MIcrosoft will start installing its Live Search Toolbar on all HP Consumer PC sold in North America and Canada starting next year. The default search engine will be set to Live search. Similar action has been taken by Microsoft when Live Search was the only and default search engine on IE 7, before Google opposing that setting back then.

It is unknown when worldwide HP shipment will have similar installation. From my point of view, this is a brilliant move by Microsoft since Google has partnered will Dell last year to offer similar thing.

Search Engine Land has detail breakdown the PC market share among the main PC makers by worldwide and North America, only where this deal is done.

While this is a good move to encourage more users using Live Search, but MS must improve its search quality in the first place. The default search engine can be modified with a few steps easily, so Microsoft wouldn’t want this to ruin their effort in catching up with Google, which costs them billions paid to HP.

source: SearchEngineLand