During his keynote address at the International Consumer Electronics Show 2009 last week, Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer, made some exciting new announcements about Microsoft Live Search. To begin with, Ballmer said that Microsoft has entered into a 3-year agreement with Dell.
According to the terms of the agreement, Live Search will now be the default search engine for most of the new consumer and small business PCs that Dell ships globally. Considering the fact that Dell is the largest provider of PCs in the U.S. and the second largest OEM worldwide, a lot of new clients will now have the chance to use Live for their searches, without any trouble. All these new PCs will also have a Live Search-powered toolbar.
This agreement between Dell and Microsoft will be applicable across 23 countries worldwide ranging from Australia, Brazil, India, Japan, U.K. U.S.A. and many others and will come into effect from February 2009.
HP and Lenovo PCs shipped within North America already include Live Search as the default search engine.
The other interesting announcement made by Steve Ballmer is to the effect that Microsoft beat Google to acquire a five-year deal with Verizon, the second largest mobile carrier in the U.S.A. Thanks to this deal, users of Verizon Mobile in the U.S. will be able to use Live Search Mobile as their default search service.
Google is probably unhappier about the deal with Verizon, as mobile continues to be one of their top priorities for future growth and losing out to Microsoft in this relatively nascent market does not bode well.
However, no matter how many deals Microsoft can muscle in with providers and OEMs, it is the consumers who will finally decide, and far as consumers are concerned, Google is undoubtedly firmly entrenched in their hearts and minds.
