Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Service

Earlier this week Microsoft set Bing as the default search engine for Internet Explorer 6, without the possibility to choose another search provider. Search engine marketers noticed and wrote about it. After notifying Microsoft, here’s what they answered:

We’re aware of the issue with IE6 and Bing and are investigating a solution. This issue is not impacting IE7 or IE8 users. We respect user choice on search providers in IE and all browsers, and designed IE to enable that choice. We will provide an update soon on this issue, and we apologize for any inconvenience it has caused. In the meantime, we encourage customers to upgrade to IE8 here. Alternatively, Firefox users can install the add-in for Bing here.

Accident?

Few people use IE 6 and by their majority they are not web savvy. Has Microsoft been testing the change on the old browser in order to see people’s reactions? Sounds like a logical thing to do. Change IE6, wait for reactions. If no one catches on:

1. Leave it at that (some market share)
2. Change IE 7 as well (the really big one).

They got caught though :)))