Google really, really wants Firefox users to switch back to Google Search

It seems Google really wants Firefox users to switch to Google Search. At least some users of Mozilla’s browser, myself included, are being greeted with a message asking them to make Google their default search engine.

While that in itself may not raise eyebrows given the recent history between the Internet giant and Mozilla, Google has actually placed the message at the very top of the search results in Google itself. Moreover, in this VentureBeat writer’s case, Google is already his default search engine.

This comes four months after Mozilla announced it was dropping Google in favor of Yahoo as the default search engine on Firefox, a move that led to Yahoo Search making some small gains on Google in January. Indeed, Google Search fell below 75 percent market share in the U.S. for the first time in five years.

Last month, it seemed that part of Google’s response was to make Google Play unavailable through Firefox on Android, though the company later said that the issue was a bug and subsequently fixed it.

It is of course easy to manually change your default search provider within Firefox, and Google actually provided an idiot-proof guide showing Firefox users how to do just that. But for those who stick with whatever default search engine is in place when they update their version of Firefox, in this case Yahoo, Google is clearly pushing hard to get them back on board by donating valuable space at the top of search results.

However, this seems particularly unnecessary given the user must be on Google already to see the message. And when some are seeing the message when Google is already set as their default search engine, then something doesn’t seem right.

We’ve reached out to Google for clarification on the matter, and will update here when we hear back.