Firefox 34 Launches with Yahoo as Its Default Search Engine | Hacker News Reader

Firefox 34 Launches with Yahoo as Its Default Search Engine

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81 pointslettergram68 comments

The search change doesn't bother me at all -- Google search is just three (?) clicks away and it took zero effort to reset it for me.

What I was really looking forward to in this release was:

  - JS template strings: `Hello ${'world'}`
  - Direct jQuery event in the inspector

For the former, there's this tiny little library that I use for everything:

https://github.com/davidchambers/string-format

JS Template strings (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...):

Template strings are enclosed by the back-tick, `string text ${expression} string text`

  var a = 5;
  var b = 10;
  console.log(`Fifteen is ${a + b} and not ${2 * a + b}.`);
  // "Fifteen is 15 and not 20."

You can also 'tag' a template string:

  tag`Hello ${ a + b } world ${ a * b}`;

where the 'tag' is a preprocessor function.

For you, yes. I work in an organisation with over 100000 non savvy users and I've not seen a single person that has successfully switched default search engine from Bing to Google in IE. They just complain about search "being bad".

The new search bar is in no way improved. I have to always keep in mind what my default search engine is now since they removed the icon, and I can no longer do multiple searches on a different search engine without having do a lot of extra clicking. Any way to fix it?

Use Yubnub or Duckduckgo as your search provider, and take advantage of the command line nature of Yubnub or the bang operators in DuckDuckGo.

Bang operator and "feeling lucky" search is one of the reason I started using DDG and I am happy with it. Google has removed the "feeling lucky" due to advertising reasons may be. Need to try out Yubnub.

I don't why but I never got the habit to use the search bar going all the way back to Phoenix. I guess I prefer clicking on a link and using a real website. On the other hand I LOVED the "Search [search engine] for [selected text]" in the context menu, which use the search engine selected in the search bar.

And the old keyboard shortcuts to change search providers don't even work (ctrl+up & ctrl+down). Worst FF update in quite a while...

I imagine they only hid the icon so people don't know they're searching with Yahoo instead of Google...

The only thing I don't like about this is that I'm not seeing myself using Yahoo! for my searches, because I'm not living in the US and everything else I tried has poor local results. This is OK for me, because switching search engines is easy in Firefox.

However, this means that the searches I'm doing will not generate revenue for Mozilla anymore. And I feel bad about that. I hope they'll cut a deal with Google for Europe.

How much worse are Yahoo! or Bing search results compared to Google in Europe? Is the problem that Yahoo! or Bing don't crawl enough European language sites?

I'm a Romanian and speaking from personal experience, they are much, much worse.

For example I just searched for "restaurante" (the Romanian word for "restaurants"). Google gives me nearby restaurants in Google Maps plus links to Romanian guides to restaurants, whereas Yahoo is giving me the Spanish Wikipedia page for the Spanish definition as the first result (WTF!) and the results are complete bullshit. And look, DuckDuckGo is also returning the same bullshit (yes, even with regional searches turned on, I still get Spanish results): https://duckduckgo.com/?q=restaurante

I could think of other blunders, as whenever I tried using alternatives it's been very painful for me (i.e. fixing the individual example above won't solve my needs) and Google is also often able to infer what I want based on my profile. For example when I search for Ruby I get a different set of results than my wife does ;-)

You can say what you want about Google's privacy invading tactics, but their search results are really the best and if people wonder why they have a monopoly in search, well this is why.

I don't like the French version of Bing. One of the reasons is that it assumes I'm monolingual. Like, if I search for a film, I'll get the result for Allociné instead of IMDb. I much prefer IMDb.

Pretty terrible. I made an effort to try Bing and ddg a while back, and while it was good enough for searching for English language sites using English words, it fell down heavily when searching in Swedish.

I think the problem isn't just crawling, it's parsing. Google does a lot of clever stuff where it tries to understand the site and handle things like alternate spelling, synonyms and typos. From what I've seen Bing at least is far behind on this front for non-english sites and I don't know if they're even really trying.

As most others, I mostly use search when I know where I want to end up, but can't be bothered clicking my way there. German Bing just doesn't show the relevant results on top, so the effect of saving time by using search is lost. I doubt it doesn't have the right sites indexed, it's just bad performance in delivering at the right time. At least in my case.

>> The only thing I don't like about this is that I'm not seeing myself using Yahoo! for my searches, because I'm not living in the US and everything else I tried has poor local results.

I was under the impression Yahoo was going to be US only.

Maybe, but if it works out in the US they could expand. Also, my desktop browser remained with its settings intact after the update, but my Android Firefox converted to Yahoo as the default, even though I'm not in the US - maybe it has something to do with Google Play, I don't know.

It's fine for me, as converting back to Google as the default is easy. But as I've said, I hope they'll still struck a deal with Google for non-US markets that do not have an alternative to Google (like China or Russia do). Because that way users like myself can keep supporting them indirectly.

A lot of people outside of the US don't want to use translated software. I grew up on English software and prefer it that way, so I never download the Danish translated version of Firefox.

This is not uncommon at all.

So given the broad usage of the US version of Firefox around the globe there need to be some level of localization in the services that are more sophisticated than simply assuming that a Yahoo search from the search bar must originate from the US.

I never thought of that, very interesting. Obviously it's not ideal but you could download the GB/UK edition. English language and outside the US so the search engine should still be Google.

You could of course change your default back to being Google, which is easy to do in Settings => Search (or just click the "Change Search Settings" in the new search bar). It's a problem for Mozilla though, since they are updating users that they haven't indented to update.

But then, going back to my original problem - does Mozilla get credit for my searches? I always felt good about using Firefox and recommending Firefox to my peers, because Firefox usage brings them nickels that add up.

So is the deal with Google over, on a global scale, or just for the US? And if I'm using the en_US version, while in Europe, does that bring them anything? That's what I'd like to know.

So effectively it's Bing results?

Only for five more years.

Yahoo web search is now powered by Bing, so yes.

How does that work anyway? Like this: [I search Yahoo] -> [Yahoo queries Bing] -> [Bing returns result] -> [Yahoo returns result]. If so, isn't that horrible for latency? These are two different companies with different data centers! I'm very used to the quasi instant results Google provides even before I completed typing, so I have no idea how the other side looks like. Anyone knows details?

Doesn't Yahoo just use Bing index but has own search engine running on top of it?

For some reason I don't see "Hello" client in the Linux version.

And I don't like the new search bar - it's too cluttered and not really useful for those who rely on DDG search bangs which offer way more direct search options and don't require mouse clicks.

You can revert the search bar to classic style by setting this key in about:config

    browser.search.showOneOffButtons = false

What could be good however if Firefox somehow could integrate DDG search bangs in the browser search bar itself. That would be awesome since it would save an extra trip to DDG. But that would require Mozilla to synchronize bangs list with DDG periodically.

Isn't it funny, these "search bangs" were first available in browsers, way back around the time of firefox 1.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-search-from-address...

edit: better link http://kb.mozillazine.org/Using_keyword_searches

Very interesting, I didn't know about this. But it's more manual (while DDG offers a huge list of predefined bangs already).

These were nice, but you had to configure each one yourself. I had one for google and youtube, but that was it. With DDG, the bangs come quite nicely preconfigured.

And because of that, they work on any device. Even my iPhone!

Because of that, also, DDG is aware about every search that you do, even with bangs. Even though they allegedly don't do bad things with this data, it is a bit sad that you would ask one centralized service to route queries to providers in such a simple way, rather than do it client-side (and, say, have a mechanism to automatically install new bangs from the server to the client...).

DDG is aware of these queries anyway, I'm not losing anything. I only use !g as a fallback.

Well, you should get a phone that doesn't restrict so much what you can do with it. Sending every query to DDG, even when you're not searching DDG is very problematic for privacy too.

Firefox on Android is pretty cool, being the only trustworthy browser that supports add-ons on smartphones right now, so I can use AdBlock Plus, HTTPS Everywhere and LastPass with it. It also has the Awesome Bar and does keyword searches as well, synced with my desktop Firefox of course.

I just received an iPhone 6 as a gift and while it's really cool, I quickly felt its limits and I sold it, because I couldn't see myself using it. Firefox is not available on iOS because of Apple's restrictions. VLC is also currently kicked out of the app store, by Apple of course, yet there are dozens of shitty apps available that violate its trademark, yet Apple doesn't kick those out. Dropbox on iOS, to have a working background process for backing up your photos, has to resort to dirty tricks like keeping location alive and triggering the background sync when detecting movement. There's non such thing as Tasker for Android. And the list can go on.

On the other hand, iOS has a far better privacy model than Android. I can deny apps specific permissions and don't have to accept a laundry list of them wholesale.

True, but it's not a solved problem because apps can keep asking ad-nauseam about wanted permissions and even refuse to work. For example Facebook's Messenger asks about being able to show notifications every time you open it, until you say Yes. For me personally it is much easier to not use apps that want unjustified permissions (for example I refuse to install Facebook's app and whenever I feel the need to checkout updates, I open the browser version which works fine).

Point taken though. Android's permissions model needs some serious improvements. I would also like to lie to an app. If it wants my contacts list, it could get a blank list, if it wants my location, it could get random coordinates in the middle of nowhere, etc...

The main reason given for using DDG are privacy concerns with Google. Therefore sending every query to DDG's servers doesn't make sense to me. The redirect will be slower too than searching directly through your browser.

On the configuration side, that doesn't make sense either.

You configure it once and then because of Sync you get those configurations wherever you're using Firefox. And in Firefox at least it is easy - you just right click on a search input and select "Add Keyword for this Search". It's much, much faster than searching for the right bang in DDG, as those bangs aren't exactly obvious. And I only care about a couple of websites, less than a dozen, instead of hundreds.

The "Hello" client seems to be getting rolled out incrementally. You can force it by setting loop.throttled to false in about:config.

I see, thanks for the tip. Is it because there is some load on Mozilla services with it?

Also I wonder what signalling protocol does it use on top of WebRTC.

why dont DuckDuckGo? IMHO it would be a better fit

Money.

Google splits advertising revenue with browsers that send users to Google (to some degree). Mozilla made a good deal of money from their relationship with Google, but for several reasons (that include Chrome and no payment for truly anonymous searches) Mozilla decided to jump ship - but they still need that sweet search $.

Yahoo! is likely paying well. I can't imagine DDG could come close to competing with the money Yahoo! or Google could pay.

> no payment for truly anonymous searches

What's a "truly anonymous search"?

You travel to a country on a different continent, buy a new tablet and do no modifications to it. Connect to a local Internet coffee-shop network and do a search. Then you repeat this process in a few other countries (preferably with different native languages) and then aggregate the search results into a common list?

I like DDG too but I bet thay can't afford to pay Mozilla enough to survive. Google was paying them close to $300 million. Hopefully Yahoo can afford something similar or Mozilla will need to cut back on spending.

Long-term given the switch to mobile where FireFox is almost nonexistent (and to a lesser degree their decline in desktop market share) they may need to cut back if they can't find new sources of funds.

Serious question, what are they burning $300 mil on? AND, if they are getting $300 mil from Google every year, why on earth is it asking me for donations on my Firefox start tab?

To help answer my own question, Googled it. Got this:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2012/f...

Developers. Plain and simple Mozilla pays market wages and has lots of developers.

They'd have to be paying 2000 developers $150,000 per year to hit $300 million. Are there really that many developers working on this?

According to the NYT they have more than 1000 employees. Usually costs are approximately 2*salary, so assuming $100,000 per developer, we get $200 million, which is what they claim as software development costs. So at least the order of magnitude seems right. I guess the salary and costs are actually less, but there are even more employees.

In general, I find the Mozilla corp/foundation great.

But I dislike what their UI designer did with Firefox and that Aurora theme. Mozilla needs more developers (Rust, Thunderbird would need you), less people that change product designs for the sake of change (Mozilla is not Microsoft).

Aurora on OS X looks much better for me than the old theme. The only thing that bothers me is that they could have been more space efficient, but otherwise I like it.

They also just made slight adjustments to Firefox on Android and I hope they keep them coming because on Android Lollipop Firefox's UI is starting to look out of place.

Here is the financial report for 2013:

https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi...

The biggest expenses are $197m on 'software development' and $46m on 'branding and marketing'.

great finding .. here's an interesting paragraph[1]

  Mozilla entered into a contract with a search engine
  provider for royalties which expires November 2014.
  Approximately 90% of royalty revenue for 2013 and 2012,
  was derived from this contract. The receivable from this
  search engine provider represented 66% and 69% of the
  December 31, 2013 and 2012 outstanding receivables,
  respectively.

[1] p21: Note 8 - Concentrations of Risk

Interesting to see revenue went from approx $150M in 2011, to $310M in 2012 and then stuck steady at that same rough figure in 2013.

Is that a result of Firefox stopping growing or Google not paying as well, or something else?

multiyear contracts at that fixed amount.

Yahoo is only in the US. Baidu is now default in China, and Yandex in Russia, likely to have similar deals in place.

So instead of one source of income, they now have 3. And I don't see why people switching their search engines back to Google (with all the Europeans whose defaults don't change AFAIK) would not still generate revenue from Google.

I think it's a pretty wise move.

Looks like you now can sync saved passwords also if you have a master password set. Previously it was disabled in that case.

I don't get the yahoo search business model - aren't they just showing Bing results?

Didn't they retire all their indexing bots years ago?

For awhile they were the only contender to google with most of their search options and apis

Unfortunately, FlashBlock doesn't work any more.

Well, between the built-in click to play for simple use cases and noscript for more advanced setups, do you even still need FlashBlock?

Maybe Flashblock actually isn't needed any more.

Have you considered uninstalling Flash instead of merely blocking it?

Works well for me, but I don't regularly visit any site that depends on Flash. Easy enough to open the occasional Flash-using page in Chrome or IE instead - they both have embedded, auto-updated Flash-plugins that don't need to be kept up-to-date separately.

Uninstalling Flash means uninstalling video. Flash in browsers nowadays is probably less obnoxious than it was years ago.

I wouldn't mind this if it would direct me to the new Yahoo search.

No, I am not in the US.

this is bad move by mozilla ,

Poor move by Mozilla IMO - clearly a profit driven decision and not one in be best interest of their users.

Financial independence from a company that increasingly seems to be little more than an extension of US intelligence apparatus is very much in the best interest of their users

Any information Google can be subpoenaed for, Yahoo can also be subpoenaed for.

Try not to read the comments on this article, they're around YouTube quality.

The best thing there is this one comment:

    "NOOOOOOOO.not that HORRID, irrelevant Yahoo? I may go back to , gulp, Google."

what.

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