When Did Mozilla's Firefox First Hit The Web & What Search Engine Does It Use?

Browsers are an undeniably crucial aspect of the internet as there's no other way to traverse cyberspace. Well, now the internet is so much more than using a web browser and going to a website since the invention of smartphones and their apps. But older generations can remember the early days of the internet when browser options were limited. The first mainstream browser most remember is Netscape, created by computer scientist Marc Andreessen and released in 1994. Netscape Navigator would eventually be considered the first browser for the people. Seeing Netscape's success, The fabled Internet Explorer entered the fray in 1995. Within five years it owned 99% of the browser market.

Netscape, seeing a vital need for some variety, decided to not only open source its code for others to use, but also created Mozilla in 1998. This non-profit company would eventually create a community of programmers to improve the code's functionality and existing features. By 2002, Mozilla 1.0 arrived. Community members also collaborated and released Phoenix 0.1, the first iteration of Firefox, in the same year, but neither garnered the same attention that the majority of the world was giving Internet Explorer.

Then, in 2004, the Mozilla Foundation launched Firefox 1.0, and it was an instant success. Before the end of the year, it was downloaded more than 100 million times, giving Internet Explorer a run for its money. 

Mozilla Firefox has used a few different search engines as its default since the browser's inception in 2004. At the time, it was the wild west for search engines. Alta Vista, Yahoo, Google, Ask, MSN, AOL, and so many more fought for the hearts of Millennials worldwide. Slowly but surely, Google took the throne. Google being Firefox's default search engine in 2004 surely helped. It remained the go-to search engine for Firefox until 2014, when an older brand attempted a comeback.

In the 10 years from 2004 to 2014, Yahoo and others fell off the metaphorical radar. Yahoo even added Google as its default search engine, essentially admitting defeat and ceding to the up-and-coming company. Yahoo quietly faded from the most popular search engine in the world to obscurity, joining forces with Microsoft to produce its results.

However, Yahoo's CEO at the time, Marissa Mayer, was never happy with the Microsoft partnership and made moves to put her company back on the map. She eventually succeeded in 2014 when Firefox made a deal to make Yahoo its default search engine. This was likely one of the reasons many users stopped using Firefox. Yahoo's prominence as Firefox's default search engine only lasted until 2020. By that time, Google found itself as the default for Firefox once again. Considering that 90% of Mozilla's funding comes from whoever pays to be the default search engine, it makes sense that the biggest name on the internet would be welcomed back.