Yahoo and Mozilla Join Forces–Shake Up the Search Engine Landscape

Though Google has long been the dominant player in the search engine game, its status as the number one search engine may soon be challenged. Last week, Mozilla announced via a blog post that it was ending its 10-year partnership with Yahoo (it was the default search engine for the browser), to “review our competitive strategy and explore our options.” Chris Beard also explained that Mozilla was “ending our practice of having a single global default search provider…we are adopting a more local and flexible approach to increase choice and innovation on the Web, with new and expanded search partnerships by country.”

In a similar vein, Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer noted, “Search is an area of investment, opportunity and growth for us. This partnership helps to expand our reach in search and also gives us an opportunity to work closely with Mozilla to find ways to innovate more broadly in search, communications, and digital content.”

Essentially, by ending its previous partnership with Google, Mozilla is also ending its presumption that Google is the only solution when it comes to searching within a browser. Though Mozilla’s revenue has mostly come from its search partnership with Google–88 percent to be exact in 2012–the ending of the partnership might mean that Yahoo may have made a better offer in terms of money and innovation opportunities, or that Google may have wanted its previous terms to change drastically. There are also rumors that Mozilla was in disagreement with Google over their refusal to recognize the “do not track’ browser settings of their users­­­–Yahoo, under the new partnership, will honor said settings.

Yahoo also stands to benefit from the partnership. Long sidelined from the search engine game, Yahoo’s partnership with Mozilla may raise its current 10% stake in the search engine market in the United States. It may also receive millions more inquiries to Yahoo every month and help to boost search-related ad revenue.

In addition to search engine functions, both companies also mentioned that they will explore other potential “future product integrations and distribution opportunities to other markets.”

The rollout will be somewhat gradual, first launching to US Firefox users in December 2014, then to all Yahoo users in early 2015. The search experience will look different depending on the global region. In the United States (its largest market) Mozilla will feature Yahoo, while in Russia the default will be Yandex Search, and Baidu in China. Google, DuckDuckGo and several other local search engines will remain as built-in alternatives.

For internet users in general, but especially those who use Mozilla Firefox, this new partnership means that they now have more choices in terms of their options when they want to thoroughly search for something, without really having to leave their browser to do so. Of course, they can always type in the web address of another search engine such as Google, but the convenience of having Yahoo right on their Firefox landing page certainly may lessen the burden of having to do so.

And what of Google? With the loss of Mozilla and the potential gain of a new competitor seeking to take a bigger market share in the search engine game, is the current #1 set to do battle to keep its dominance? The answer will likely be revealed with the patterns of search engine users everywhere, who have now been accustomed (and likely prefer) Google Search and are not necessarily willing to try a new platform. Either way, Google, Mozilla and Yahoo (among other browsers and search engines) all stand to either benefit or lose out on the ever-shifting search engine game.