14 DAY TRIAL // Nowadays, despite all the efforts of the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, a search engine's homepage is rarely visited. Instead, most users start from the search box present, in any modern browser.
Firefox 4 hasn't ditched the dedicated search box, like Chrome and now Internet Explorer 9 did, but it is making some changes to the default list of search engines.
The big addition is Microsoft Bing which has been missing from previous versions of Firefox. This should make Bing fans especially happy, since there was a time when Mozilla didn't even consider the possibility.
"Firefox 4 will streamline and modernize the Web experience for our hundreds of millions of users," Jay Sullivan, VP of Products at Mozilla, said.
"In addition to greatly improving performance, adding advanced graphics capabilities, and rethinking how people use tabs to organize their online lives, we have also been looking closely at the search options that we include in the search box, which appears to the right of the URL bar," he announced.
Mozilla splits search into three categories, general search engines, shopping and reference. Google will remain the default option, Mozilla says, based on its popularity.
Yahoo will also be included, as the second option, as Mozilla feels that the search experience is still different enough even if the searches themselves are powered by Bing.
The big change is that Bing is now also included in the general search category. Mozilla says that advances Bing has made in the past year and thanks to its rise in popularity, will be included by default.
Amazon and eBay will both continue to be included for shopping results. Wikipedia expectantly also makes the cut. However, Answers.com and Creative Commons will not be included in Firefox 4.
"Overall these changes will mean that English-language versions of Firefox 4 will display the following search services, in this order: Google (default), Yahoo!, Bing, Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia," Sullivan concluded.
Of course, users can easily bring back any of the search engines or choose from the large number of other search engine plugins available online.
Note that these search engines will be the default only for the English version of Firefox 4. There is no word on whether Yahoo will be the first choice in some Asian markets, as has been the case in the past, or what other differences there may be in localized versions.