The only other search engine with significant financial resources is Microsoft’s Bing, but would it really be in Microsoft’s best interests to prop up its closest rival on the desktop? That again seems improbable. It seems unlikely Yahoo would be queuing up to retake its place. However, as Mozilla’s annual report notes, the termination of that deal “was the subject of litigation the parties resolved in 2019”. If Google decided it didn’t need the ever-decreasing search traffic coming from Firefox, would Mozilla be able to strike a search deal with any of Google’s rivals?īefore Google returned as the default search engine in 2017, Mozilla had a deal with Yahoo.
