Bing To Be Only Search Engine For Windows Phone 7

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Greg Sullivan, product manager for Windows Phone 7, has confirmed to website Pocket-Lint that Bing will be the only search engine for Windows Phone 7. This sort of bucks the trend that iOS and Android have started by allowing different search engines to be added to the phone.

Although Android may not allow users to change the search engine from Google – they allow OEMs to do it, as we’ve seen manufacturers like Motorola pick Yahoo! or Bing over Google in Google’s own search engine. Likewise, Apple, who doesn’t have a search engine (yet ) allows users to pick between whichever they’d like.

But according to Mr. Sullivan, Microsoft won’t allow this. They say that Bing is too closely connected to the operating system to allow alternatives. “The search engine has been heavily integrated into the OS, so it would be hard to offer an alternative,” he says.

Mr. Sullivan did tell pocket-lint that they will allow other search engines to produce ‘search apps’ for the Windows Phone platform, but there will be no way to change the default search engine – even for the manufacturers.

Sullivan insists that the “Tell Me” integration is one reason behind it. “Tell Me” looks like a similar voice control scheme that has been featured on Android phones and the iPhone.

Bing has been growing rapidly in the one year+ that it’s been around. Pocket-lint believes that this Windows Phone 7-Bing requirement is another attempt by Microsoft to increase Bing’s presence. Remember that the folks at InfoWorld gave Windows Phone 7 a damning preview, calling it “a disaster”.