Firefox 98.0.1 version is only concerned with removing Yandex search for users in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkey, and switching them all to Google by default.

Original finding by vc.ru

Personal comment

  • They could just make a deal with SearX which would help Mozilla and SearX but instead they go back as fallback to Google search because they still have a deal with Google. The ironic part is that most Firefox users do not want Google.
  • The Bugzilla moderator could just changed and fixed the issue ticket name and make it clear what this is about but they did nothing here. I do not blame the creator of this particular issue ticket but the moderator who did not corrected it, which still misleads people.
  • I also find it hypocritical that they, because of Ukraine War now pretend they give lots of f#s about the search engines and the involvement. That Yandex, Google etc are controversial search engine providers is known way before Ukraine. I understand that you want to show sympathies but this is not the correct way to approach and communicate things. The whole story is basically about taking away control from the users, I do not judge users or would restrict them from using xyz search engine but they see it different.