linux

Will Firefox in Ubuntu soon use Microsoft Bing as the default search engine? Some press releases / announcements are out that can be interpreted so.

July 2009 / Microsoft Press Release

Yahoo! and Microsoft announced an agreement that will improve the Web search experience for users and advertisers, and deliver sustained innovation to the industry. In simple terms, Microsoft will now power Yahoo! search while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers.

January 2010 / Ubuntu Desktop Mailing List

Change #2 is changing the default search provider in Firefox to Yahoo!
Note that this won’t in any way effect the ability of a user to choose
and use the search provider of their choice. It’s literally 2 easily
discoverable clicks to change this setting, a simple matter of switching
to that search provider in the chrome by clicking on the icon and
choosing the desired provider. Note also that Yahoo! does not share any
personally identifiable or usage information.

Why?
I am pursuing this change because Canonical has negotiated a revenue
sharing deal with Yahoo! and this revenue will help Canonical to provide
developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and
the Ubuntu Platform. This change will help provide these resources as
well as continuing to respect our user’s default search across Firefox.

February 2010 / Yahoo Press Release

Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) and Yahoo! (Nasdaq:YHOO) announced today that they have received clearance for their search agreement, without restrictions, from both the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Commission, and will now turn their attention to beginning the process of implementing the deal.

Implementation of the deal is expected to begin in the coming days and will involve transitioning Yahoo!’s algorithmic and paid search platforms to Microsoft, with Yahoo! becoming the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers globally. Once the transition is completed, the companies’ unified search marketplace will deliver improved innovation for consumers, better volume and efficiency for advertisers and better monetization opportunities for web publishers through a platform that contains a larger pool of search queries.

To me it looks like that 1+1 = Firefox of Ubuntu will soon be using Microsoft search engines and algorithms. If you know more about  and are able to clarify, please add it to the comments. What do you think, would you be happy to use Bing search engine as your search engine or are you maybe already using? Better than Google?

Thanks Aapo for the tip!