Soon, Yahoo will be the default search engine for Mozilla Firefox.
Chris Beard the CEO of Mozilla has announced the new five-year partnership with Yahoo.
“Our new search strategy doubles down on our commitment to make Firefox a browser for everyone. We believe it will empower more people, in more places with more choice and opportunity to innovate and ultimately put even more people in control over their lives online” said Beard.
The browser will make the switch to the new “enhanced Yahoo search” for users in December. However, users will still be able to change the default search engine option to Google, Bing, eBay, Amazon, Wikipedia or Twitter.
Google has been the default search on Firefox since 2004, which was up for renewal this year.
“In evaluating our search partnerships, our primary consideration was to ensure our strategy aligned with our values of choice and independence, and positions us to innovate and advance our mission in ways that best serve our users and the Web” said Beard, regarding that “one strategy stood out from the rest.”
Searching feature has became a big area of focus for Yahoo since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO where she has aggressively pursued Yahoo’s investment in contextual search. The former Google executive has been particularly focused on mobile with the goal of decreasing Google’s dominance on mobile browsers. Yahoo’s desktop search is currently powered by Microsoft’s Bing search engine, a deal that has Mayer has reportedly tried to get out of.