14 DAY TRIAL // Windows 10 comes with Bing as the default search engine and MSN as home page, but in Russia and a few other countries, adopters of the new operating system will actually get to use a different service.
Today, Microsoft and Yandex have signed an agreement to use the latter as the default search engine and home page in Microsoft Edge, the default browser in Windows 10 replacing Internet Explorer. Users in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Ukraine will all get Yandex instead of Bing and MSN, the two companies have announced today.
The search giant signed a similar deal in China, where it agreed to offer Baidu as the default search engine and home page in Windows 10 versions provided to local users, in an attempt to conquer a bigger part of the local market.
Better tackle the local markets
Such deals are generally supposed to help Microsoft better address the needs of Windows users in specific countries by offering them instant access to services provided by domestic companies, as is the case with Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia.
But at the same time, it might also be a setback for Microsoft in its fight to conquer a bigger market share for Bing, the company's own search engine that's also powering a number of additional services, such as Cortana and Apple's own Siri.
Time will tell if Microsoft's playing the winning card here, but it's pretty clear that the software giant is willing to do anything that's possible to bring Windows 10 on more devices across the world.
Redmond has a goal of installing Windows 10 on a total of 1 billion devices by 2017, and right now, the company says that it has already achieved some 10 percent of this, with prospects currently pointing to an accelerated growth in the coming months. If such more deals are signed and more partners push for Windows 10 adoption, figures are indeed very likely to skyrocket for the new operating system.