Firefox rolls out an update that removes major Russian search providers

Microsoft has issued a regulation to thoroughly remove Russian state-sponsored content from its platforms, and suspend all new business operations in the country. Google also restricts access to Russian-language content. While Mastercard, Visa and PayPal have suspended their services in Russia.

Another big name, Mozilla, has also made a move to express its opinion, which is to remove some software services originating from Russia from the Firefox browser platform.

Specifically, in the new Firefox 98.0.1 update released today, Mozilla has removed two major search service providers from Russia, Yandex and Mail.ru, from the default search engine settings menu. above. This can be considered an additional release of Firefox 98 that was released just a few days ago, and seems to have been released solely for the purpose of eliminating Russian search engines.

The content mentioned in the release notes is as follows:

Yandex and Mail.ru have now been removed as optional search providers in the default search engine settings menu on Firefox.

If you have previously customized Firefox with Yandex or Mail.ru as your default search engine, or installed a customized version of Firefox with Yandex or Mail.ru, which is available through the partner's distribution channels working, this release will remove those settings. This also includes default add-ons and bookmarks. If possible, your browser will revert to its default settings, as originally provided by Mozilla. All other releases of Firefox will not be affected by this change.

It is not clear whether the removal of Russian search providers from Firefox is part of Mozilla's anti-Russian stance, or whether the removal is 'extreme' due to a number of obstacles and constraints. legally. As is, Yandex and Mail.ru are no longer offered by default in Firefox, but users can still add them manually from the Firefox settings page.

Isabella Humphrey

Update 17 March 2022