Unless you live outside of the geek-o-sphere, you probably did not realize that Mozilla recently added Bing! as a search option to Firefox.
Today Bing and Firefox announced that Bing will be included as one of the search engine choices within Firefox on both the Mac and PC.
We’re very excited to be included in the search engine choices in the upcoming version of Firefox. Having Bing in the “out of the box†list makes it easier than ever for the Firefox community to experience the benefits of Bing.
We expect the Bing option to show up in an upcoming build of Firefox 4. (Bing! Community Blog)
Although Mozilla is reassuring everyone that Google will remain the default search engine for Firefox, Mozilla probably knows it’s only a matter of time before Google Chrome catches up (if not surpasses) Mozilla’s browser.
Instead of renewing their agreement with Google, it may be wiser for Firefox to replace Google with Bing (the latter who recently just assimulated Yahoo!).
While partnering with an old foe might sound strange to users, Microsoft is desperate to increase the market share of Bing!, and is probably willing to out spend Google for the right to be Mozilla’s default search engine.
Even though Firefox could simply strive to improve its browser (which still offers more extensions than its newest rival), they might want to rethink their alliances lest they join Opera as an unknown browser used only by a handful of geeks.
Originally posted on October 7, 2010 @ 1:44 pm