Verizon forces Microsoft’s Bing on ‘smartphone’ users

16 years ago

“Verizon has unilaterally updated user Storm 2 BlackBerries and other smartphones so that their browser search boxes can only be used with Microsoft Bing,” Cade Metz reports for The Register. “The move is part of the five-year search and advertising deal Verizon signed with Microsoft in January for a rumored $500m.”

MacDailyNews Take: Geez, for $500 million they could’ve bought a U.S. senator.

Metz continues, “Verizon pushed the search change over its network two days ago, the company has confirmed with The Reg. ‘We’re a proud supporter of Microsoft’s Bing search engine,’ a company spokesman tells us. ‘On a couple of select smartphones (Storm 2 the most prominent), we’ve changed the [Verizon Wireless]-supplied web menu to make Bing the default search engine.'”

“Previously, the search box – baked into the top of Verizon’s browser, above the url address bar – could be set to search Google, Wikipedia, and other sites,” Metz reports.

“Naturally, such sites can still be queried via the browser proper. But countless users are up-in-arms over the switch,” Metz reports. “A discussion thread dedicated to the change at CrackBerry, a popular BlackBerry user site, is now 36 pages long.”