Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show that his company’s Bing search engine will be the default option on new computers made by Hewlett-Packard, which could have a measurable change on the search engine optimization (SEO) landscape.
Notebooks.com says that there is "no doubt" that the move will lead to a boost in market share for Bing, asserting that, although users are free to change the settings at their leisure, many will keep the defaults for extended periods of time.
ZDNet Asia says that the deal will also make Microsoft’s MSN the default home page for web browsers on HP computers. ZDNet also says that the deal is an extension of the one that Microsoft already had in place for computers sold in the U.S. and Canada. Bing will now be the default search engine on HP computers worldwide.
Experts say that paid search deals like this one are nothing new. ZDNet reports that Google paid Mozilla $56 million in 2006 for having its Firefox web browser default to Google’s search engine.
