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This morning at the BlackBerry World keynote in Orlando, Florida, attendees were a little surprised to see Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer take the stage. What could he possibly be doing down in Orlando during a BlackBerry event? Well, it turns out he was promoting Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, and Bing Maps. In partnership with BlackBerry, future devices will be using Bing as its default search service.
There are plenty of folks who love Bing and prefer it over Google, but there will undoubtedly be a number of BlackBerry users who might bemoan this change. Hopefully RIM will give folks the option of switching if they really want to, but it seems doubtful – especially if this is anything like the move Verizon made in partnership with Microsoft when it dished out BlackBerry devices and some Android models with Bing search only. The only way to get Google search was to use it within the phone’s browser, which isn’t an elegant or preferable solution or fix.
If you’re a die-hard BlackBerry user who absolutely loves Google or Yahoo! search, you’d better start learning to love Bing, too.
About The Author
Marc Flores
Marc has been a mobile fanatic for the better part of a decade and has had more devices pass through his hands than he would care to count. Originally from Los Angeles and briefly in San Francisco, Marc now lives in Brooklyn where, unlike Will Park, he longs for simpler times and simpler technology. All the while, he writes about gadgets and wireless technology as he tinkers, hacks and ultimately breaks most of his gadgets in the process. Marc has written about the mobile industry for Boy Genius Report, MobileCrunch, Laptop Magazine and has had his work appear in the Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, CrunchGear and more.
