What? No Google on Vista? Google Strikes Back on IE 7!
As some of you may know, Bill Gates unveiled Windows Vista at the CES Keynote address early this year in Las Vegas. There, attendees and users that followed via webcast (thanks Gary!) and other news stories all around.
Context & Ripple Effects
Bill Gates used the Las Vegas CES keynote — streamed live after Microsoft promoted the webcast days earlier — to unveil Windows Vista, and the demo made no room for Google. Reporting circulating alongside the keynote questions why Google is absent from the OS, while Google's response against IE 7 is confirmed.
The stakes are distribution: whatever browser and search defaults ship inside Vista will steer hundreds of millions of desktop sessions, and the Engadget pickup shows the no-Google-on-Vista question travelling well beyond the search-blog niche.
First-order effects
- IE 7 ships as Vista's default browser with Microsoft's own search properties positioned ahead of Google, so Google loses out-of-the-box reach on every new Vista machine unless users actively install its toolbar or switch defaults.
Second-order effects
- Rival search engines face the same wall, pushing them toward paid distribution deals and toolbar bundling to buy back the default placement Microsoft gets for free inside its own OS.
Third-order effects
- If control of OS-level defaults decides search share, the contest moves from algorithm quality to platform gatekeeping — the pattern that historically invites antitrust scrutiny of Microsoft's bundling, and that Google's public counterattack is already framing for regulators.
The trend: Search competition is shifting from the results page to the desktop, where whoever controls the operating system's defaults controls traffic before a user ever types a query.