Mozzila and Search Changes: Meh
November 20, 2014
You can read the crashing waves of opinions about Mozilla and its falling out of love with the GOOG. “Firefox Drops Google as Default Search Engine…” presents the new, “real” journalism approach; to wit:
Firefox has lost market share in recent years but is still used by roughly 17 percent of web goers.
Juicy factoid. Small percentage in a world in which traffic and eyeballs matter.
You can get the search engine optimization/inside scoop viewpoint in “Mozilla CEO: It Wasn’t Money — Yahoo Was The Better Strategic Partner For Firefox.” I noted this:
The official line from the Mozilla blog post about the deal helps parse what being a good strategic partner seems to be. It praises Yahoo as being “aligned with our values of choice and independence” — which suggests that Firefox was feeling that Google had become too controlling or wanted more control about what was happening within Firefox. Or, perhaps Mozilla felt Google has been less about supporting the web and more about supporting itself than in the past.
My view is not just tepid; it is indifferent. Monopolistic behaviors are the order of the day. Yahoo is no monopoly. Yandex may have a shot as long it stays on the right side of certain governmental authorities. Baidu is the best of the bunch, but one misstep and I would suggest that life could be viewed through a filter.
As the browser becomes the new operating system, if you are not running what’s mainstream, there may be some challenges ahead. Do you still have an Eagle desktop computer? If so, dig it out, plug in your DEC Rainbow, and let me know how you read this blog post.
Oh, and what about search? It seems to rank right along with the Mozilla attitude toward money in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, November 20, 2014
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