Microsoft has just announced that it has reached an agreement with HP for the installation of a Live Search-enabled toolbar on all HP consumer PCs that will be launched starting 2009. Part of the said agreement involves setting the default search engine in the preloaded browser of the new HP PCs into Microsoft Live Search.
Kevin Johnson, president of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft said that this is the most significant distribution deal that Microsoft has ever done.
“This agreement with HP is a strategic indicator of our increased focus on securing broad-scale distribution for Live Search,” says Johnson.
The custom Live Search-enabled toolbar will take advantage of the user experience capabilities of Microsoft Silverlight and will provide HP with customization capabilities as well as quick access to HP’s online services and tools as well as to HP support team.
“This agreement provides HP customers with an outstanding search product in Live Search, as well as a user-friendly, fully customizable way to access their favorite online services,” said Ulf Claesson, vice president of Worldwide Attach at HP.
Definitely not the best strategy for Microsoft, but nonetheless it might boost up the performance of Microsoft’s Live Search, even just a bit.
