In move that is part of a five-year search and advertising deal between Microsoft and Verizon in January of this year, the carrier unilaterally updated user Storm 2 Blackberries and other smartphones so that now, only Microsoft Bing is available.
“We’re a proud supporter of Microsoft’s Bing search engine,” a company spokesman tells The Register. “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.”
Before, by the default, the search box could be set to search Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com and other sites. Now, users will have to visit these sites via the browser to have access.
Users aren’t happy though. In a thread about the Verizon’s recent change at the CrackBerry, posts have now reached 36 pages long, and it doesn’t contain a lot of happy messages either. Other Verizon forums contain similar complaints too. http://community.vzw.com/t5/BlackBerry-Devices/All-other-search-providers-removed-required-to-use-bing/td-p/133060
“Yesterday, all of the search providers that used to be available through the browser disappeared and bing is the only option. I hate bing. I no longer am able to search using Google, Dictionary.com, or Wikipedia from the ‘Go to…’ page on my browser. This is a very poor decision…to take choice away from their users,” the first post says.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/19/verizon_snuffs_google_for_bing/
