Daniel Hruska Being the default search engine on iOS devices is certainly a very prestigious matter, no doubt about it. Since the launch of the first iPhone, this position belongs to Google. In 2010, Apple and Google extended their agreement. However, things have changed since then, and Yahoo is starting to stick its horns out.
Apple is gradually starting to distance itself from Google services. Yes, we are talking about removal YouTube application and replacing Google Maps with your own Maps. So it's not surprising that the question arises as to what happens to the default search option. The five-year agreement (for which, according to some sources, Google is to pay hundreds of millions of dollars per year) is set to end this year, both companies do not want to comment on the situation.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is not afraid to talk about the situation: “Being the default search engine in Safari is a lucrative business, if not the most lucrative in the world. We take search very seriously, as evidenced by our results with Mozilla and Amazon eBay.”
Mayer previously worked for Google, so she is no newcomer to the industry. Even after coming to Yahoo, she remained loyal to her field and wants to help the company take more of the imaginary pie of all the searches in the world. Yahoo previously even joined forces with Microsoft, but for now Google remains the world number one.
Let's imagine a situation where Apple actually decided to change the default search engine in its Safari. What impact would this have on Google as such? According to estimates, quite minimal. For its dominant position, Google pays Apple between 35 and 80 percent (the exact numbers are unknown) of its earnings from searches through the search box.
If Yahoo also had to pay the same amount, it might not be worth the company at all. It can be assumed that some users would change their default search engine to Google again. And the percentage of "defectors" might not be small at all.
Yahoo was able to experience this effect in November 2014 when it became the default search engine in Mozilla Firefox, which accounts for 3-5% of searches in the US. Yahoo searches reached a 5-year high, while Firefox's share of paid clicks fell from 61% to 49% for Google. However, within two weeks, that share had risen to 53% as users switched back to Google as their search engine.
Although Safari users are not as numerous as Google Chrome users on Android, they are willing to spend money. And with search engines making the vast majority of their revenue from paid advertising, Apple territory is a big target for Yahoo. All this provided that a sufficient number of users would keep it as their default search engine.
And how would it make sense for the user? Better let them use DuckDuckGo instead of Google, which at least doesn't track us.
Yahoo is fighting for survival, so it has to try. Most of the company's value is made up of its equity stake in Alibaba. Now the shareholders' demand for the division of Yahoo and the allocation of Alibaba shares to
separate companies. The management is against it because it is worried that the rest of the company could have a negative value... So much for Yahoo.