Yahoo snags another search partner: HP

You know what they always say: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Apparently Yahoo is applying this mantra quite liberally, as just a fortnight after signing a deal with Acer to make Yahoo the default search engine on all of its future notebooks, the distantly-second place search giant is teaming up with HP. Yahoo has been on a tirade of sorts in its attempt to partner with as many other firms as possible, but landing a deal with the world's second largest PC maker just might provide the usage boost its been after. North American HP PCs will sport an Internet Explorer 7 toolbar that automatically channels any search requests to Yahoo's servers, while European PCs will be greeted with a Yahoo home page each time they launch their browser (until they change the default setting, that is). Also noteworthy is the newfound partnership between HP and Vonage, which will toss in advertising brochures and an offer for "unlimited premium residential broadband telephone service," thoroughly showering your fresh HP box with "pre-selected offerings." Whether or not this turns out to be a two-fer-one (or are we up to three now?) deal for Yahoo, considering HP just acquired VoodooPC and all, remains to be seen -- but we can't imagine Voodoo customers warming up to an advertisement-laden OS anytime soon.

Read - Yahoo teams with HP
Read - Vonage connects with HP

[Magallanes @ Sep 29th 2006 2:21PM]

Also yahoo made a alliance with MS related with messenger system.

[XiozTzu @ Sep 29th 2006 2:30PM]

Now HP will have the power of Yahoo! to search to go through all our phone records. Great!

[GhostDoggy @ Sep 29th 2006 3:00PM]

People still yahoo? I haven't been to that website in several years.

[fluffman86 @ Sep 29th 2006 4:30PM]

yeah, some people do. but I'm doing my best to convert everyone to someone who doesn't put people in prison.

http://booyahoo.blogspot.com

[john @ Sep 29th 2006 5:21PM]

yawn. They actually inherited that idea from compaq, who have done it for years on presarios

[Russ @ Sep 30th 2006 8:18AM]

when are PC manufactures going to realise a lot of people don't want the crappy pre-installed software than comes with their PC? i guess they are happy to get the kickbacks when "average users" use their default search, and upgrade the "free trial" virus scanner..

reminds me of that "i'm a mac / i'm a PC" ad. the mac can working straight away - the PC needs to uninstall all the software that came preloaded..

[Ed @ Sep 30th 2006 2:53PM]

Russ, you're so right. They may make some extra money from it - but they need to remember that their customers are the ones paying for the product in the end, and they don't want to be given a load of crap with their new computer. Almost every time I've used the default apps that come with a new computer they've fallen over and/or are incredibly poorly written.

[Russ @ Oct 2nd 2006 1:52AM]

i was setting up WPA encryption for a friends wireless a few weeks ago. the "name brand" machine boots up and a screen come up saying: "your evaluation period for the virus scanner has expired, better renew". so i close it - it come back in 2 seconds. my friend says she just moves the window out the way contines work. there's even a checkbox that says "prompt me to renew expired products" - switching it off does nothing!! she eventually cracked and paid for the next 12 months subscription - wondering now if it would've let us uninstall it!

[RichardatDELL @ Sep 30th 2006 7:56PM]

HP is just following Dell on every front these days, it seems....well not quite, we are hiring engineers and they are still laying off people; they still dont have a profitable PC business; and they still dont stand behind their own products from manaufacturining to sales to support and recycling, leaving most it to third parties.

[stephan @ Oct 2nd 2006 4:00PM]

Great, even more crapware. Even an experienced XP tweaker will take far more time removing all of the junkware from an OEM machine than it would take to simply run a fresh install with the nefarious corporate cd. This is the kind of thing that spawns new legions of future "black-hat" hackers.

[Meneer R @ Oct 3rd 2006 8:27AM]

@Russ:

You're absolutely right! Perhaps some consumer organisation should provide some logo that said 'no crap preinstalled'. I mean, I don't mind changing a default search engine or home page. I know, just call it the N serie. A preinstalled windows, without crappy works, crappy burn programs, crappy media players, crappy browsers, crappy virus scanners that make a pc run as slow as a virus infected one, internet supplyer options, etc.

You can't really remove anything cleanly in Windows, so please let US choose which crap we want on there.

AMEN