Another lost battle for Google in Russia. After the billboards in the streets of Moscow, the failed acquisition of contextual advertisement company Begun, and an army of Russianoligarchs on the wrong side – Google now lost the prime search spot in Mozilla Firefox to Yandex.
Harvey Anderson, VP and General Counsel of Mozilla Corporation, wrote on his personal blog:
In October, we asked for feedback on creating a deeper partnership with Yandex, one in which we would make Yandex search features the default in our Firefox Russian language builds. Over the past few months, we have listened to feedback, talked with our localizers, studied the trends of our Firefox Yandex builds, and reviewed the Yandex user experience. All this activity led us to the conclusion that our Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds.
Thus Yandex will be standard in the Russian release of Firefox 3.1.
Firefox has about 20 percent share of Internet browsers in Russia and Yandex is Russia’s leading search engine with 54 percent share of searches.
Written on 16th December 2008
14 COMMENTS Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
If you’re still looking for a reason to finally switch loyalty from Internet Explorer over to one of many competing browsers, trust me, this is it.
A major flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer that allows hackers to gain the password details of the user has been revealed.
This is not a rumor, it has been confirmed by Microsoft who in fact announced the discovery themselves admitting a “vulnerability in Internet Explorer” that “could allow remote code execution.” Not Good.
Still think this is over hyped news? Think again. Even the BBC has picked up the story with commentary from a number of industry analysts. (more…)
In case you haven’t noticed it yet, there’s a recommendation industry emerging which offers its services for “free” in exchange for your privacy. Share your web apps on Wakoopa, see on which site you waste time at 8aweek, and give away your playlist at Last.fm. I use or used all of these services, they’ve proven to be of great value. Yet I don’t have anything anymore that comes close to privacy. For that matter, I might start using Glue as well.
With Glue, you can see what your friends thought of the books, music, movies, wines, restaurants, gadgets, stocks, actors and tv shows you browse along. A toolbar pops up, and by clicking on a friend’s name, you can tell what they thought of it. Here’s a video explaining how Glue works:
This product by AdaptiveBlue might be of use for people who shop online a lot. As a true web geek, I get most of my friend’s recommendations via Twitter, blogs, or services like Last.fm. But apart from the privacy, it doesn’t hurt me to give Glue a spin as well. The only challenge here, is a familiar one: I’ll have to persuade my friends to start using it as well. If only they wouldn’t use Internet Explorer…
Interesting news about Chrome. Colin Barras, online technology reporter for Short Sharp Science, has been keeping an eye on the Global Marketshare Statistics of Clicky (the web analytics service we use, approve, and recommend). He noticed that the Google browser peaked when it was the talk of the town, with a 3.1% share. Yet since then it has dropped to 1.5%, sometimes even 1.4%.
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (around 60%) and Mozilla Firefox (around 30%) caress their steady figures. Barras expects Google to “have a job on its hands if Chrome is ever to rival Firefox, let alone Internet Explorer”. He also notes that the Chrome download link disappeared of the minimalistic Google frontpage – for reasons unknown.
To me it all makes perfect sense.
Google launches a beta version of a browser.
People check it out.
Google has enough test users and takes the link off the frontpage.
The folks who love Chrome wait for a stable version and start using their old browsers again.
Some hardcore fans stay.
Google launches a new kick-ass version and resumes its quest for world domination.
Written on 12th January 2009
1 COMMENT 
Harvey Anderson, VP and General Counsel of Mozilla Corporation, wrote on his personal blog:
Written on 16th December 2008
If you’re still looking for a reason to finally switch loyalty from Internet Explorer over to one of many competing browsers, trust me, this is it.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
