Ramping up its efforts to build search market share, Microsoft signed a deal to embed a Live Search toolbar on all Hewlett-Packard consumer PCs in North America starting next year.
In
addition, Live Search will be the default search engine on browsers on
the computers, the companies said. Both features will be included in HP
PCs in January 2009.
While the deal could boost use of
Microsoft’s search platform, it could also boost support of
Silverlight, Microsoft’s new browser plug-in and development runtime
for adding multimedia to Web applications. That’s because the Live
Search toolbar will be built using Silverlight, meaning that the
browser plug-in, which is required to view multimedia content built
with the tool, will come with the computers.
Microsoft is
concurrently trying to improve the distribution of Silverlight by
building some of its own Web pages with the technology and requiring
visitors to download the browser plug-in to view the Web pages.
The
toolbar will also include buttons that HP will be able to customize to
direct computer users to Web sites such as Snapfish, HP’s online
photo-sharing and printing service, and HP customer service.
Microsoft
called the agreement the most significant distribution deal for Live
Search that the company has done. HP is the world’s largest PC
manufacturer, the companies said. They did not mention whether the
agreement might be extended outside of North America.
Some
Microsoft competitors have cried foul at previous efforts by the
software giant to tie its search platform into its browser. Two years
ago when Microsoft launched IE7 in beta, it set Live Search as the
default search provider in a toolbar in the browser, although users can
hit a drop-down menu to change the search provider to a handful of
other companies. At the time, Google complained to the European
Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice that the default setting
removes choice for users. Google has a similar setup in Mozilla’s
Firefox browser, which comes with Google as the default search bar. The
DOJ found that Microsoft makes it easy enough for users and computer
makers to change the default setting.
Deals like the one
between Microsoft and HP are not uncommon. Yahoo previously had an
agreement with HP to feature its search engine on new computers, and
Google signed a similar deal with Dell.
The HP deal builds on
other Microsoft efforts to grow its search market share since it
withdrew its acquisition offer for Yahoo. For example, Microsoft
recently launched Cashback, a service that offers Live Search users
money back when they buy products through the search engine from Live
Search advertisers.
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