Google may be in danger of losing a major deal for its search engine, which could result in a reduction in market share.

Google has already lost out to Yahoo as the default search engine for Mozilla’s Firefox browser in the U.S. While Google will remain the default experience for Firefox in Europe, that could change in the future. Mozilla also elected to go with Yandex and Baidu in Russia and China respectively.

According to a new report from The Information, Apple’s deal with Google will expire next year, and Yahoo and Microsoft are both eager to step in as a replacement, which shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise.

As Bing has basically acknowledged that it can’t win the war against Google from Bing.com, such a deal could be of major help to the search engine. Meanwhile, Yahoo has really been on the upswing with its search business, and no doubt wants to continue that momentum.

While this could ultimately come down to a bidding war, Apple is also not likely to want to compromise the user experience, so Microsoft and Yahoo will have to prove that they can do search just as well as the king.

Yahoo, of course, once was the king, but that was long ago. Under former Googler Marissa Mayer, however, the company has been making some significant moves in tech. Becoming the default search for Safari would be huge for the company.

Apple, which in recent years has increasingly tried to distance itself from dependence on Google, has already partnered with Microsoft to make Bing the default web search on Siri.

The search engine Apple chooses could have a major impact on the search landscape. It’s hard to say just how big of an impact though, as Google would certainly still be an option and a setting adjustment away.

Image via Apple