Back in January, we picked up a story from Reuters involving Motorola which said they’ll use Baidu instead of Google on their Android smartphones in China. Now we have the same company [Motorola] announcing a deal with Microsoft to use Bing. So one wonders – what’s happening here?
This time, however, it’s not Reuters picking up the story, but we have the official MOTO press release, which I guess, we should trust more.
Under the deal, the American handset maker will preload all of its future Android smartphones with Bing Search and Maps capabilities (starting from this quarter), whereas existing phone owners will get Bing as part of the firmware update.
In case you wonder, the Bing integration includes preloaded Bing bookmark in a mobile browser and an “enhanced search widget with Bing integration.”
It’s all about a consumer choice and flexibility, according to Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi. There’s also something about eyeballs that makes advertisers go crazy. 😉