Why Yahoo could become your default web browser

Irrespective of whatever reservations some may harbour about Google’s increasing pervasiveness, the significant majority of internet users – at least English speakers – use Google as their search engine of choice.

And the reason is simple – it’s so damn good.

Unless Google screws up & drops the ball (like Alta Vista did years ago) or something better emerges (unlikely), few of us would stop using Google. However you may soon find that when go to make online searches your computer mysteriously starts using Yahoo rather than Google. This is because Yahoo has struck a 3 year deal with Oracle which means next time your computer does one those frequent Java updates you could inadvertently approve it switching your default search engine to Yahoo. To avoid this annoyance you’ll need to actively opt out, meaning many will unwittingly be tricked into installing Yahoo.

When users download Java this screen appears with the option pre-checked to set Yahoo as their browser’s default homepage and search engine

Why should you care?
There’s a reason Google has far greater market share than Yahoo, & it’s not because of better marketing. It’s simply much better & so you’ll be understandably fed up if a Java update surreptitiously switches you to Yahoo – unless that’s a conscious choice on your part. So next Java update pay careful attention to pre-filled check boxes.

Yahoo – tricking people is not clever marketing!

Other search marketing news this week:

• Bing outdoes Google with new Video Search
  Bing’s updated Video Search could become the starting place for an increasingly large number of searches.
• Google tackles accidental ad clicks with fixes for fat fingers
  Studies say that up to half of all mobile ad clicks are accidental. New fixes from Google should reduce the number of inadvertent ad clicks.

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