Mozilla and Yahoo Become Bedfellows

Mozilla and Yahoo announced a five year agreement for Yahoo to become the default search engine for Firefox. The deal pays Mozilla $100 million and ends their current arrangement with Google. (You can read more about the deal here.)

Mozilla and Yahoo struggle with their low market shares in their respective industries. But will this deal benefit both parties or is it too little too late?

Andy: I understand why the agreement took place. It makes sense for both these companies. Mozilla, an open source company, picks up a significant source of revenue for the next few years.

For Yahoo, this is a way for the former search engine behemoth to try and gain a footing back in the market and perhaps become relevant again. But this seems futile for both companies.

World wide, Google Chrome is now the elephant in the room when it comes to browsers. It has a bigger market share than Internet Explorer, the once insurmountable web browser now playing second fiddle.

According to Stat Counter, Chrome now has a commanding 51.3% market share while IE is at 21.3% and Mozilla is at 18.8%. Yahoo is attempting to capitalize on that 18.8% of the population using Mozilla, but it is just too little too late.

Yahoo is down to a 10% share in the market and continues to drop. Google’s market share for both search engine use and web browser use continue to grow and this relationship seems like it will do Mozilla more damage than it will do Yahoo good.

Mike: Andy, there’s nothing you said I disagree with. I also appreciate you listing out the stats. Saved me from doing it.

Yahoo has a lot more to do to re-establish themselves in the search market than a five year contract with Mozilla. Yahoo’s search experience is horrible. Instead of buying up other companies like Tumblr, they should re-invest the money in their own search again. And unless I’ve missed an article in the past couple of years, Yahoo uses Bing’s search to populate it’s results.

The article linked above, the one from engadget, mentions a new user experience through Firefox. That’s a step in the right direction, assuming they don’t mess it up. But unless they rededicate themselves to search, all they’re doing is putting lipstick on a pig and no one wants to kiss that oinker.

As far as Mozilla Firefox is concerned, they have the most to lose from this move in the US market. Moving their default search to Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China makes sense. They’re the search giants in those countries. There’s a reason people use Google. Whether you hate them or not, their search is a good product that knows can get the results to their users.

This is a move by both companies to provide a unique experience to get more users. Unfortunately for Mozilla, this hinges more on what Yahoo delivers. Who knows what they’re planning to do. Yahoo may surprise us and give us great results and a intuitive user experience.

We won’t know until they release the final product. We won’t have to wait long to find out. Yahoo will be the default search starting in December, so we’ll see what product they put on our screens.

Agree with the partnership? Do you think we’re off base? Let us know what you think in the comment section below.