Yahoo's search deal with Firefox/Mozilla is already paying dividends.
A report from StatCounter finds that Yahoo usage on Firefox 34 in the US on the 2nd December was 29.4% compared to 9.6% for the previous version Firefox 33. Google search usage by Firefox users dropped from 82.1% to 63.5% as they upgraded from version 33 to 34. Bing declined slightly from 6.5% on Firefox 33 to 5.8% on Firefox 34. As Website Magazine readers may recall, Yahoo became the default search option for Firefox 24 in the US, replacing Google's 10-year relationship with Mozilla.
"Firefox 34 is still being rolled out so its usage is currently quite low. It will be interesting to see how this develops," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "At the moment the change is having a negligible impact on overall search share in the US, but if this early usage trend on Firefox 34 continues then Yahoo could be on course to gain a number of percentage points."
On the 2nd of December, overall search share across all browsers in the US was 78% for Google, 12.4% for Bing and 7.9% for Yahoo. Yahoo obviously has a long way to go to catch up with Google but it's partnerships like the one with Mozilla which could change the future of search.
Important to mention however that market share for Google Chrome is roughly 48 percent (including desktop, tablet, and console browser) while Firefox garners just 16.74 percent (as of November 2014 data from StatCounter).