Becoming Firefox’s default search engine has proved to be an excellent decision on Yahoo’s part as evidenced by its gains in the search market in the months following the deal while Google’s share has actually dropped. While neither the gains nor the losses were huge, it’s still impressive on Yahoo’s part.
Gaining the status of default search engine in Firefox is paying off for Yahoo, which has grown its share of the U.S. search market over the last three months while Google’s portion has dropped slightly. Neither Yahoo’s gains nor Google’s losses were massive, according to Web analytics company StatCounter. In January, Yahoo’s share of the U.S. search market rose to 10.9 percent. That’s a minor increase from the 10.4 share the struggling Internet company claimed in January and a sizeable jump from the 8.6 percent share it held in November. Last month’s gains weren’t enough to lift Yahoo past Microsoft Bing, which occupies the second spot with a market share of 12.4 percent for January. That’s down slightly from the 12.5 percent share Bing held in December.
