As you may know, Yahoo recently secured a five-year deal with Mozilla to become the default search engine for the Firefox web browser in the U.S. This went into effect with the latest Firefox release, which was launched last week.
Now, Yahoo is going so far as to tell users on its various web properties, including its popular homepage, to “upgrade to the new Firefox.” They’re not just telling Firefox users to upgrade to the new version. They’re telling other users, like those using Chrome, to “upgrade” to it.
You’ll also see it at Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, and elsewhere.
Yahoo stands to gain a lot if it can get more people to opt for Firefox over Chrome, as it could put a bigger dent in Google’s share of the search market. An early report from StatCounter after the latest version of Firefox was release found that a lot more people started searching with Yahoo. In fact, Yahoo saw a 3x jump in Firefox searches right after the update.
The firm found that Yahoo usage on Firefox 34 was 29.4% compared to 9.6% for Firefox 33. Google search usage by Firefox users dropped from 82.1% to 63.5% as they upgraded to the new version, it found, and Bing declined from 6.5% on Firefox 33 to 5.8% on Firefox 34.
Even ahead of the Firefox deal, Yahoo’s search business was looking up. This should help add some momentum to that, and help the company’s search revenue even more.
Via TechCrunch
Image via Yahoo