And ya to Yandex

Jan 19, 2009 12:35 GMT  ·  By

Come Firefox 3.1 Beta 3, which is currently expected early next month, Mozilla will say goodbye to Google for the Russian market. According to Harvey Anderson, VP and general counsel of Mozilla Corporation, Mozilla has divorced its open source browser from search partner Google in favor of a new marriage with Russian-based Yandex. However, this will only be valid for the Russian localized versions of Firefox that will feature Yandex as the default search provider associated with the browser.

“In October, we asked for feedback on creating a deeper partnership with Yandex, one in which we would make Yandex search features the default in our Firefox Russian language builds. Over the past few months, we have listened to feedback, talked with our localizers, studied the trends of our Firefox Yandex builds, and reviewed the Yandex user experience. All this activity led us to the conclusion that our Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds,” Anderson explained.

Mozilla is not exactly playing with fire when it is opting for a local search engine in the context of a specific market over Google, but fact is that Firefox is largely dependent on the Mountain View search giant for its revenue. In 2007, Mozilla managed to rake in no less than $75 million in revenue, the vast majority coming from Google for searches end-users entered in the default search box of the browser.

In 2006, Google was also largely responsible for the $66.8 million in revenue Firefox generated. However, as Google introduced Chrome at the end of 2008, a rival browser that could erode audience away not only from Internet Explorer but also from Firefox, it is a good strategy for Mozilla to ink partnerships with additional search providers.

“We’re planning on setting Yandex as the default search provider for the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds (these changes should go into the current beta for testing). This means that, upon download and launch, the Firefox Start Page for RU locale builds will use Yandex for search queries, and the search bar will default to Yandex,” Anderson added.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Windows is available here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Linux is available here.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 for Mac OS X is available here.