A story in the New York Times on Monday indicated that Google was talking to the U.S. Justice Department and the European Commission about Microsoft’s beta version of Internet Explorer 7. According to Google representatives, the default search engine for IE7 is MSN Search. This default engine appears in the top-right corner of the window, where there is a search box, a first for Internet Explorer.
Steve Langdon, a spokesman for Google, said that in their discussions with EC, “we have expressed our concerns that Microsoft’s approach to setting search defaults in IE 7.0 benefits Microsoft while taking away choice from users.”
This claim could be misleading. It seems that rather than just setting the default search engine as MSN Search, IE7 is just reading the user’s Windows System Registry. For example, this means that if a user upgraded from IE6, and if MSN Search was the default search engine in the IE6 search bar, then MSN Search will be the default search engine in IE7s search bar. If the default engine in IE6 was Google, then Google will be the default engine in IE7. If a default was not selected for IE6, MSN Search will be the default engine of choice for IE7.
Vice president for search products at Google, Marissa Mayer, said that “The market favors open choice for search, and companies should compete for users based on the quality of their search services. We don’t think it’s right for Microsoft to just set the default to MSN. We believe users should choose.”
This appears to be an example of the pot calling the kettle black. In other words, it is a bit humorous to see Google making these claims when Google itself has exclusive rights as the default search engine for both Mozilla’s Firefox and Opera’s Opera browsers.
It comes as no real surprise, seeing that this new threat combined with Microsoft’s upcoming adCenter could cut into Google’s dominating revenue which it derives almost wholly from its search engine business.
Sources:
http://www.tgdaily.com/2006/05/01/is_microsoft_
playing_monopoly_with_ie7_search/
http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/
searchinsider/wpn-49-20060501GoogleComplains
ToFedsAboutIE7.html
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000085&
sid=af1GNF4h6Z4M&refer=europe
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