14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's upcoming mobile operating system Windows Phone 7 is expected to have as default search engine only one solution, namely the company's Bing service. For what it's worth, the move might not come as a surprise to many, especially since Bing is another Microsoft product, though it is quite interesting to learn that the company removed other search engines as default options for the new mobile platform.
“The search engine has been heavily integrated into the OS, so it would be hard to offer an alternative,” Greg Sullivan, senior product manager for Microsoft, confirmed, according to a recent article on Pocket-lint. This doesn't meant that other companies won't have the possibility to come up with their own application or even with a hub, but it does mean that no other search engine would be made default on the upcoming platform.
According to the news site, Microsoft decided to make the move due to the “Tell me” integration, through which users can push a button and give voice commands their mobile phone to search for various items on the handset and on the web. In other words, the solution would be similar with the voice recognition search feature Google packed on the Nexus One, or with Apple's Voice Control.
It seems that the feature already works pretty nice, and that it should offer an enhanced experience to users. Greg Sullivan demonstrated the solution on his Windows Phone 7 developer preview device, as he asked for details on a flight to the US and performed a search for a calendar entry.
It should be noted that other companies have actually expanded the number of search engine options available for their mobile phones users. However, Microsoft's Bing solution enjoys only a small share of the search market, and the company's move to make it the only default search engine on Windows Phone 7 might have been driven by an attempt to increase that share.