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7:41 PM
According to the Register, Microsoft has paid Verizon Wireless $500 million in a five-year search deal to make Bing its official search engine on most smart phones, like the BlackBerry Storm II.
Some Verizon users have grumbled. Some bloggers have called the move “evil.” There are even (completely off-base) whispers of payola. And yeah, sure, Verizon’s not easy to love in the best of times and even less when it seems to be stripping users of the very choice and openness that getting a smartphone represents.
Those more charitably disposed might want to remind us, before the keening and the wailing really starts up, that the change is only applicable to the Verizon embedded browser. Users can still navigate to a different browser via Bing or download a Yahoo! or Google widget to circumnavigate the native default. And I have to say it’s funny how no one complains when the Googlopoly is extended with every new smartphone/embedded Google apps launch. The Droid army is coming, let’s not forget.
All of that aside, I wanted to take the opportunity to take us back to a nastier, more brutish time. Remember when mobile search was a really big deal and Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! and others saw snagging a carrier exclusive in this burgeoning market as the ticket to winning the overall search wars? When Yahoo! was actually considered a real threat, with an 18 percent market share in mobile ... then it won an AT&T exclusive but its up.
Not that long ago, but that was before the floodgates opened on the smart phone revolution, before open mobile access to the Internet was common. When the typical mobile Web interface was shudder a WAP portal.even though Bing is getting press out of the deal and more exposure, what kind of effect this will have in moving the search dial. Part of me wants to say “none,” because the Googlewebs has taken over smartphone search like kudzu in Georgia – but Verizon has a pretty hefty BlackBerry user base, after all. And one would really need to be a Google or Yahoo! devotee to bother taking measures to avoid Bing as the default.But, that whole doubling of early-termination fees thing, combined with the lack of openness on its network, along with this seeming throwback to carrier overlord-like control, has given Verizon a kind of bogeyman persona among consumers of late.
verizon wireless, microsoft, bing, patents, microsoft verizon, bing search, 500 million dollar deal, ditches, search partener
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