Firefox Drops Google For Yandex In Russia, But Big Loser May Be Rambler

Jan 12, 2009 at 8:41am ET by Barry Schwartz

Mozilla’s General Counsel, Harvey Anderson, announced the Russian builds of Firefox 3.1 will drop Google for Yandex. He explained that after months of research and surveys, Mozilla learned that their “Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search.” So, in the next build of Firefox, the default search provider will be Yandex for Russian users.

The big loser in all of this might not be Google. PaidContent.org reports that Rambler, one of the big Russian portals, will be letting their CEO go after seeing their market share drop from 14.9 percent last year to just 6.4 percent. The CEO’s departure might be a signal that Google may not follow through on the Begun purchase, where Google would buy Rambler’s contextual ad service for $140 million.

In August of last year, Google renewed their deal with Mozilla to be the default search provider in Firefox. When Google came out with their browser, Chrome, it may have ruffled some feathers.

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.

See more articles by Barry Schwartz >

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