Google, is starting panic. For the first time since 2008 their market share as dropped below 75%. The reason behind this sudden decline and panic is Mozilla’s decision back in November 2014 not to renew the agreement (default browser search engine) they had with Google, instead opting to sign a five-year deal with Yahoo. Not surprisingly, Yahoo’s market share has increased as a result of this deal to 10.6% (up 2% since the agreement started back in November). Well, Google is not too happy about this and is trying to get Firefox user back.
While Google is still the clear market leader, it is still embarrassing for the company: Search is Google’s bread and butter — the company’s name has become a verb synonymous with finding information online. Google’s displeasure is now becoming clear, Search Engine Land reports, with the search engine prominently asking Firefox users who do not have Google set as their default search to change when they visit the site.
I checked this earlier today with the default search engine set to Yahoo and also again with the default search engine set as Bing. Both times when I did a search directly on google.com I received this request displayed above my search results:
via Business Insider
Love it! I’m thinking Google might be using the useragent to decide if the message is sent because I see the msg even when Google is set as the default. By the way… I use Startpage which shows the results from Google’s search engine. Also… Thanks for the heads up, I use notify but not the auto-update, Firefox now on 36.0.4.