DuckDuckGo, Start Page, or Qwant might have been a little more in the spirit of Mozilla and privacy. Then again it takes about half a second to change the default search to your own preference.

Google is probably the most approachable for the vast majority of users. It is a sensible move in that regard.

I feel like the quality of deep search is diminishing; either there is less free content on the web, or search has been optimized for something else; I just get the same results over and over, not matter what combination of search terms I used on a topic.

I really just wish they would go back to letting the search bar change on the fly and remain that way until you change it back. With the little icon letting you know which service it is currently set to.

Does anyone know why that functionality was removed? If I'm searching for anything other than my default chances are I'm going to be searching at least 3 different things before getting it right, but then I can't just change the text and press enter.

While I'm ranting, when did google stop paying attention to the actual words you type and starting showing what they think you meant? I mean I know it's been gradual, but at some point over the last few years I've noticed having to use quotes for almost everything, and it still doesn't return exact results. I assume that has something to do with how they normalize the ngrams and how I'm not the target audience anymore, but it's still annoying.

Mozilla missed the opportunity to regain some of their authentic voice with this announcement.

“This is part of our ongoing search strategy, announced in 2014 to evaluate and select the best search experience in each region as opposed to having a single global default.” is revisionist. I worked on a competing browser, Flock, in 2005 and Mozilla already had a strong and wonderful commitment to use the (local) best search engine for Firefox in a region. When they switched to “Yahoo!” without additional transparency about the economic factor it made it easier for me to use Chrome without feeling moral regret. With the exception of this blog post / announcement I’m really excited overall to see Mozilla back in the game.

I wonder if at this point Google wants to keep Mozilla in the game. Their market share is low enough and it keeps antitrust regulators at bay. It looks bad if there are only two major browsers, one of which owned by a company which already got slapped for this very kind of monopolistic behavior.

Sorta like Intel and AMD.

Eh...if the Google search money keeps Mozilla going, why not? It's no worse than having Yahoo as the default search provider previously. I switch my default to DuckDuckGo anyway.

So Mozilla backed out of their 5-year contract with Yahoo then [1]. Do they have a new agreement with Google that I'm not seeing anywhere?

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-an...

Makes sense I guess. Nobody wants Yahoo search as a default.

On mobile Firefox makes it really easy to select a different provider.

I now use it on iOS too, even if it's just a shell for iOS's Safari view — the UI is nicer and you can enable tracking protection to be always on.

Shortened title is misleading:

Firefox Features Google as Default Search Provider... "in the U.S., Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan"

EDIT title updated (within HN title length constraints, I guess), thanks admins :)

What's with requiring an Add-on to set a search engine URL?

I can't remove the "&t=ffab" query tag from the DuckDuckGo search. Presumably ffab is Firefox Address Bar.

default search should be google search and default maps should be google maps. yelp on the contrary forces you to use apple maps on iphone and that kind of sucks.

Looks like Google is gaining its foothold back

You can't even remove all the search engines. I tried.

Mozilla's punch line "Built for People, not for profit" stands at odds with this since we know Google monetizes the heck out your search history.

Another interesting thing to note is Apple dropped Bing for Siri and Firefox stayed with Google. Sounds like Microsoft is not even trying.

There will likely be some people errantly suggesting this is due to search quality. It is not. Yahoo previously outbid Google approximately three years ago for that default search offering, and it's likely their arrangement has come to an end. One of Mozilla's strongest sources of funding comes from selling the default search engine spot to the highest bidder.

EDIT: As an interesting note: Yahoo's deal was for five years, not three. I am guessing Verizon decided it didn't want to pay for Mozilla anymore, and cut it off early?

just another reason to avoid it. mandatory telemetry, mandatory pulseaudio in linux, pocket, that weird failed video chat thing, and the DRM add-on that literally no one asked for.

Things like this illustrate why it's a bit disingenuous to praise the nonprofit status of Mozilla as some huge distinguishing factor. Not only do the executives pay themselves more than generous salaries (1m for chair, 874k for director, 908k for treasurer) but nonprofit doesn't mean free from commercial concerns. They still need to make money to pay those salaries and support their projects. It seems wiser to judge the ethos of a company based on their actions and decisions instead of their corporate tax status.

[1] - https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/2014_Mozilla_Found...

I agree. It's incredibly difficult to find anything that isn't a basic, low-value result when you're looking for advanced, detailed content.

Maybe I'm looking up practices on how to write efficient SQL queries. All of the results I find are just slideshare presentations and basic blog posts on how to add an index to your select statement.

It feels impossible to find depth nowadays, when everything that search engines deem relevant are the big, heavy-SEO websites with the lowest tier of query-relevant information. Sure, the results may be good for people who want just-the-basics about what they're searching, but anything more than that feels hidden away.

I think the problem is that making a worthless website (by this I mean worthless to users) is so cheap but also very lucrative for content farms. A webpage with garbage content but that has taken the right SEO measures has a good chance of getting on the first page and getting clicked, and these can be cloned ad infinitum with different content.

It's very easy now for good content to be hidden amongst clickbait.

SEO won. There were no economic incentives for Google to continue to fight it; they have no significant competitors. A better strategy for Google is to buy pieces of or provide services to the companies that dominate the first page.

Dollars put into the branding of being the best search aimed at the current userbase are been more effective than actually innovating on search anyway. People don't objectively rank search results between engines. They do defend their current habits, though, and solid branding material gives them something to tell themselves to counteract any (rare) arguments to switch.

What if it's actually an improvement in search results?

Everyone will search for something with a different set of words based on their experience. If most of those sets of words, all used to search for the same topic in the end, return the same results, isn't it an improvement?

Unfortunately, as you said, it doesn't help when trying to tweak the results you see to find your answer, but most people probably don't search in depth to find THE answer, but are looking for AN answer.

Agreed. I am getting irrelevant results WAAY more often than I used to, and it only gets worse.

Hi, I work on Google search. Can you share any examples of the types of search queries that used to work better for you?

It could also be due to the quantity of indexed data

Did you mean: something you definitely did not mean?

  Showing results for something you definitely did not mean
  Search instead for something you meant

No, Google, that's not what I meant. Put these links way, I did not mean that. I meant what I said.

Bandcamp's search is particularly bad in this regard, and doesn't even give you the option to quote or manipulate your search terms.

This is an increasing trend across the industry. I've been calling it "technological paternalism".

I use DDG as default, and have all my other engines set with keywords. Searching wikipedia (mapped to 'wk') for instance is as easy as:

ctrl+l

wk <search_key_word>

I'm on 56.0 until Ubuntu publishes an update but... if I click on the search glass icon, a dialog pops up with a set of suggested alternatives, and a change search settings button.

Did that actually change in Quantum?

Probably because search providers (e.g.. Google/DDG) will pay more for exclusive preference on the search bar.

How to switch off search-engines panel in url-search?

I feel the same way.

While it's true that Mozilla pays its people well (necessary, to compete for high end tech talent) and we (I work for Mozilla) are in no way free from commercial concerns, I think you're missing a big piece of why being a nonprofit is a distinguishing factor: Mozilla doesn't have the insane pressure for growth that most startups and all publicly traded companies have to reckon with. Any company that has gone public, wants to go public, or wants to get acquired has a never ending pressure for user and/or revenue growth at all costs. Mozilla doesn't have that pressure for growth. Of course we need to maintain enough market share to stay relevant, and we'd love to have more and more and more users, but ultimately as long as we can make enough money to pay for our operations then we're golden. This gives us a lot more freedom of choice when making decisions about what and how to make money.

Why can't people get rich while making a difference? These same people could be working for other companies who are not fighting for our privacy and an open web.

I agree that what is considered high paying salary is completely insane these days with wealth inequality and the idea that such sum of money if more than an individual will ever have use for. But that is a different topic.

A non-profit status doesn't always mean charity. In Mozilla case they are a Foundation, another entity eligible for non-profit status. They have different goals than a charity.

One of the things they do to earn this status is grants. And they have lots of grants.

Now what is funny is you exclude the $0 the five Directors made. Also Mitchell Baker doesn't get their entire pay from salary. That why it is in the second column. Last salary report on her was $400k. Which is weird cause that was in 2014 the same as this public disclosure form. Not sure why you purposely left out the fact their salary isn't actually 1 millions. But total compensation.

So their 'disingenuous' nature isn't so black and white as a headline 'non-profit chair has a 1 million dollar salary'.

They just switched from Yahoo as the default. So it's not like there's only one company paying the bills (and pulling the strings).

> It seems wiser to judge the ethos of a company based on their actions and decisions instead of their corporate tax status.

I do. I judge them based off the tools they build and the fine line they walk between making boatloads of money and actually providing services for people who care about privacy. Sometimes they get this wrong, but they try really hard.

And, really, the alternative is Google. That's not to say Mozilla shouldn't strive to be the best that they can, but if they were to disappear, we'd be using a closed-source browser built by the biggest ad company in the world who has demonstrated over and over that your privacy is antithetical to their business.