Phones Review is reporting that Verizon may have struck a deal with Microsoft, putting Bing as their search engine of choice. The news comes from CrackBerry Forums, as well as the Official Verizon Forum, where BlackBerry users are reporting their default search engines set to Bing. Not only does Bing seem to be the new default, but it's also the only available option. Up until now, you could always change these settings, but from what people are saying, Bing is locked into place.
Some users in the forums mentioned above have noticed the change, but many say that their options are still in tact. It's still unclear what's going on here, but in the midst of users claiming to still have their original search options, zerog32, on CrackBerry Forums, says that "After a few battery pulls your choices will be gone." Many users seem to be in agreement with this. On the Official Verizon Forum, some users have reportedly called Verizon and received no help, as their tech support seemed to know nothing about a change. User HMM said that "A supervisor then also told me it me the change came from Blackberry, not Verizon." AzCellUser posts that after a Verizon tech connected with RIM, they told him that "VZW has partnered with Microsoft and has pushed BING to the 9550, 9530 and I believe the 9630. You can no longer use the other previous default search engines unless you go directly to their search page. This is a Verizon push and has nothing to do with RIM, I apologize for this inconvenience."
Did Verizon really strike some sort of deal with Microsoft? If so, does the deal only apply to BlackBerry smartphones, or is this change happening across the board? Maybe BlackBerry made the deal, but wouldn't that leave BlackBerry devices on all carriers with the same outcome? It's not uncommon to see a company set a certain search provider as a device's default choice, but removing all other options is unheard of. News is still coming in and Verizon has yet to make an official statement. Leave us a comment; let us know if you've noticed anything on your phone.
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