Bing The Only Search Option On Windows Phone 7

This might not go down well with many folks, but word is out that Microsoft’s Bing will be the only default search engine on Windows Phone 7 devices. The reason behind it is apparently that the search engine is heavily integrated into the OS, which makes it hard to offer an alternative, with an example of the “Tell me” feature being cited. Said feature allows users to press a button and speak to the phone giving it voice commands to search the phone or the web. Of course, such a move is probably aimed at raising the awareness of the Bing search engine, but it’s a radically different move from Apple’s iOS 4, which now offers Bing and Yahoo as alternatives to Google as the default search engine on the web.

Publisher’s note: “[Bind] search engine is heavily integrated into the OS” – don’t you think that it’s a really bad excuse? Microsoft is better off saying that Bing is better (from their point of view). Clearly, Microsoft want down that road and in the end, it wasn’t technically so hard to offer4 choice to users when regulators stepped in. Even if some features rely on Bing in the background, nothing prevents the OS from using Bing when it needs. We have no problem with Microsoft trying to push its own products, it’s fair game, but putting it on the “tight integration” with the OS is bull.

Matthew Chung
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Bing (Microsoft), Microsoft, search engine, Windows Phone 7