Yahoo And Mozilla Sue Each Other, Google Now Default Firefox Search Engine

Google is the most dominant search engine company in the business, so it’s no surprise that Mozilla would make it the default search option on its updated Firefox Quantum browser. Unfortunately, this was in violation of the company’s agreement with Yahoo three years ago to make the less prominent search engine the default choice on Firefox. Now, both companies are suing each other.

It was around three years ago that Yahoo and Mozilla made the announcement that Yahoo would be the default search engine on Firefox, Search Engine Land reports. When Firefox Quantum was launched, however, this arrangement ended with Google taking the place of Yahoo.

From a completely business standpoint, this move makes a lot of sense since more people use Google compared to Yahoo. However, this ended up ruffling some feathers over at Yahoo’s parent company Oath, which is owned by Verizon. This resulted in a lawsuit accusing Mozilla of breaching the contract by terminating what should have been a long-term agreement.

Oath is now asking for an unspecified amount from Mozilla for supposed damages. For its part, Mozilla is saying that it was well within its rights to terminate the contract in a cross-complaint.

“We recently exercised our contractual right to terminate our agreement with Yahoo based on a number of factors including doing what’s best for our brand, our effort to provide quality web search, and the broader content experience for our users,” the complaint reads.

Immediately following Yahoo’s acquisition, we undertook a lengthy, multi-month process to seek assurances from Yahoo and its acquirers with respect to those factors. When it became clear that continuing to use Yahoo as our default search provider would have a negative impact on all of the above, we exercised our contractual right to terminate the agreement and entered into an agreement with another provider.”