Google Angry With Internet Explorer 7 Search Box
Google might be the reigning champion of the search engine market in the world today, but they do not control what browser a user runs on his desktop. They have managed to get both Mozilla Firefox and Opera to point to their search engine by default, but Internet Explorer continues to remain the most used web browser in the market.
And with Windows Vista coming early next year with Internet Explorer 7, it becomes important for Google to see how they can compete with Microsoft’s latest invasion in their territory. Microsoft has added the search box to the latest version of their web browser and it points to MSN Search by default.
Google claims that this gives Microsoft an unfair advantage considering it would ship with all the copies of Vista. And they have filed an informal complaint to both U.S. and European antirust regulators.
Marissa Mayer, vice president of search services at Google said on this issue: “The market favors open choice for search, and companies should compete for users based on their quality of search services. We don’t think it’s right for Microsoft to just set the default to MSN. We believe users should choose.â€
Interestingly, Google just recently started promoting Mozilla Firefox from their homepage, which makes the open source browser to become the first third party application to get this honor. Seems like Google understands the kind of problems they might face when Vista arrives in the market next year and wants more people to switch to Firefox to avoid giving Microsoft an advantage with Internet Explorer 7.
But the fact remains… If Google has a problem with Microsoft using MSN Search by default on Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft should ask Opera and Firefox (and perhaps Safari) developers to provide an option to their users to choose the search engine of their choice!