Wonder where them free browsers get their funds (Firefox and lately Opera)? Turns out that these browsers have built-in search boxes with Google as their default search engines. Mozilla/Opera gets a cut on all advertising revenues as a result from using the built-in search boxes. So, when a user search Google using the built-in search box then clicks on the Adsense ads (far right of the search results page), the browser takes a percentage of those paid ads.
John Battelle talks about why Google is a bit worried about Microsoft and its upcoming browser, Internet Explorer 7. If some of you have tried installing IE7 before, you will have noticed that it too has a built-in search box in it (a first in Microsoft’s browser):
The focus of Google’s concern is a slender box in the corner of the browser window that allows users to start a search directly instead of first going to the Web site of a search engine like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Typing a query and hitting “Enter” immediately brings up a page of results from a designated search engine.
That slice of on-screen real estate has the potential to be enormously valuable, and Microsoft is the landlord. Internet Explorer 7 is the first Microsoft browser to have a built-in search box, while other browsers like Firefox, Opera and Safari have had them for some time. Google estimates that the boxes, when available, are the starting point for 30 to 50 percent of a user’s searches, making them a crucial gateway to the lucrative and fast-growing market for advertisements that appear next to search results.
Even if IE is seriously loosing its share in the browser market, it still holds a majority and those numbers could very well hurt search engine usage for Google.
[tags]google, microsoft, search, IE7, browser[/tags]
Microsoft finally learned something from FOSS? are you on crack? That is where most of the innovation comes from, you just don’t see it because you don’t use Linux obviously.
ohh..so Microsoft has finally learned something from the FOSS community, Google shouldn’t be so bothered by it, blogging is still spreading and is becoming more popular and with it, it’s support of spreading Firefox.