from Hacker News

Firefox Features Google as Default Search Provider in the U.S.

by dallamaneni on 11/14/17, 2:14 PM with 147 comments

• by mrarjonny on 11/14/17, 2:58 PM

  DuckDuckGo, Start Page, or Qwant might have been a little more in the spirit of Mozilla and privacy. Then again it takes about half a second to change the default search to your own preference.

  Google is probably the most approachable for the vast majority of users. It is a sensible move in that regard.

• by jonnycomputer on 11/14/17, 2:53 PM

  I feel like the quality of deep search is diminishing; either there is less free content on the web, or search has been optimized for something else; I just get the same results over and over, not matter what combination of search terms I used on a topic.

• by dec0dedab0de on 11/14/17, 3:03 PM

  I really just wish they would go back to letting the search bar change on the fly and remain that way until you change it back. With the little icon letting you know which service it is currently set to.

  Does anyone know why that functionality was removed? If I'm searching for anything other than my default chances are I'm going to be searching at least 3 different things before getting it right, but then I can't just change the text and press enter.

  While I'm ranting, when did google stop paying attention to the actual words you type and starting showing what they think you meant? I mean I know it's been gradual, but at some point over the last few years I've noticed having to use quotes for almost everything, and it still doesn't return exact results. I assume that has something to do with how they normalize the ngrams and how I'm not the target audience anymore, but it's still annoying.

• by lloydde on 11/14/17, 3:30 PM

  Mozilla missed the opportunity to regain some of their authentic voice with this announcement.

  “This is part of our ongoing search strategy, announced in 2014 to evaluate and select the best search experience in each region as opposed to having a single global default.” is revisionist. I worked on a competing browser, Flock, in 2005 and Mozilla already had a strong and wonderful commitment to use the (local) best search engine for Firefox in a region. When they switched to “Yahoo!” without additional transparency about the economic factor it made it easier for me to use Chrome without feeling moral regret. With the exception of this blog post / announcement I’m really excited overall to see Mozilla back in the game.

• by Fej on 11/14/17, 9:13 PM

  I wonder if at this point Google wants to keep Mozilla in the game. Their market share is low enough and it keeps antitrust regulators at bay. It looks bad if there are only two major browsers, one of which owned by a company which already got slapped for this very kind of monopolistic behavior.

  Sorta like Intel and AMD.

• by AdmiralAsshat on 11/14/17, 3:59 PM

  Eh...if the Google search money keeps Mozilla going, why not? It's no worse than having Yahoo as the default search provider previously. I switch my default to DuckDuckGo anyway.

• by ethhics on 11/14/17, 3:01 PM

  So Mozilla backed out of their 5-year contract with Yahoo then [1]. Do they have a new agreement with Google that I'm not seeing anywhere?

  [1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-an...

• by ams6110 on 11/14/17, 2:49 PM

  Makes sense I guess. Nobody wants Yahoo search as a default.

• by bad_user on 11/14/17, 9:11 PM

  On mobile Firefox makes it really easy to select a different provider.

  I now use it on iOS too, even if it's just a shell for iOS's Safari view — the UI is nicer and you can enable tracking protection to be always on.

• by ronjouch on 11/14/17, 3:01 PM

  Shortened title is misleading:

  Firefox Features Google as Default Search Provider... "in the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan"

  EDIT title updated (within HN title length constraints, I guess), thanks admins :)

• by thisacctforreal on 11/15/17, 9:08 AM

  What's with requiring an Add-on to set a search engine URL?

  I can't remove the "&t=ffab" query tag from the DuckDuckGo search. Presumably ffab is Firefox Address Bar.

• by karmapolic on 11/14/17, 6:36 PM

  default search should be google search and default maps should be google maps. yelp on the contrary forces you to use apple maps on iphone and that kind of sucks.

• by sidcool on 11/14/17, 2:59 PM

  Looks like Google is gaining its foothold back

• by Feniks on 11/14/17, 8:20 PM

  You can't even remove all the search engines. I tried.

• by Bhilai on 11/14/17, 5:03 PM

  Mozilla's punch line "Built for People, not for profit" stands at odds with this since we know Google monetizes the heck out your search history.

  Another interesting thing to note is Apple dropped Bing for Siri and Firefox stayed with Google. Sounds like Microsoft is not even trying.

• by ocdtrekkie on 11/14/17, 2:58 PM

  There will likely be some people errantly suggesting this is due to search quality. It is not. Yahoo previously outbid Google approximately three years ago for that default search offering, and it's likely their arrangement has come to an end. One of Mozilla's strongest sources of funding comes from selling the default search engine spot to the highest bidder.

  EDIT: As an interesting note: Yahoo's deal was for five years, not three. I am guessing Verizon decided it didn't want to pay for Mozilla anymore, and cut it off early?

• by nimbius on 11/14/17, 3:02 PM

  just another reason to avoid it. mandatory telemetry, mandatory pulseaudio in linux, pocket, that weird failed video chat thing, and the DRM add-on that literally no one asked for.

• by indubitable on 11/14/17, 4:50 PM

  Things like this illustrate why it's a bit disingenuous to praise the nonprofit status of Mozilla as some huge distinguishing factor. Not only do the executives pay themselves more than generous salaries (1m for chair, 874k for director, 908k for treasurer) but nonprofit doesn't mean free from commercial concerns. They still need to make money to pay those salaries and support their projects. It seems wiser to judge the ethos of a company based on their actions and decisions instead of their corporate tax status.

  [1] - https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2014_Mozilla_Found...