In China, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan, the default homepage and search engine in Mozilla’s Firefox browser will be provided by Yahoo instead of Google.
Yahoo has maintained a strong presence in Asia, and has taken a step to reinforcing that with this latest deal. The search and portal company will trade some Overture advertising revenue for prime placement in Firefox, Search Engine Journal’s Loren Baker reported:
From Yahoo: “Per the agreement, Yahoo! will now distribute Firefox 1.5 in those markets and will be the default search engine on Firefox 1.5 in each of those countries.”
Although Google is Mozilla’s premier distribution and search partner in the US, Yahoo has made a strong play by partnering with Mozilla in the Asian market. While Google is hands down the most popular search engine in the US and the world, Yahoo enjoys a strong brand in the Pacific Rim, being the most popular web destination in Japan and equally well known throughout China, Korea, and Taiwan
Yahoo made a huge investment in the Chinese market over the summer, purchasing a $1 billion stake in Alibaba and subsequently selling Yahoo China to Jack Ma’s company.
The Firefox deal gives Yahoo another way to strengthen the Chinese presence, as Yahoo and competitors like Google and Microsoft have been frantically ramping up their efforts in China and fighting over the employment of Kai-Fu Lee in order to tap the country’s growing Internet userbase and potential search advertising profits.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
