Internet search is a lucrative business — just ask Google. The company accounts for two-thirds of desktop searches in the US. But change is afoot this year. Microsoft and Yahoo, numbers two and three in US search, could revisit their search agreement with each other. Yahoo’s market share in this field has risen (now 13 per cent, ComScore says) after it became the default for Mozilla Firefox. Meanwhile Google’s exclusive search deal with Apple’s Safari browser is up for grabs; UBS estimates that the Safari deal could drive nearly $8bn in sales for Google this year. So 2015 could become the year of the search wars.
互联网搜索是一项有利可图的业务——只需问问谷歌(Google)就知道了。该公司占美国台式电脑搜索的三分之二。但今年，这样领域正在酝酿一场变革。在美国搜索领域排名第二的微软(Microsoft)和排名第三的雅虎(Yahoo)，可能会重新修订互相之间的搜索协议。在成为Mozilla火狐(Firefox)浏览器的默认搜索引擎后，雅虎在互联网搜索领域的市场份额已上升（ComScore称，如今其份额为13%）。与此同时，谷歌与苹果(Apple)浏览器Safari的独家搜索协议仍悬而未决；瑞银(UBS)估计，与Safari的协议今年可能会为谷歌带来近80亿美元的销售额。因此，2015年可能会成为搜索大战之年。