Mozilla, an online software community that supports open-source programs, chose famous Web service portal Yahoo as its default search engine for the browser Mozilla Firefox for the next five years.
Since 2004, Mozilla Firefox's default search engine was Google, a fierce competitor for Yahoo. However, when the partnership reached its renewal stage this year, Mozilla decided to look for another search engine in an effort to promote competition and innovation.
Yahoo said that the partnership deal with Mozilla is its most significant in the recent five years. The multinational Internet firm said that the deal will also help them further stretch out the potential for Yahoo's search tool. However, Yahoo is still not sure on how much the partnership will boost the firm's revenue.
According to Net Applications, Firefox is behind Google Chrome in the browser market, where Internet Explorer occupies the top spot surprisingly.
Even in mobile devices, Firefox lags behind Safari, Chrome and the default Android browser.
But the partnership will still net Yahoo more Web users than Google as Firefox users from around the globe use search engines more than 100 billion times every year. Yahoo said that the new partnership will allow future projects between the two firms, but no further details were given.
"Our agreement [with Google] came up for renewal this year, and we took this as an opportunity to review our competitive strategy and explore our options," said Mozilla.
Yahoo will only be the default search engine in the U.S., while Chinese Web users will be using Baidu by default and users in Russia will be using Yandex Search.
Firefox said that the search engines chosen are not absolute. They will also offer other alternatives such as Bing, DuckDuckGo and Google, which will still help the browser with its safe-browsing option and location features, said Mozilla.
In addition, Yahoo will be updating its search tool interface. The updated interface design will be launched next month for U.S. Firefox users, while it will reach global Yahoo users early next year.