On: Chrome Privacy

[bzbarsky]

There is no bid process. Mozilla sets the default search engine to whatever search engine provides the best search results for its users, as far as that can be determined.

This is why the search engine is different in different locales; for example Yandex has way better Russian search results than Google, and hence is the default search engine in the Russian localization of Firefox.

[blasdel → bzbarsky]

Mozilla makes a 9 digit income in referral fees from setting search engine defaults, almost exclusively from Google.

At least they no longer solicit donations, but for them to pretend they're viable without that omg privacy violating teat to suckle at is just gauche.

[bzbarsky → blasdel]

The major search engine providers all have referral fee programs.

So while Mozilla does make money from those, it would do that no matter which of the major search engines it defaulted to, no?

And note that there is a reason the search field is not merged with the url bar in Firefox. Precisely because it would be a privacy violation.