According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo has instituted a hiring freeze across the company and is considering a reduction in force in support units of the company.

While the details of any layoffs — which are expected to be small and selective for now — are still being worked out, sources said that the stricture not to fill hundreds of open positions is the first step toward significant cost-cutting initiatives across the Silicon Valley Internet giant, in the wake of what it expects to be another weak quarterly report next week and a looming proxy fight.

Yahoo reports its fourth quarter earnings Tuesday. While the company has managed to improve the results in the last part of the quarter, sources said they will still show continued weakness in its key businesses and consumer usage.

That’s as competitors such as Google and Facebook have been showing significant growth, especially in the display advertising market.

Thus, new Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson appears to be zeroing in on costs and managing for margins, said multiple sources, much as his predecessor Carol Bartz did at the start of her tenure.

But many think Yahoo needs even more drastic changes, including massive cuts in staff and also product arenas, to give the company new life.

That includes shifts in leadership at the top levels too. In a major move this week, co-founder Jerry Yang stepped down from the company’s board and all roles there. More directors are expected to leave soon, too.

That will likely come after negotiations to sell part of its lucrative stakes in both the Alibaba Group and Yahoo Japan are successfully completed.

While not a certainty, Yahoo’s board hopes that will happen sometime before activist shareholder Daniel Loeb initiates a proxy battle against the company in the coming month.

Sound complex?

It is, and also troubling to Yahoo’s long beleaguered rank and file, who have been worried about more layoffs.

The Yahoo troops have been under intense pressure and have suffered from ongoing attrition. Just yesterday, for example, Yahoo lost one of its top advertising execs, Seth Dallaire, to Amazon.

The company can ill afford such departures of key talent, even as it seeks to pare employee numbers in other parts of its business.

At the end of its last quarter, Yahoo reported that it had 13,700 staffers, down from 14,100 in the previous year.

Yahoo, of course, declined comment.

Whether women buy more tech products than men seems to be another facet of the subject emerging right now.

According to a new report from Parks Associates, more women than men are downloading movies and music, women do the majority of game-playing across some platforms, and women have higher “purchase intentions” than men do when it comes to some electronics.

In the 1986 movie “Ferris Bueller's Day Off,” Ferris got a computer, while Jeannie got a car.

Women are 40 percent more likely than men to play games on Facebook, represent the majority of Nintendo Wii players, and match men in terms of owning and playing Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s PS3, says the report. And women are 73 percent more likely than men to have watched a full-length TV show online in the past 30 days.

Parks Associates also says that women have higher purchase intentions than men do when it comes to buying popular devices like tablets, laptops and smartphones, though men’s interest surpassed women’s when it came to purchasing flat-screen LCD TVs.

Intent, of course, is different from pulling the trigger and pressing the e-commerce “buy” button.

This Nielsen study, meanwhile, refutes the idea that women aren’t likely to purchase advanced TVs.

And while the Parks Associates report says 88 percent of women purchased tech-related items last year, compared to 83 percent of the men surveyed, not all recent reports point to women as besting men in tech-buying.

Confused yet? You’re not alone.

Let’s look at this chronologically:

In 2008, men were estimated to spend $902 annually on consumer electronics, compared with the $558 women spent on tech each year.

By 2009, women were spending more on consumer electronics than men, according to the CEA. It says women accounted for $55 billion of the $96 billion spent on electronics gear that year.

But in 2010, as our WSJ colleague points out here, the average man reported spending $3 on consumer electronics for every $2 the average woman said she spent.

With all of the fluctuating data, perhaps comparing women to men when it comes to consumer tech spending isn’t the right way to look at it. It’s how much growth is occurring overall when it comes to women and consumer tech.

We’ve come a long way from this 2003 report on women being “comfortable” purchasing PCs and DVD hardware.

Despite the fact that women were still trailing men in terms of consumer electronics purchases in 2010 — women spent $631 on average, compared to men’s average annual spend of $969 — women still spent $73 more on tech products than they did in 2009. And that number is expected to continue to grow.

You’ve probably heard a lot about the emergence of female purchasing power. A lot of this may have to do with the current state of the economy and shifts within households: While men are recovering more quickly from the recession — regaining more than one out of three jobs lost, compared to women regaining about one in four — men have been hit harder over the past few years, hovering at a full percentage point higher in terms of unemployment. (Some of the recent employment gains for men may also be attributed to a disproportionate number of men working in the government sector who have been regaining their jobs.)

Many women consider themselves to be chief financial officers — of the home. According to a Harvard Business Review report from last year, U.S. women continue to say they control more than 70 percent of total consumer spending. Earlier reports indicate that this number could be even higher, but some researchers say the number is murky.

Another Nielsen study shows big differences between what female consumers in developed countries spend money on versus what females in emerging countries spend on: More than half of women in emerging countries focus on allocating household funds for their children’s education, compared to 16 percent of women in developed countries, who are more likely to spend on vacations and other items. And yet, in both developed and emerging countries, more than half of women surveyed say that purchases of computers, mobile phones and smartphones have changed their lives for the better.

Bottom line: Women are making more buying decisions, and that includes consumer technology products, though the growth to date seems incremental. And that doesn’t necessarily have to be measured against what men are buying — though marketers like to know these things.

We can only hope that increases in women’s tech purchasing also means that manufacturers and marketers are getting savvier about that age-old question — what do women want? — and that the answer isn’t necessarily hardware in stereotypically girlish hues.

According to multiple sources, the long-anticipated public offering of Facebook is now likely to come in the third week of May.

That means that the company must file its IPO documents within the next month, given that the review by the Securities and Exchange Commission usually takes about three to four months.

That’s if there are no issues, of course, such as a turbulent market or thornier-than-usual questions from regulators that require amending the filing.

Groupon, for example, filed for its IPO in early June, but did not go public until five months later in November.

The usual caveat on the late-May timing (even though I called 143 people on this one): This IPO planning could all change, in a New York minute, to another month.

In any case, the Facebook IPO is expected to be one of the largest Web offerings ever — with some reports saying the company will be raising $10 billion on a $100 billion valuation. (The valuation and raise, sources tell me, will be much lower.)

That amount is presumably to match its huge consumer growth and revenue explosion. Users now number 800 million — a figure that is likely to hit one billion this year. And revenue, which was reportedly close to $4 billion in 2011, is expected to be higher by another third in 2012.

Facebook will need such oomph if it is to impress investors, although the social networking site’s leadership is still warning that its focus is products over dollars.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal last week, for example, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg hedged the point, even as he sang his same familiar strategic tune of the last few years.

“The thing to take away isn’t that we don’t care [about business]. People for years were asking me why aren’t we trying to make more money,” he said. “I would say I’m trying to build a business for the long term and it was clearly the right strategy.”

While admirably I’ll-row-my-way in tone, Zuckerberg needs a public offering heft more than ever, as Facebook’s battles with rivals — most especially Google — escalate.

Just last week, the monocratically-inclined search giant ham-handedly shoved its own social networking service, Google+, into its results, in a move that could severely disadvantage Facebook.

Thus, into the Wall Street breach, to get a giant pile of dough to fight back!

But, unlike Google’s more kookified 2004 IPO, sources said Facebook’s is probably going to hew to a more traditional offering script.

That is likely to include a hefty consortium of irksome investment bankers — think firms like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley on top of the filings, and a spate of smaller ones (Allen & Co.) below, and you have the approximately accurate idea.

And, while shot-caller-in-chief Zuckerberg will be the one key voice in the IPO, the man to watch has been and will be CFO David Ebersman.

The longtime Genentech exec, who came to Facebook in 2009, has been doing all the heavy lifting in preparation for the IPO, said sources, and will continue to do so.

Facebook declined to comment (but I would too, if I were them).

If you thought things were going to quiet down with Yahoo now that it has installed new CEO Scott Thompson in place, think again!

That’s because of a very unusual — well, to be fair, unusual for most companies, but not for perpetually storm-tossed Yahoo — confluence of important events about to take place all at once over the next six weeks.

And, like a very dicey game of corporate Jenga, each has the ability to upend and impact the other significantly, either for the good or, well, for the bad.

Here are the four horsemen of the possible Yahapocalypse, all riding into town very soon:

Q4 Results: Yahoo will report its fourth quarter earnings on January 24th, after the markets close. While sources said the company has managed to turn around what was looking like a first-class disaster, it’s still not going to be a pretty picture when it comes to advertising growth, consumer engagement and other key metrics.

Simply put, Yahoo needs to show investors a fast-growing business. Instead, sources said the Q4 results will likely come in at the bottom of the expected range, which should be unimpressive, even though this has been business as usual at Yahoo for some time.

If Google and others have strong reports, of course, it will make the situation worse.

Along with goosing its ad business again, Yahoo needs to spur innovation and intro some cool new products in new arenas to make Silicon Valley and others perk up.

Proxy Fight?: Weak results will give a nice lift to potential efforts by activist investor Daniel Loeb of Third Point — a major Yahoo shareholder — to wage a proxy fight for control of the company. He’s already here in Silicon Valley this week searching for possible board members for an alternate slate of directors.

As I wrote earlier today, the earliest nominations for directors can be submitted is February 24. Loeb then has a month after that to submit a competing roster.

Worse for Yahoo, many of Yahoo’s major investors are mulling backing Loeb if he initiates a battle for control of the company.

There’s no doubt that Loeb is and means to be a thorn in Yahoo’s side — he already made a lot of noise about its consideration of partial investments from private equity firms, due to low share prices — until major changes take place at the company.

And by major, Loeb’s intent seems to be along these baseball lines: Throw the bums out!

Board in Flux: Speaking of the board, it’s not the pretty picture of solidarity as you might think.

Actually, no one in their right mind thinks that. This board is about as dysfunctional as they come. (It’s like that group on “American Horror Story,” minus the bald dwarf in the basement.)

Right now, several sources report, various factions are jockeying over which board members go and which stay. The Wall Street Journal reported last week on a formal search for new board members to replace outgoing ones, but it’s much more complex than just that.

While some departures seem most obvious — longtime board members Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern and Gary Wilson — the really interesting part will be the possible exit of Chairman Roy Bostock.

While it now is more of a when rather than an if, many sources report, how it goes down is the key part of the move. And who will be the chairman then will be the big conundrum — either an internal candidate, such as David Kenny, or a fresh-eyed outsider.

Another question mark: Whether co-founder Jerry Yang could also move along off the board with Bostock. While Internet company founders usually stick on boards, it’s not a given, especially with all the turmoil at Yahoo, some of which is related to Yang.

For now, make no mistake, Bostock is still in charge of the board and Yang is the only real power behind that power, despite the recent influence of director Brad Smith.

But, with all the pressure by shareholders, some sources suggest that it might finally be time for some significant change at the board level, starting with the pair most associated with all its troubles.

Or, um, not.

If there is going to be any action at all, expect it before February 24th — when Loeb can start making real trouble.

Asian Solution: A lot of the above hinges on whether Bostock and Yang can deliver the promise of a deal with its long disgruntled Asian partners, Alibaba Group and SoftBank.

The trio is now engaged on negotiations about a tax-free deal, in which Yahoo would sell back some of its stakes in its Asian properties and get money and other operating assets in return.

While it’s good news that the talks are finally proceeding with some level of normal functionality, it’s still a complex situation and one with a lot of outstanding questions.

Most important: Which operating assets will be bought in the deal to hand over to Yahoo? And also, what will the valuations be?

Sources close to the situation said that the talks remain slow-going and frustrating — “The stop-and-go of all time,” joked one person involved. But they are moving forward, which is no small thing when it comes to these three.

That’s critical for Yahoo, which can ill afford to disappoint shareholders if no lucrative, cash-rich deal happens in Asia. And, it needs to happen before Loeb can act on a proxy fight too, since a successful end to its Asian issues will negate his momentum dramatically.

Oh Yeah, Running the Core Business Stuff: As usual, a full and fraught month for Yahoo and its directors, who have other things to do, I assume.

But not me and not new CEO Thompson. By the way, the former eBay exec will presumably be very busy doing some significant rejiggering of the core Yahoo business in the meantime.

Could that mean a new product direction for Yahoo, for example, around data? Could it mean a passel of new execs? Could it mean layoffs?

Or, could it mean Thompson will finally solve the ultimate sword-in-the-stone question: What is Yahoo?

And that, in the end, will be the real victory.

I love talking points as much as the next person, but there’s a striking similarity between recent statements by Yahoo’s co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang and its new CEO Scott Thompson, who was just hired after a stint running eBay’s PayPal unit.

It seems from the pair that the exploitation of Yahoo’s troves of data might take center stage from the “premier digital media company” moniker that the Silicon Valley Internet giant has been using of late.

Premier consumer data mining and usage company just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? (And it’s also usually called Google!)

Here’s Yang from an interview with Walt Mossberg at our AsiaD conference in Hong Kong this past October (this is a liveblog with quotes and paraphrasing of quotes).

Q: As you look at what Yahoo could be, what are the one or two key areas that it could go after to truly transform itself?

Jerry: We’re really focused on trying to “turn Yahoo inside out.” We do a huge amount of services internally: Data, content, personalization. Lots of other people on the Web around the world could use that.

And, from my liveblogging, here’s Thompson last week on his aspirations, which were much less focused on Yahoo’s longtime — and, ahem, bill-paying — advertising business (which the new leader keeps saying he knows nothing about) than on exploiting its consumer data businesses (which he certainly does know about from running the online payments giant).

The data these Internet businesses create, the ability to use analytical technology to build a better businesses for your customers. … I feel certain that wealth of data is going to be exploitable for next generation products, next generation experiences. … My instinct says down in that data we’re going to be able to find ways to compete and innovate that the world hasn’t seen yet.

Data it is, then!

Yahoo actually let me talk with its new CEO Scott Thompson this morning, after the company announced it had hired him as its latest leader.

In an interview, the man who is leaving a job running eBay’s large and lucrative PayPal online payments unit was affable and — dare I say it — seemed very sweet, as well as gung ho on Yahoo’s prospects going forward.

Joking about how he took the job only because eBay and Yahoo are located close by each other in Silicon Valley and the commute was just as easy, Thompson opened by noting that those working at the online commerce giant have always had a “keen appreciation for what each other was doing.”

He said that when he was approached in November about the Yahoo job, although sources said it was just offered this week and took eBay by surprise.

Still, soon after being contacted by Yahoo’s exec recruiters, Thompson said he began “exploring in more detail what’s actually here.” As he did so, he added, he “became progressively more fascinated” that Yahoo had more promise than has been assumed in recent years.

“Its potential is still enormous, but the dialogue has not been about what the company is,” Thompson said. “I want to get this wonderful brand to where it could be again … so, as a starting point, this is a great starting point.”

Thompson’s premise is based on his belief that we are still in the early days of the Internet. And, because he is a Boston native — making him, of course, an ardent fan of its beloved Red Sox — he used baseball as a metaphor.

“It’s early innings, and there are the next eight innings in front of us,” he said, noting that he was in the stands with his father when catcher Carlton Fisk hit that famous game-winning home run in the 12th inning of the sixth game of the World Series in 1975.

Note to everyone who is not an obsessive fan like Thompson (and also, I might add, Walt Mossberg): It did take the Red Sox from 1918 to 2004 to actually finally win the Series again, so maybe Yahoo has a chance!

“This remains a great business, and I have no doubt its best days are ahead of Yahoo,” said Thompson, in that same hopeful spirit of this-year’s-gonna-be-the-one.

Thompson noted that he is fully cognizant of the major troubles at the company recently, and had a “real sense of urgency, but not by moving at breakneck speed, because you just do bad stuff faster.”

Instead, he said, he hopes to focus Yahoo the same way he did PayPal, by innovating, making commitments and keeping them, and overperforming.

None are easy tasks, and all have stymied Yahoo in the recent past. Thompson said that he thinks it might be because of not focusing equally on both consumers and Yahoo’s partners and advertisers.

He admitted that his lack of advertising experience was clear — it could be problematic, because it’s Yahoo’s biggest business — but said, “I readily admit what I don’t know, and am ready to learn and rely on Yahoo’s great team.”

While he would not go into deep specifics — Thompson does not start until next week — he said he planned to get some basic grounding, noting, “I have no preconceived notions.”

One thing is clear, said Thompson: “I can assure you I am going to be completely different.”

If that means doing what Fisk did, that would certainly be a home run for Yahoo.

As I reported late last night, Yahoo said it had named PayPal President Scott Thompson as its new CEO. The exec is currently in charge of the large eBay online payments unit.

He’ll start next week, but there are staff conference calls today and also an all-hands meeting on Yahoo’s main Silicon Valley campus (meet at URLs, troops!) tomorrow.

Yahoo shares are down almost three percent on the news so far, as Wall Street has been hoping for a big sale of some sort and not another turnaround.

Yahoo will be holding a 7 am PT press conference about the move and presumably to swan around Thompson.

(Welcome, Scott! I hope you were informed — please do not listen to what co-founder Jerry Yang says on this important issue — that you are supposed to send all internal memos to me! Also, as one of my Twitter followers, Mike Dudas of Google just tweeted: “If Thompson leads companies as well as he grows a moustache, Yahoo made a great CEO choice!!” I concur.)

A Yahoo PR person confirmed the hire very cordially in a phone call early this morning and the Internet giant also put out a press release.

So did I, of a sort, last night. Given I am too tired to rewrite myself, here is what I had reported:

The company fired its last CEO, Carol Bartz, in September, and Yahoo has been run by the board and also by interim CEO Tim Morse, who had previously been its CFO.

After Bartz’s ouster, Yahoo said it was looking at a range of strategic options, including the possible sale of all or part of the company.

That was the focus at first, although Yahoo had simultaneously hired Heidrick & Struggles to look for a new CEO.

The company attracted two partial investment bids from private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital, but shareholders were unhappy with the low prices of these so-called PIPE — Private Investment in Public Equity — arrangements.

Yahoo then moved to try to strike a tax-advantaged deal with its long disgruntled Asian partners, China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank, to sell back parts of the large stakes it has long owned in Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan.

Those complex negotiations are still ongoing and look promising, which could yield Yahoo billions of dollars in capital to be given to investors, for stock buybacks or to invest in new initiatives.

Since then, the board — long considered one of the more cloddish in tech — has turned its attention to hiring a new CEO, in the hopes of trying once again to revive its flagging fortunes.

Thus, it began looking to hire someone with deep tech experience at a large public consumer Internet company in Silicon Valley.

That narrowed the field, with Yahoo looking at a range of choices with expertise in advertising, technology platforms and more.

There is a lot of that on the deep bench that eBay CEO John Donahoe has assembled at the online commerce giant, including Thompson.

Plus, he is a genuine Internet geek.

According to his eBay bio, Thompson became president of PayPal in early 2008, after serving as its CTO in charge of information technology, product development and architecture.

Before eBay, he worked at Inovant, a subsidiary of Visa formed to oversee global technology for the organization. He was also CIO of Barclays Global Investors and has worked at Coopers and Lybrand on information technology.

And here’s a tasty new wrinkle: Thompson recently “liked” Yahoo on his Facebook page, along with the decidedly more interesting Kickstarter and Splunk.

Again, Scott, thanks for the Facebook tip — I knew the social networking site could come in handy!

(Also, here is an interview I did with him post-announcement.)

And here is Yahoo’s official press release where Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock says nice stuff about Thompson:

YHOO_News_2012_1_4_General

According to sources close to the situation, Yahoo is poised to name a CEO, an announcement that could come as early as tomorrow.

Sources said the leading candidate likely to get the nod is a dark horse and someone who has not been named in previous reports (and not on my suggested lists!): PayPal President Scott Thompson, who runs eBay’s massive online payments unit.

While the situation could certainly change, the Yahoo board has definitely been moving aggressively of late to try to find a new leader for the Silicon Valley Internet giant.

The company fired its last CEO, Carol Bartz, in September; Yahoo has been run by the board and also by interim CEO Tim Morse, who had previously been its CFO.

After Bartz’s ouster, Yahoo said it was looking at a range of strategic options, including the possible sale of all or part of the company.

That was the focus at first, although Yahoo had simultaneously hired Heidrick & Struggles to look for a new CEO.

The company attracted two partial investment bids from private equity firms, Silver Lake and TPG Capital, but shareholders were unhappy with the low prices of these so-called PIPE — Private Investment in Public Equity — arrangements.

Yahoo then moved to try to strike a tax-advantaged deal with its long-disgruntled Asian partners, China’s Alibaba Group and Japan’s SoftBank, to sell back parts of the large stakes it has long owned in Alibaba and Yahoo! Japan.

Those complex negotiations are still ongoing and look promising, which could yield Yahoo billions of dollars in capital to be given to investors, for stock buybacks or to invest in new initiatives.

Since then, the board — long considered one of the more cloddish in tech — has turned its attention to hiring a new CEO, in the hopes of trying once again to revive its flagging fortunes.

Thus, it began looking to hire someone with deep tech experience at a large public consumer Internet company in Silicon Valley.

That narrowed the field, with Yahoo looking at a range of choices with expertise in advertising, technology platforms and more.

There is a lot of that on the deep bench that eBay CEO John Donahoe has assembled at the online commerce giant, including Thompson.

Plus, he is a genuine Internet geek.

According to his eBay bio, Thompson became president of PayPal in early 2008, after serving as its CTO in charge of information technology, product development and architecture.

Before eBay, he worked at Inovant, a subsidiary of Visa formed to oversee global technology for the organization. He was also CIO of Barclays Global Investors and has worked at Coopers and Lybrand on information technology.

And here’s a tasty new wrinkle: Thompson recently “liked” Yahoo on his Facebook page, along with the decidedly more interesting Kickstarter and Splunk.

(Dear Scott, Nice to meet you. And thanks for the tip! FYI, it’s a juicy giveaway like that which feeds my insatiable quest to find out All Things Yahoo!)

More to come soon, I expect.

Yahoo, as usual, never got back to me on my query, although the much more cordial people at eBay politely declined to comment.

It’s not clear if Netflix’s recent series of snafus are Amazon’s gain or not. But in a just-released report by ForeSee, one went up and one went down.

It’s an easy guess which was which.

In the well-known customer satisfaction survey of the Top 40 online retailers during the holiday season — which ForeSee has been conducting twice a year for the last seven years — Amazon rose to its highest spot ever, while Netflix’s score dropped significantly.

Amazon got an 88 out of 100, up two points, while Netflix dropped seven points to 79. The survey noted that “Netflix saw scores drop in every single element of the website that ForeSee measures, including site content, site functionality, merchandise, and prices.”

Ooops.

(Netflix fared better with customers in another poll last week, conducted by Citigroup. As Peter Kafka noted: “They’re less happy than they used to be. But they don’t seem to be going anywhere.”)

But in the ForeSee survey, Netflix moved from being a consumer darling to just another face in the crowd. It garnered the average score, which is also 79, a number that has risen from 74 since 2005.

But Netflix was not the only online retailer hit. Also down: Gap.com (down 6 percent to 73), and Overstock.com (down 5 percent to 72).

But on the up: TigerDirect.com (up 8 percent to 79) and J.C. Penney (up 6 percent to 83).

In general, ForeSee concluded that consumers are starting to get the hang of this e-commerce thing, and have become less price-sensitive, too.

And here’s a pretty chart explaining it all (click on the image to make it larger):

Earlier this week, Google and Mozilla said they had struck a deal to renew their search royalty agreement for another three years.

What the pair declined to add: The search giant will pay just under $300 million per year to be the default choice in Mozilla’s Firefox browser, a huge jump from its previous arrangement, due to competing interest from both Yahoo and Microsoft.

Sources said this total amount — just under $1 billion — was the minimum revenue guarantee for delivering search queries garnered from consumers using Firefox.

Google’s main rival in the bid, sources said, was Microsoft’s Bing search service, which was aggressively trying to hip-check it from the main search spot on the browser.

That’s because the software giant has been spending a lot of money in efforts to grow Bing’s market share in the search market.

Microsoft, of course, also owns the still-dominant Internet Explorer browser, but Google’s Chrome has recently been making major gains over both IE and Mozilla’s Firefox.

Still, Mozilla’s recent negotiations with both companies was about search market share.

Yahoo was also in the mix, even though Microsoft powers its search technology, because a hookup with Firefox was considered a plus in holding on to its declining search market share.

But the deal, which was being pushed hard by Yahoo’s Chief Product Officer Blake Irving and its search head Shashi Seth, was determined to be too costly for Yahoo.

Costly indeed, since the new price is much higher than Google had previously ponied up to Mozilla. In 2010, Google contributed 84 percent of Mozilla’s $123 million in revenue.

A previous version of the partnership had expired at the end of November, and the new talks were done against a backdrop of simmering tension between Google and Mozilla over Chrome.

As Liz Gannes wrote earlier this week:

Since the first search royalty deal was signed in 2008, Google’s own Chrome browser has become a significant competitor. Just last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in global usage for the first time, according to StatCounter. Both browsers — software which is used to navigate the Internet — have about 25 percent market share.

Even with the new default deal with Google, Mozilla still also has partnerships with other search providers, including Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon and eBay.

Of course, everybody declined to comment on my queries to hand over all the financial deets stat.

But Google’s SVP of Search, Alan Eustace, said in a statement: “Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come.”

Great, perhaps, but also much more expensive — so presumably Firefox is worth it.