Yahoo held their annual shareholder meeting last week which mentioned some pretty interesting things. Apart from the fact that Yahoo’s stock has jumped 25% last year, Chief Executive Marissa Mayer also announced a new partnership with Oracle which will now prompt anyone installing or updating their Java install to make Yahoo their browser’s default search engine & home page. Considering that some version of Java is installed on roughly 89% of desktop computers in the US alone – that’s quiet a huge market share that Yahoo potentially stands to gain.
Combine that with Yahoo’s partnership with Mozilla Firefox last year; and their on-going talks with Apple to be the default search engine; and within a year Yahoo’s search market share may be significantly past the 12.7% it currently is.
Now there is some concern that people may feel tricked into using Yahoo via this method – however anyone that has been downloading and installing software for a week will already expect a few screens with some default-on checkboxes that they need to watch out for. As you can see in the above screenshot you do have the option of not accepting Yahoo as your default search. Plus Ask.com has been running the same deal with Oracle Java for quiet a while.
It’ll be interesting to see where Yahoo’s market share goes from here.