Google search slips after Firefox switch

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

SAN FRANCISCO — Google's grip on the U.S. Internet search market slipped last month.

It was the largest decline since 2009.

The search giant's share of the market fell to 75.2% in December from 79.3% a year ago, according to analytics firm Statcounter.

That's the smallest share of the market for Google since at least 2008 when StatCounter started tracking the numbers.

The decline came after Yahoo replaced Google as the default search engine on Firefox browsers in the U.S. Firefox users accounted for more than 12% of Internet usage in December, according to StatCounter.

Yahoo, on the other hand, posted its largest gain, jumping to 10.4% from 7.4%.