After recent speculation regarding a potential deal between Mozilla and Ask Jeeves, AJ has taken things to the next level by releasing a version of their browser toolbar for the Firefox web browser. It does all the usual things one expects from a browser toolbar and some interesting additions. Check it out if you’re in the market for another toolbar for your browser. My personal feeling here, is that the search engines have realised that Firefox provides them with something they haven’t had for some time. A popular browser that doesn’t send everyone to MSN by default and a browser for which MSN won’t release a toolbar (or anything else). The Microsoft monopoly doesn’t extend to alternative browsers. If IE is the only browser, then the non MSN search engines have to work twice as hard to get market penetration. Don’t believe me? Wait until Longhorn is released and see how much Microsoft search technology is built into it. Firefox is possibly the last real chance the search engines have of getting a fair playing field in the browser landscape and they all apparently know it, or at least Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves do, as they’ve all released Firefox toolbars in the past couple of months. Yahoo went so far as to pledge that all Yahoo services will be made compatible with Firefox. As far as I can tell, all of Google’s services already are.
INSERT (23/03/2005): Ask Jeeves has just been purchased by InterActiveCorp for 1.85 billion dollars.
