Microsoft has beaten rivals Google to secure being the default search provider of America’s soon to be largest wireless carrier Verizon. The deal was cited as a major victory for Microsoft with both Google and Yahoo! bidding for the same service. Verizon are currently closing on a takeover of Alltel to give them 78 million subscribers in the US taking them past AT&T as the number one carrier in the US. 

Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer announced the deal in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electrics Show after a long period of speculation. The deal also allows for Microsoft to manage the search and display advertising on Verizon’s mobile internet service as well. 

It is a five year deal that will allow users to also download a Live Search software package to their phones for checking local traffic reports and movie times as well as standard search options. It was reported that the deal would also mean the two companies sharing revenue from advertising in response to the amount of cell phone web searches that are made using Live Search.

It also allows Microsoft to gain an early advantage over rivals Google, who are default providers for Sprint Nextel and Yahoo! who are with AT&T and T-Mobile Europe in the mobile search market. With mobile search becoming such a hot commodity this was a deal that Microsoft needed to win as they are currently falling behind Google in other search areas. They plan to offer features where available such as voice search commands as well as the traditional typed commands on the phones. 

Steve Balmer said, “Mobile search and advertising offer tremendous opportunities for innovation and growth and that Microsoft is able to deliver a fully integrated solution for Verizon customers.” 

Microsoft is still some way off the numbers being posted by Google and Yahoo! when it comes to mobile search and it will interesting to see whether this deal has any impact on those numbers. There are no definitive guesses as to whether wireless customers will use a default search or just revert back to their everyday desk top search provider.

Verizon are hoping that the coming together will help them realise their aim of building up mobile data revenue especially as it hot on the heels of the takeover of the Alltel Corp. Some experts have warned that it could end up leaving Verizon subscribers with the lesser end of the deal as Microsoft may not be able to provide the delivery of personalised experiences in the way Google can. Other thoughts are how this will affect the Google Android now that the biggest carrier is now signed up with a rival. 

The early forecasts are that the mobile search ad revenues are expected to reach over $4 billion by 2013 so it certainly is a market worth competing for.

Posted on Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 3:15 pm in Google, Microsoft, Mobile Marketing, Search Engines, Yahoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.