Google has been the default search engine company for the Mozilla Firefox browser.  This is mainly due to Google’s financial support of Mozilla.  In 2006, Google paid Mozilla about $57 million which amounted to 85% of their revenue.  But now the Russian version of Firefox will be dropping Google as the default browser and switch it to Google’s Russian rival Yandex.

According to a blog post by Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson, Russian Firefox users “wanted direct access to the Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds” based on studying trends of Firefox Yandex builds.  For the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds, Yandex will become the default search engine.  This version will be released in the next few weeks.

In the last few months, Yandex was planning on going IPO, but postponed it until the economy recovers.  Yandex gets about 50 million searches per day.

[Via Webware & TechCrunch]

Alisher Usmanov is a billionaire based in Russia that made money from mining, lumber, and other investments.  He is the 142nd richest person in the world with a value of $5.5 billion. Usmanov has been proactively investing in Internet companies.  Usmanov is a majority owner in Digital Sky Technologies (owner of Mail.ru) and SUP (the owners of Live Journal since December 2007).

Usmanov is now pursuing a large investment into Yandex (Yandex in English).  Yandex is a search engine that is currently in the planning stages of an IPO.  Usmanov is interested in 10-20% of the company which could be valuated at $1 billion given Yandex’s $5 billion valuation.

Yandex is ranked #3 in search in Europe.  Yandex had over 528 million monthly searches as of May 2008.  Yandex made $167 million in 2007 revenues.  Although the deal is not confirmed, this could be one of the largest investments made in a search engine.

Related Link:
1. Quintura Blog