However, this means that the searches I'm doing will not generate revenue for Mozilla anymore. And I feel bad about that. I hope they'll cut a deal with Google for Europe.
I was under the impression Yahoo was going to be US only.
It's fine for me, as converting back to Google as the default is easy. But as I've said, I hope they'll still struck a deal with Google for non-US markets that do not have an alternative to Google (like China or Russia do). Because that way users like myself can keep supporting them indirectly.
This is not uncommon at all.
So given the broad usage of the US version of Firefox around the globe there need to be some level of localization in the services that are more sophisticated than simply assuming that a Yahoo search from the search bar must originate from the US.
But then, going back to my original problem - does Mozilla get credit for my searches? I always felt good about using Firefox and recommending Firefox to my peers, because Firefox usage brings them nickels that add up.
So is the deal with Google over, on a global scale, or just for the US? And if I'm using the en_US version, while in Europe, does that bring them anything? That's what I'd like to know.
For example I just searched for "restaurante" (the Romanian word for "restaurants"). Google gives me nearby restaurants in Google Maps plus links to Romanian guides to restaurants, whereas Yahoo is giving me the Spanish Wikipedia page for the Spanish definition as the first result (WTF!) and the results are complete bullshit. And look, DuckDuckGo is also returning the same bullshit (yes, even with regional searches turned on, I still get Spanish results): https://duckduckgo.com/?q=restaurante
I could think of other blunders, as whenever I tried using alternatives it's been very painful for me (i.e. fixing the individual example above won't solve my needs) and Google is also often able to infer what I want based on my profile. For example when I search for Ruby I get a different set of results than my wife does ;-)
You can say what you want about Google's privacy invading tactics, but their search results are really the best and if people wonder why they have a monopoly in search, well this is why.
I think the problem isn't just crawling, it's parsing. Google does a lot of clever stuff where it tries to understand the site and handle things like alternate spelling, synonyms and typos. From what I've seen Bing at least is far behind on this front for non-english sites and I don't know if they're even really trying.