Google Inc.’s share price down, loses search share the most since 2008 after Mozilla and Yahoo deal

Google Inc.s share in the Internet search market in the U.S. was reported to have declined in December 2014. This drop is considered as the largest in six years.

According to a report of the analytics firm StatCounter, the search traffic of the U.S.-based company in its home market, excluding mobile devices, declined from 79.3% in 2013 to 75.2% in December 2014. This is the lowest result of the company since at least 2008.

The drop comes after Mozilla made Yahoo the default search engine of its Firefox browser. On the other hand, Yahoo! Inc. reported its largest share gain since 2009. Its search traffic excluding mobile devices increased from 8% to 10%.

The Chief Executive Officer of Google, Aodhan Cullen, said in a statement, cited by Bloomberg: “The move by Mozilla has had a definite impact on U.S. search. The question now is whether Firefox users switch back to Google.”

As StatCounter explained, the changes were accelerated by the deal between Mozilla and Yahoo in November last year, when Googles search engine was replaced by Yahoo on Firefox browsers in the U.S. This put an end to the collaboration between Google and Mozilla, which started a decade ago.

The change is of significant magnitude, given that Firefox accounted for almost 14% of the U.S. browsers in December 2014.

At present Google and Microsoft are dominating the browsers on personal computers with their Chrome and Internet Explorer, which had average market shares of 37% and 34% respectively in the U.S. in 2014.

As reported by Bloomberg, the founding editor of Marketing Land & Search Engine Land, Danny Sullivan, commented the difficulties, which Google has recently been facing, in an e-mail: “I doubt Google needs to worry. For one, that’s probably the high water mark. Unless Firefox suddenly grows share, everyone who likely could get switched has been now. And Google might claw back even the small share gone.”

Google Inc. lost 0.29% to close at $505.15 per share yesterday, marking a one-year drop of 11.37%. The company is valued at $342.10 billion. According to CNN Money, the 42 analysts offering 12-month price forecasts for Google Inc. have a median target of $640.00, with a high estimate of $750.00 and a low estimate of $530.00. The median estimate represents a +26.70% increase from the last price of $505.15.