The break-up between Google and the Mozilla Foundation has been nothing short of logical now that Chrome is out. The official break-up has now begun, with FireFox Russia ditching Google in favor of a Russian search engine known as Yandex!
A Mozilla developer stated the following on his personal blog:
Over the past few months, we have listened to feedback, talked with our localizers, studied the trends of our Firefox Yandex builds, and reviewed the Yandex user experience. All this activity led us to the conclusion that our Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds. As a result, we’re planning on setting Yandex as the default search provider for the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds (these changes should go into the current beta for testing). This means that, upon download and launch, the Firefox Start Page for RU locale builds will use Yandex for search queries, and the search bar will default to Yandex.
From my point of view, the message is clear: the Mozilla Foundation is actively looking for new search partners. Google has little to loose by supporting Firefox until it gets booted out (after all, they get traffic in exchange); and furthermore doesn’t want to concentrate the wrath of most power users on itself by stopping to support the foundation.
The future perspective IMHO is short and sweet: localized builds will switch to other search engines slowly but surely, while Google lowers its royalty payments. The deal will then fall asleep without much further ado when all locales have found new partners…
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I can’t really blame Firefox for getting rid of Google. After all Yandex is Russian and will be better suited to Russian searches.
Sounds like Yandex is a much better product than Google. Russia is a massive place and Firefox obviously don’t believe Google is catered enough to Russia, either that or its too competitive.
Hi Folks (nice companies ur advertising btw),
.
the issue is not who is better suited but who pays more
All the best
Tam Hanna
P.S: Keep in mind that Firefox is funded by Google…
Well, for Russia, yandex is a much better search engine. I always use it when I do russia-specific searches. Plus, the page design is by Art Lebedev
Hi badzed,
it’s a weird situation – on TamsWMS, I have a user stating that google.ru is better.
Weird…
All the best
Tam Hanna
Well, yes
A lot of Russian’s I know don’t even know that Google exists 
But Yandex is massively marketed. Gmail accounts are also not yet very popular in Russia, and Yandex mail is popular. For whatever reason, but it is a fact that Google is NOT the most popular search in Russia. I, however, on many occasions was convinsed, that Google.ru does a much better job of locating information than Yandex.
Hi Vic,
so here is the user from TamsWMS – welcome, Vic
As I am not Russian and can’t speak Russian, I gotta keep out of the discussion. All I can say is that Yandex is a lot more popular than Google – see here for details:
http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?cc=RU&ts_mode=country&lang=none
All the best
Tam Hanna