As Originally Posted at The Wall Street Journal
It's no secret that Mozilla's Firefox Web browser is emerging as a potent competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. What may not be fully appreciated is the impact that Firefox could have on 
Web-browsing habits --
and the number of searches people perform.
The most recent version of Firefox, released last June, makes it much easier for Web surfers to return to a site they've previously visited. They won't need to know the site's address -- the browser's address bar offers what's essentially an automated bookmarks list. This is likely to reduce the number of searches per person over time.
The feature is likely to become standard. Microsoft is adding something similar in its upcoming version of Internet Explorer. Google isn't sitting still. Three months after the new Firefox version was released, Google came out with its Chrome browser, which also has a similar feature.
Search will remain a vibrant market. Firefox's new feature won't help someone searching for the first time. And the importance to ad revenues of people getting to sites they already know is unclear.
That said, anything that could undermine the number of searches each Web user has to perform only adds uncertainty to the category's growth prospects. For Google, the dominant player, the implications can't be good.
