I've been watching with interest the debate about IE7 and its default search providers. If you've missed it, Google has been complaining that IE7 is defaulting to MSN search in it's newly introduced search box in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7). Actually, this turns out to be untrue. Have a look here for the official IE7 response.

If you don't have time to read that, basically it boils down to this. IE7 does not default to MSN search. What it does is default to the search provider that was selected in the previous version of IE. On existing machines it may be true that most of the time this will indeed be MSN search since that was the default of IE6. However, for new machines the manufacturer (Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.) can default it to whatever they want. There's sure to be lot's of money thrown at these companies for the default choice. You can bet on that and you can bet Google will be spending plenty to make sure it's the default.

It's also important to point out that the user can easily change the default search engine. I've tried it and making Google my default search engine was made simple by IE7. I should also note that I upgraded from IE6 and found that IE7 had Google as my default search provider. This goes along with the IE blog piece since, indeed, I had set Google as my default search under IE6 a long time ago.

Some have stated that IE7 should prompt the user upon first run as to what search engine they want to use. To a user, that would seem to be a good option at first glance. However, as a software dev and, more importantly, for all the IT people out there who support Windows this is just another choice to make for new installations. I believe the application should just work out of the box without forcing the user or IT support person make default choices upon installation.

I think it's a bit disingenuous of Google to complain about this, especially since it appears that they didn't really investigate the particulars about IE7 before making their complaint. I think they actually did, however, but decided to complain anyway. By the way, Firefox defaults to Google as its search engine and Google actively promotes Firefox on its main search page. Hmm. In addition, one of the key Firefox developers/architects works for Google. Hmm. Oh yeah, in the default installation of Firefox MSN search is not even one of the options for search. You have to go to a separate web page to install support for it. Hmm. In IE7, Google is right there as an option along with many other popular search sites. Google, isn't this an instance of the pot calling the kettle black?

Oh, and do you think if/when Google delivers it's own web browser that Google search won't be the default? Who knows, but I have a hard time believing it won't be.