Today Microsoft announced that they are in agreements with Dell Computers as the primary search engine that would show up automatically on the desktop screens of most new Dell consumer PCs beginning in February. Their agreement with Verizon will allow them to be the primary search engine for handsets for the next five years.
This move was something that needed to be done in order to keep Google in check with their constant stride to be the only online search engine. 60% of search queries originate from Google, where as Yahoo comes in a steady second with 20% and Microsoft/Live comes in third with 8%. Even though Internet Explorer comes as the default web browser for all Microsoft OS’s, people still have the opportunity to change their Internet properties default home page to support any search engine they desire, but the people they are targeting are the consumers that don’t necessarily use search engines on a day to day basis. These are the ever so often search for a pizzeria or restaurant in the area they are in allowing them to provide more opportunities for their paying advertising customers. Verizon cell phone users will now be faced with MSN/Live search results on their cell phones, which would give MSN customers the opportunity to place ads in front of the potential customer providing them exclusive opportunities to Verizon Wireless customers.
As of right now there is no competition between the search engines, and I do not anticipate this to change anything in the long run. Since they will have exclusive rights to both Dell and Verizon, they are also going to have to skim some of the advertising costs with the 2 making their profit levels lower, and increasing the cost to advertise on the search engine itself. Today’s market is at a steady decline with unemployment increasing and job opportunities decreasing giving big business’s less profit and making their companies downsize to keep their doors open.
The Verizon/Alltel merger expected to happen sometime in late 2009 early 2010, was expected to downsize some Alltel locations, which this merger may bring some extra income and extra work for worrisome Alltel employees and maybe even kick start the merger faster than anticipated. Hopefully this will make life easier for SEO specialists by giving them 3 targets rather than just 2 to focus their SEO efforts. This would allow more room for trial and error with other markets and search algorithms and possibly bring unity to how search engines rank their sites. Ultimately search engines want the searcher to find what they are looking for fairly quickly within a few clicks after their search.