No financial terms were announced, but Mozilla’s blog post says the agreement extends the companies’ agreement “for at least three additional years.”

The renewal comes about three weeks after the previous contract expired. The two companies previously had another three-year deal that expired at the end of November. A couple quotes from the Mozilla announcement:

“Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world,” said Gary Kovacs, CEO, Mozilla.

“Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come,” said Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Search, Google.

The deal’s importance to Mozilla can hardly be understated. Earlier this year, the company revealed that 98% of its revenue comes from search royalties.

Postscript, December 22: As we’ve reported on Marketing Land, reports are circulating today that the Google-Mozilla is triple the amount that Google spent in 2010 to be the default search engine in Firefox.

Search Globe plots different colored bars protruding from the globe. Each color represents a different language, and you’d see a nice diverse set of colors (i.e. languages) over places like Europe and parts of Asia.

Here is a video of how it works:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Google Data Arts Team put this together to help Internet accessibility throughout the world by geographic area and language. They also wanted to their WebGL talents and how it renders on Google’s browser, Chrome.

If you have interesting data sets, you can plot them using this globe feature by utilizing the The WebGL Globe.

After measuring activity across the 80,000 or so sites in its ad network, Chitika reports that Bing usage is tied to which version of Internet Explorer a person uses. Specifically, Bing usage increases as users upgrade to newer versions of Internet Explorer.

As you can see, Bing usage jumps from 16.9% among IE8 users to 22.9% among IE9 users — that’s a 35% gain.

Is this just a case of IE9 making Bing the user’s default search engine? No, not really. A Microsoft spokesperson says users who upgrade from one version of IE to IE9 will maintain the same preferred search provider they chose previously:

If a user has selected another search provider as the default (via the IE Gallery) in a previous version, that preference will be preserved when upgrading to IE9. Bing is the default on new IE9 installs.

So, it sounds like the explanation for Bing’s popularity among IE9 users is either A) A lot of people are switching from another browser to IE9 and using Bing by default, or B) a lot of IE9 users are upgrading and switching to Bing at the same time.

Google, of course, remains the number one search engine among all IE users. But it’s interesting to note that Google does see a drop-off in usage between IE8 and IE9, corresponding to some degree with Bing’s increase in usage between IE8 and IE9.

And then there’s Yahoo. According to activity across Chitika’s network, Yahoo users are generally web browser luddites. Ouch.

Postscript: I should also mention the possible impact on browser/search engine use from deals and partnerships that have been struck over the years between the major search engines and various computer makers. Here are a few of our past stories covering that topic:

• Deal Puts Microsoft Live Search On Dell Computers, Verizon Phones — Will It Help?
• CES: Microsoft Expands Scope Of HP Search Relationship To 42 Countries
• Bartz: Yahoo’s Search Decline Due To Dead Toolbar Deals

Behavioral targeting are a form of ads that use your online behavior to target specific ads to you, as you browse the web. Google calls these interest based advertising but most of the web calls them behavioral targeting.

Google released a new Chrome extension named Keep My Opt-Outs. The extension helps block some of the personalized advertising and related data tracking performed by companies. I should note, Google has an older Chrome extension named IAB Opt Out that blocked Google’s interest based ads. This new extension works more broadly.

Firefox said they are working on a solution for a new version of Firefox. Alex Fowler from Firefox said:

As the first of many steps, we are proposing a feature that allows users to set a browser preference that will broadcast their desire to opt-out of third party, advertising-based tracking by transmitting a Do Not Track HTTP header with every click or page view in Firefox. When the feature is enabled and users turn it on, web sites will be told by Firefox that a user would like to opt-out of OBA. We believe the header-based approach has the potential to be better for the web in the long run because it is a clearer and more universal opt-out mechanism than cookies or blacklists.

As I said at the Search Engine Roundtable, I suspect adoption of such extensions or turning on blocking will be used at a very very limited basis. So advertisers and publishers really do not need to worry about reduced advertising or marketing. But if you are a person who is worried about this, you now have some tools to help protect your privacy.

Related Stories:

• Google Gets Into Behavioral Targeting, Launches “Interest-Based …
• How Many Google Privacy Policies Are You Violating?
• Yahoo Introduces “Ad Interest Manager”: Allows Opt-In And Out Of …
• Privacy Concerns, Online Ad Targeting On Apparent Collision Course
• Behavioral Targeting Is Easier Than You Think
• How Microsoft’s Behavioral Targeting Works
• Consumer Groups Trying To Preempt Behavioral Targeting For Mobile Ads

It’s unclear what’s causing the delay but in the intervening year the iPad arrived and the first viable Android tablets are starting to appear, led by the appealing but flawed-and-too-costly Galaxy Tab. There is growing evidence that tablets — the iPad in particular — have taken a real bite out of the netbook market and negatively affected sales. These data argue that when ChromeOS computers finally appear they may find a very different market and struggle to find a consumer audience accordingly.

As an aside there’s been quite a bit of discussion about the relationship between the ChromeOS and Android. It’s somewhat ironic (or perhaps fitting) then that Android-based tablets might participate in the undermining of Chrome-based netbooks.

Interestingly Google previously positioned ChromeOS computers as second or supplemental machines and not a substitute for a more traditional laptop or desktop. This positioning was wise, in my mind, because a browser-based computer where everything is stored “in the cloud” would be undesirable to most people as a primary computer.

This “secondary computer” slot, however, has now been almost entirely usurped by the iPad. It will be a challenge to explain and market “ChromeBooks” to consumers at this point. The Google brand has considerable weight but probably not enough to overcome changed market dynamics.

Consider that the cheapest netbooks, which generally have fairly low customer satisfaction levels, are now uniformly under $300. And today, “Black Friday,” you can buy 15-inch, Windows-7 Acer and Toshiba laptops from BestBuy for under $300 as well.

What this effectively means is that for a Chrome-based netbook to appeal to a large number of consumers it’s going to have to retail for about $250 or less. Price will thus be the determining factor behind whether ChromeBooks succeed or fail in the consumer market. Here’s the logic: If I can get a “full-featured” laptop for about $300 I’m sure as heck not going to buy one that seems to offer fewer capabilities for the same price. Aggressive pricing is part of the reason why the eReader market (Kindle in particular) has survived the iPad.

Given the cannibalization of netbooks and the usurpation of the “second machine” position by the iPad, ChromeOS netbooks could turn out to be a colossal misfire for Google — absent the dramatic pricing I’ve suggested. I could be wrong of course . . .

Regardless, Google could still find potential success in the enterprise with Chrome computers. Corporate IT departments could deploy thousands of low-cost machines that could be updated quickly and cost effectively. That possibility and associated “new thinking” is suggested in a NY Times piece on Chrome:

[Chrome VP Linus] Upson says that 60 percent of businesses could immediately replace their Windows machines with computers running Chrome OS. He also says he hopes it will put corporate systems administrators out of work because software updates will be made automatically over the Web.

Having potentially missed its “window” for ChromeOS netbooks in the consumer market, the enterprise is where Google may now be forced to focus its energies.

In his blog post announcing the decision, co-founder Todd Agulnick explains how, inspired by the crowd-sourced success of Wikipedia, Xmarks was inspired in 2006 to aggregate its users’ vast database of bookmarked web pages into something useful — “maybe even a spam-free search engine based entirely on what users had bookmarked.”

Later, as the service neared 100 million bookmarks, the company did exactly that.

The first thing we built was a search engine. It turned out amazing results, but only for certain types of queries. It was terrible at finding facts. But if you were looking for the websites in a particular category, the results were shockingly complete and entirely spam-free. Looking for the list of all auto manufacturers? Or presidential libraries? Or art supply sites? A casual comparison of our results with those of the major search engines would convince you that we were on to something. We recruited a group of non-technical subjects to do a usability test, and it flopped. Sit people in front of a search box and ask them to test it, and their first query is their own name. #FAIL. It turns out that with the exception of people doing market research, consumers using search are not typically looking for an authoritative list of sites within a category; they’re looking for an answer to a specific question.

If you’ve been in SEO long enough, you can probably identify with the final sentence there. The best-known directories, like DMOZ.org or the Yahoo Directory, have always been valued more for the (assumed) benefit of their links than for any actual traffic they generate.

Xmarks is, to a large degree, more like a Yahoo Directory or a DMOZ than like a true search engine; it’s a huge database of web sites and web pages bookmarked by its users. And the current “bookmark search” tool it offers is quite good. These results for U2 are astonishingly accurate in terms of showing the most well-known, authoritative sites — official and independent — about the rock band.

In his blog post today, Agulnick says Xmarks has been shopped around since the spring, but after getting “remarkably close” to a deal, the buyer backed out. GigaOM says Xmarks was close to selling to Google, though that’s not been confirmed anywhere as far as I know. Google’s Chrome browser already offers a similar sync feature for bookmarks.

If you’re an Xmarks user, see this page for more information about the service’s shut down, including alternatives. (Sadly, none of them are cross-browser.)

There’s more discussion on Techmeme.

“The one that I am the most pleased with is Chrome. This is a personal answer. Because Chrome has a lot of subtlety to it,” Schmidt said. “It’s all of these complex design choices that the Chrome team made that makes Chrome faster and just [intuitive]. And once you start using Chrome it’s very hard to go back to a different browser. And you can’t quite say why. And those are the trade-offs. And they’re all subtle. And that’s the kind of stuff I like. And obviously that extends to Chrome OS as it becomes available.”

Schmidt also said that Chrome harkens back to the simplistic design of Google when it first started:

“I told the team that the design choices of Chrome were as subtly elegant as the design choices that Larry and Sergey made when Google was founded. That’s how clever they were. And I think that’s often missed.”

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, said that initially when Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founders, brought the idea of building a browser or operating system to him six years ago, he was not interested. Schmidt said recently, “At the time, Google was a small company.” “Having come through the bruising browser wars, I didn’t want to do that again,” he added. But when Schmidt saw what a Googler (previously Firefox developer) built, he was convinced it would be a “game changer.” Page also added that he and Sergey “just wore you down.”

Meanwhile, VentureBeat reports Microsoft’s Vice President of Developer and Platform Evangelism, Walid Abu-Hadba, calling Google’s entry into the OS market as a “defensive” play, to keep Microsoft distracted on search.

There were suggestions on the TechCrunch blog that third parties were potentially exerting pressure on or encouraging Google to hurry up the general release of Chrome. I asked Pichai about this idea and he said that the product was “very far along” when they initially released it in September. He added that the bugs and feature requests have been addressed; so it was time to come out of beta.

What bugs and feature requests?

Pichai said that there had been some issues with audio and video that were now fixed. He added that the browser is now more stable and even faster — indeed speed is one of its chief selling points. Among the feature requests, there are now better privacy controls (in one place), better bookmark management and various security upgrades and improvements. On the nagging question of a Mac version, Pichai said there was a good deal of internal pressure to get one done but it was a “non-trival matter.” He said that one would likely be out by the “end of the first half” of 2009.

One of the great features of Chrome is the new tab page (pictured above). Somewhat like Opera’s “speed dial,” it offers a grid display of most commonly visited sites for easy access. Another feature I would like to see Google add is one like Firefox’s “save and quit” option, which remembers tabs and sites and reopens them upon launching the browser during a subsequent session.

There are a host of coming improvements such as better RSS support and support for extensions, among a range of other things. Pichai also said that the browser has an impressive 10 million users after three months. That’s a very big number but to put it in the context of the larger browser market, here’s the marketshare breakdown:

I asked Google about location in the browser. Google Gears and its Geolocation API are built into Chrome. What that means is that Google’s WiFi and cell tower database triangulation will be able to pinpoint users with a high degree of accuracy (much like Google’s “MyLocation” does on mobile phones). It’s also similar to what Mozilla is doing with the next version of Firefox.

Pichai was not able to discuss these matters in great detail given that they were outside the scope of his responsibility. However he reminded me of the “double opt in” privacy policy tied to the Geolocation API. Google asks if you want to expose your location and third party developers or publishers trying to access that information must also request access from users.

There are lots of implications both for publishers and advertisers coming from this improved location awareness (Windows 7 will also have it). Here’s a previous post on some of the implications of location in the browser.

In the background, Microsoft has allegedly signed a deal with Dell Computer (a long time Google search partner) to pre-load the Live Search toolbar. If all that is true, an improved Chrome could be a carrot to retain the Dell relationship.

Most of the coverage, from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, focuses on several themes:

• Google going directly after Microsoft (browser wars redux); it’s even being called a “windows killer” by some

• Google trying to guarantee access to its search box
• Google now competing with ally and partner Firefox

On the last point, Om Malik has an interview with Mozilla CEO John Lilly in which Lilly says, ““I really don’t know how it will impact us.”

Indeed, we’re all speculating until the browser is available for download and people can see whether it represents an upgrade over IE, Opera, Safari or Firefox. For its part Google says:

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

This is just the beginning — Google Chrome is far from done. We’re releasing this beta for Windows to start the broader discussion and hear from you as quickly as possible. We’re hard at work building versions for Mac and Linux too, and will continue to make it even faster and more robust.

One way to look at this is as a kind of operating system for the emerging “cloud computing” world and a strategic asset for Google accordingly. As more computing functions move to the Internet, Chrome does have the potential to contribute to a decline in desktop-OS based computing. However it’s “way premature” to call it a Windows Killer in my view.

Google is making Chrome simultaneously available in 100 countries. Google also has huge reach and a powerful brand, which will make it more likely that there will be a big initial response.

However this is a product that will live or die on own merit: does it work, is it fast and functional? Google says that “this is just the beginning” for Chrome and is doing demos and a Q&A session later today (2 p.m. Eastern US).

I’ll be there and will update this post (or write a new one) after the session.

Postscript: You can watch the webcast here.

Update: Chrome will be available at 12 pm Pacific today.