Categories: Firefox

Changes to Search in Firefox

Think about what you’ve searched for in the last week: gifts for family, travel ideas, worrying health symptoms, long lost friends. Search is a central part of how we live online, and that makes it a personal, intimate act. That’s why I’m excited about the changes coming to search in Firefox. We build Firefox for you, and we work constantly to ensure that it fits your online life.

The first change, as Chris announced a few weeks ago, is that we will no longer have a single, global default for search providers in Firefox. This is really important: Firefox is available in more than 80 locales and we can now choose great defaults independently in each one. Of course, we’ll always offer you several built-in search providers to choose from, and the ability to install new ones.

For our US users, the new Yahoo default also comes with a new, modern Yahoo search experience. We collaborated with Yahoo to help them create something special for Firefox users, with richer search results that pull from the best of the Web (like integrated Yelp reviews for restaurants, Tripadvisor for travel, and lots more). Yahoo has also committed to respect Do Not Track signals from Firefox users across all Yahoo properties. For our users that choose not to have their activity tracked across the web, I’m thrilled that we can offer a default search that respects their choice.

The new search interface in Firefox

The last big change you’ll see in Firefox is our new search box. You’ve told us that, even with great defaults, you often have special searches you want to send directly to a different provider, like Wikipedia. Now you have the power to choose any search engine in a single click, without having to change your default.

If you don’t see these changes in your Firefox right away, don’t worry; you will. For something as central as search, we take extra care, and that means we’re going to roll this one out slowly (if you really can’t wait, try our pre-release channels).

Firefox search options

We provide more search choices in Firefox than any other browser because their differences matter; to you, to us, and to the web. We hope you’ll enjoy the improvements we’ve made to search in Firefox, and we look forward to bringing you more awesome in 2015.