What's the point of a Default Site ?

[modeller]

When I boot up I usually go to Google to search out the information want but I could of course go to any other site but just about every site you go on they ask you to make their page the default page .

What difference does it make which site you choose ? I could say Yahoo as a default but never use it so what is the point from my and their point of view. ? I use several email addresses from different sites so that's not a factor either.

[ChuckFickens]

It's just the site your browser will display when you first load it. (more often called the home page)

Doesn't matter at all what you set it to, I normally have mine set to google, you can also set most (all probably) browsers to open multiple tabs with several different sites when you first open the browser if you wanted to.

[VHG]

If you make a certain site your default page you are more likely going to use it for looking at their adverts or doing a search.

Web sites make money by showing adverts, or doing searches, so they WANT you to set their page as your default page.

Did you know, for example, that if you click on an advert one one web site and go to a web site like Dell, Argos etc then the web site you clicked FROM get a little bit of money (called click through).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickthrough_rate

If enough people do this then a company can make a fair bit of money.

This is probably where answerbank makes its money from.

[rojash]

You can always set the default to be a blank page - I do.

[AlBags]

I use Google .. Quick to load up.

[modeller]

I can remember when I first installed Firefox I had a load of problems ,I forget what they were at the time, however because of these problems I uninstalled it. However I then found I couldn't open any site including AB and Google . I then had to use IE in oder to get those sites back. ,
However I notice every site( not IE ) including this one has Mozilla Firebox after the title at the top. So it is still is linked in some way to all these sites. despite the fact it is not my default page. Why is this ? Could it be it never completely uninstalled. ? Recently I've had a pop up on every site asking me to make Firefox my default page. I've unticked the box and stopped it but Firefox seems to get in everywhere.

[modeller]

I've just realised IE also has Mozilla Firefox on the title line.

[rojash]

You are running Firefox, not IE!

[modeller]

I think you are right but its not my default page, I've checked , but for the moment apart from irritating pop ups everthing is working OK so I will leave it as it is.
What role do IE and Firefox actually perform . Who else performs the same role ?