Yahoo has signed a deal with Canonical – the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu – to become the default search provider on the version of Firefox that ships with the open-source OS.
The companies did not disclose the financial details of the deal, but Canonical says the change will be filtered into future builds of Ubuntu 10.4 “as soon as reasonably possible.”
“Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Platform,” says the leader of Canonical’s desktop development Rick Spencer.
Canonical has negotiated a revenue sharing deal with Yahoo and this revenue will help Canonical to provide developers and resources to continue the open development of Ubuntu
“This change will help provide resources as well as continuing to respect our users’ default search across Firefox,” he concluded.
Canonical stressed that users will still be able to set their own default search, though after Microsoft’s recent deal with Yahoo, some users may be tickled by the notion that Redmond is indirectly funding development of the Linux distro.
The deal is similar to the one between Mozilla and Google, under which the search giant pays the foundation to set it as the default search provider in Firefox’s toolbar and on the default start page.
Mozilla’s most recent financial results revealed that the deal provided 91% of its $79 million earnings during 2008.
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