The Default Search Engine

June 2nd, 2008 admin Posted in Web Browsers | Comments Off

The default search engine for web browsers is still very important and worth a lot of moneyBack in the day, when AOL took over Netscape, there was talk about how the default settings in Netscape pushed considerable traffic to Netcenter. AOL bought Netscape for those eyeballs.Mozilla’s Firefox has earned considerable revenue with its default search engine for Google. Mozilla earned $53 million in 2005 and $67 million in 2006. (Google also has a deal with Dell to install its search toolbar).This week Microsoft announced an agreement with HP to install copies of Internet Explorer with an extra Live Search toolbar. No word on the financial details.According to the AP story, “Angus Norton, a senior director in Microsoft’s Live Search group, said about 40 percent of Web surfers use whatever search engine is set as the default on their PC.” I personally find this hard to believe. This statistic is saying most people switch their default search engine. Maybe its my mac bias, but I really don’t see lots of people switching the default search engines.