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Comment by gordon_freeman | Hacker News Reader

I just don't understand Yahoo's user acquisition strategy here. I updated my Firefox to latest version a week ago and it took literally less than a minute for me to set Google as default search engine. I know that if given choice between Yahoo and Google, I'll almost always use Google for 2 main reasons: Search quality and it is just that I'm accustomed to making specific search queries on Google. The thing I don't understand here is: what Yahoo will gain by this deal with Mozilla? I mean why don't they try to improve the quality of their search product and gain users that way rather than forcing an inferior search as default on Firefox.

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I have been running Aurora and when it switched to Yahoo I just kept it. There are a few times when I find the results dissapointing, but I have no special affinity for Google or Google search.

In terms of brand loyalty Google has removed any reason to be "loyal" to their search brand and has been operating on being better then everyone else, however its getting close for most mainstream searches and if I can support a healthy marketplace then I am all for it.

Same here. Amusingly, it actually took me a day or two to realize that the search engine had changed (I finally noticed that the emoticon in the tab was different).

It's true that Yahoo's results are sometimes noticeably worse than Google's. The result I want can often be at the third or fourth position on the page, rather than first (where it most often is on Google). Given that Google is obviously personalizing my results based on my query history (unless the Rust programming language is really the world's most popular interpretation of the term "Rust"...), I'll be curious to see if Yahoo does the same over time.

Being the default is a huge deal. You only need to look at how many people are still on IE (8!).

Plus, search quality is a very subjective matter. I have Bing on my phone for a while (mostly to avoid Google's redirect links), and I hardly notice it any more.

40,320 isn't very many people at all.

;)

The ie8 thing is because it is the last version you can run on the massive number of pirated XP copies out there.

Because most don't even know what search engine they're using, let alone how to change it?

Because it will probably work? A lot of people probably can't even tell the difference aside from the design

You're not the typical browser user. Most people have no clue.

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