Mozilla's Firefox is ending its 10-year partnership with Google as its default search engine and is moving on with Yahoo beginning December.
"I'm thrilled to announce that we've entered into a five-year partnership with Mozilla to make Yahoo the default search experience on Firefox across mobile and desktop," Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said in a blog post Wednesday. "This is the most significant partnership for Yahoo in five years."
Yahoo made a deal with Firefox as part of its approach to recover its former standing in Web search. As part of the five-year deal, Yahoo will maintain the Do Not Track feature that prevents companies and advertisers from tracking the users' browsing activities.
Mozilla decided to drop Google because Yahoo offered more flexibility in terms of search experience improvement, aside from the less-complicated negotiation compared to the search engine giant. The company has been talking with Yahoo for the past few months, and the chief executives of both companies said they had a good relationship.
"They're open to innovations," said Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker to CNET.
Techcrunch shared a screenshot Yahoo's search engine, which it described as a "clean, modern and immersive design that reflects input from the Mozilla team."
Roughly 88% of Mozilla's revenue came from its partnership with Google. The contract is set to expire this year, and it is still uncertain if Mozilla really dropped Google or the other way around.
"Google has been the Firefox global search default since 2004. Our agreement came up for renewal this year, and we took this as an opportunity to review our competitive strategy and explore our options," said Chris Beard, Mozilla's CEO in a statement. "We are excited to partner with Yahoo to bring a new, re-imagined Yahoo search experience to Firefox users in the U.S. featuring the best of the Web, and to explore new innovative search and content experiences together."
