hi, having google set as default provider is the main source of income for mozilla, that funds the development of firefox. under that aspect it's doubtful that duckduckgo could take over that spot.

users are of course free to set any search provider of their choice as default in firefox: Change your default search settings in Firefox

Okay, I understand that, but it is a pity that Moxila needs to profit from using something so alien to the principles it espouses.

As a non-profit as mentioned something has to pay the bills. It was Yahoo before, before that Google so you can always go to the donate page.

Please mark this as Solved.

Mozilla made a deal with Google again to be the default search engine only in U.S, Canada, Hong Kong and Taiwan since Firefox 57.0+ even though Mozilla wanted to actually get away from Google on a number of things. Google has not been the global default search engine since November 19, 2014. Some locales had Yahoo as the new default while other locales had other search engines as default.

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/14/firefox-features-google-as-default-search-provider-in-the-u-s-canada-hong-kong-and-taiwan/

The reason for changing from Yahoo used on some locales was explained as much as they could in https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/12/05/mozilla-files-cross-complaint-against-yahoo-holdings-and-oath/