Bing for Mobile comes to your Verizon Android
Today we are happy to announce the first official Bing for Mobile Android App available to Verizon customers. You can now download the free Bing App from your Verizon Wireless Android phones' Marketplace. — The app homepage features …
Context & Ripple Effects
This launch lands squarely in the middle of an unresolved argument about what 'open' means on Android. Two weeks earlier, Verizon and Google published a joint net neutrality framework that drew heavy industry criticism, and the L.A. Times' pickup frames today's news the same way — a carrier-exclusive Bing app as the 'proprietary side' of Google's nominally open mobile OS.
The strategic logic runs through the carrier, not just the search engine: Verizon has been building out its own software layer on Android handsets all summer, from new FiOS video apps to a planned iPad companion for live TV, and Microsoft's search app arrives as the first official Bing presence on the platform — distributed through the Marketplace at Verizon's invitation.
First-order effects
- Verizon Wireless Android customers get a free Bing app in their Marketplace, handing Microsoft its first official Android search distribution channel in the US.
- Google's default search position on these handsets now shares the device with a direct rival installed at the carrier's invitation rather than Google's own choice.
Second-order effects
- Other carriers gain a template: exclusive default-search and app slots on Android are sellable inventory, giving them fresh leverage in negotiations with Google.
- The deal feeds directly into the Verizon-Google net neutrality debate already running since mid-August, giving critics a concrete example of carrier-curated services on an 'open' platform.
Third-order effects
- If carrier-brokered defaults become routine, Android's openness risks becoming nominal versus usable — technically open, while carriers decide which engines users actually reach.
- Mobile search competition shifts from winning the desktop homepage toward preload and default placement on phones, where distribution deals increasingly set market share.
The trend: Mobile search share is becoming a battle over who controls the default slot, with carriers emerging as paid brokers between smartphone platforms and rival engines like Microsoft's Bing.