Yahoo is Firefox’s default search

After a lucrative, 10-year relationship, Mozilla is breaking up with Google and switching to Yahoo as the default search provider for its popular Firefox Web browser.

Mozilla’s partnership with Google had been rocky for years, so its end was not entirely unexpected. Google is America’s favorite search provider, with about two-thirds of the market, according to comScore, but it also created and actively promotes its own Web browser, Chrome.

Mozilla, meanwhile, has sought to create its own mobile phone software, competing with Google’s Android, and has tried to distinguish itself from rivals by committing to customer privacy technologies that are opposed by Google, Facebook, Yahoo and just about every other major website that sells advertising.

Yahoo’s decision to swoop in is surprisingly aggressive, underscoring that Yahoo’s chief executive, Marissa Mayer, still believes in search as a promising line of business. Although the Silicon Valley company created an Internet directory that became synonymous with search 20 years ago, it faltered and eventually sold its search technology to Microsoft, the No. 2 player, five years ago. Under a 10-year deal with Microsoft, which is up for possible revision, Yahoo offers Microsoft Bing’s search results under its own brand name, with the companies sharing some advertising revenue.

— From wire reports