land that Google will remain the default search engine for Europe.
Despite this shift, Mozilla will retain its policy of including a number of alternative search engines preinstalled – and Google will be among those in all three of the major regions that don’t have it as the default search engine in Firefox.
In addition, Google will continue to power Firefox’s Safe Browsing and Geolocation features.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
