Leaning with Intent

Hewlett-Packard and Live Search

The battle between the most popular search engines have been going on for years, and it seems that the top players are Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Google is currently leading, but Microsoft is not giving up, and we can see that in its recent strategy and actions. This year, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft signed an agreement, which would result in HP personal computers shipped with Live Search set as default. It is an important event, because most people do not bother changing the default settings, as people are usually content and lack time or technical knowledge to do so. This might mean that Microsoft’s search engine will gain a lot of new users in the upcoming months/years, and we will see if this will be enough to turn the tide. Many people might say that it is unfair that Microsoft’s search engine will be set as a default, because it breaks the rules of fair competition. Many people will say that customers should have right to choose what search engine they prefer. I agree with that statement and I also strongly believe that we, as customers, should have a choice of which search engine to choose. However, let’s not forget that we have a choice of which search engine to set as a default and nobody can force us to use Microsoft.