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Microsoft and Mozilla have teamed up to create a new browsing option: A version of the popular Firefox browser will be available for download with Bing as the integrated search engine.
Mozilla announced the partnership in a blog post, describing the new browser as “a customized version of Firefox that sets Bing as the default search engine in the search box and AwesomeBar and makes Bing.com the default home page.”
The Bing team, in a blog post, said they are “excited to make it even easier for members of the Mozilla Firefox community to use Bing.” Members of the Mozilla Firefox community who do wish to use Bing can download it here, at firefoxwithbing.com
This isn’t the first collaboration between Microsoft and Mozilla. In October 2010 Firefox 4 launched with new search bar options for users who preferred to search the web using an engine other than Google; Microsoft’s Bing, a little over a year old at that point, was one of those options, along with Yahoo’s search, Amazon product search, Wikipedia and eBay.
Though Bing-loving Firefox users had been able to download a Bing Add-On for Firefox to make the Microsoft product their default search engine, or reconfigure the default search engine via Firefox’s configuration settings, this new, separate browser makes it much, much easier to use Bing as the default search on Firefox.
Bing was introduced by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in July 2009, and ever since it has done nothing but lose $5.5 billion for the company, with some reports showing Bing now losing one billion dollars per quarter. Though Bing is the default search engine on BlackBerry phones, Windows Phones and on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (still the most used browser in the world by a huge margin even as its market share falls to competitors like Firefox and Google Chrome), it has still yet to make a dent in the search engine market; it sits at about 4 percent global usage, trailing behind Google, Yahoo and China’s Baidu.
Source :- http://www.huffingtonpost.com
Related articles
- Offering a Customized Firefox Experience for Bing Users (mozilla.com)
- That’s just wrong: Mozilla releases Firefox with Bing (slashgear.com)
