Amazon is getting a lot of money to displace Google as the default search engine

Sep 8, 2012 12:21 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft isn't picky about where it gets its Bing users. If it has to pay Amazon to beef up numbers a bit, so be it. And Microsoft is probably paying quite a lot for the privilege of being the default search engine on the Amazon Kindle Fire.

The tablets are bound to sell in the millions, so Microsoft is more than happy to pay the price.

It remains to be seen whether the users will be as happy as Microsoft to find Bing where Google Search used to be.

It seems like the deal only covers the Kindle Fire HD, the two models, so the revamped Kindle Fire will still get Google Search, like before, at least that's what comes out of Microsoft's small statement on the matter.

"Bing will be the default search provider on the new Kindle Fire HD. No other details are available at this time," Microsoft said.

The obvious question is whether users will be able to change the default search engine. That would be the common sense option, but Microsoft may be paying big bucks for exclusivity.

You can't change search engines on Windows Phone for example, so you may be stuck with Bing on the Kindle as well. Bing isn't necessarily bad, in fact, for most searches it's almost identical to Google.

But it's not just about the results, it's about the user experience too and, again, on Windows Phone the default Bing app isn't very good. If Microsoft can't crack it on its own operating system, what hope is there for other places.

Either way, in case you were wondering just how is Amazon able to bring down the price on these devices so much, well, now you know, Microsoft is paying a chunk of the price that you'd have to pay for yourself otherwise. Ads on the lock screen and on the homepage are the other way of offsetting some of the costs.