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After much ostentation recently regarding the shift in default search platform of the Firefox browser to Yahoo, I was relieved that there was some semblance of competition in the marketplace [1] (though I do prefer Google). However, back in 2009, Yahoo started serving Bing search results exclusively instead of maintaining its crawling and ranking systems, simply adding advertisements via its ad networks to the results. [2]
I'm most interested in how this plays out considering reports that Google used to pay around $300 mil/year to Mozilla to be the default search service--it must be a lucrative source of leads. [3] I wonder how the event would have been advertised if Firefox defaulted to serving Microsoft's Bing results? This is big business and, with the joining of Bing and Yahoo, Google may have a challenger (eventually), albeit as competition wanes--68% market share for Google, 29% Bing+Yahoo as of early 2014. [4]
Does it matter that nearly approximately 50% of average users (those that don't know they can change their default search engine) will get almost all content served to them as Microsoft sees fit? (A lot of guesstimation, but market share of IE+Firefox+Safari was approximately 49% Nov 2014 according to StatCounter) [5]
What opportunities are there for search engine companies to now highly editorialize/"curate" their results--i.e., pay for submission only, first 20 pages paid listings only, censorship of competitor products, skewing placement for news coverage from certain sources, etc? Seems that there are many interesting opportunities for search engines to monetize their services beyond a few keyword relevant adds on the top and right.