Google Wins Bidding War for Dell Desktop Placement
Google has apparently won a pricey bidding war in the race to have their software bundled with new Dell PC’s over the next 3 years. Essentially, I suspect this means, Google Desktop (perhaps Google Pack?) will be preinstalled, as well as browser settings adjusted to make a Google-ified search page the default and probably Google as the default search provider for the browser. They apparently dug in their heels and were determined to win the bidding after seeing the built in search box in IE7 which is in Beta….
Really, this is something that I think, Google could not afford to lose in many ways. Dell is probably the single biggest PC seller. Vista should be released within a year of now and it sounds like will tie people more closely to Microsoft’s services by default. IF Google get’s Dell as a wedge of leverage they can secure that they’ll be able to compete with Microsoft for the period. IF THEY were to have lost this, it would have been a HUGE win for Microsoft in rallying to out-manuever google.
I have to wonder though if a Windows update to Internet Explorer, or Explorer could, “inadvertantly” restore such search settings to the software default (as opposed to the OEM chosen… Google…). Interesting to see how this plays out. If Google had lost this, I would think they would have to start thinking about the Google PC that had been wildly rumored from time to time. I think though, that would scatter their strategy a BIT much at this point.