The Kindle Fire comes equipped with Amazon’s own Silk Web browser. By all accounts, it’s a decent Web browser that’s fast and fluid. In short, it’s the Web browser that most Kindle owners are going to stick with. Google used to be the default search engine in Silk, but it looks like Microsoft muscled their way into the Kindle Fire party.
Ubergizmo was playing around with the Kindle Fire HD this week at Amazon’s press conference and found the device to be pretty great in just about every area. Of course, the interesting part came when they found that Bing was set as the default search engine on the Silk browser.
Microsoft might have just landed a big deal with Amazon. Just by making Bing the default search engine in Internet Explorer, they were able to command 25.6 percent of the search market. They will also be leveraging the power of Xbox 360 users when Bing combined with Internet Explorer hits the console later this year. Having Bing on the Kindle Fire will only serve to expand the Bing user base as Microsoft takes on Google in mobile search.
Interestingly enough, the move to Bing might have been Amazon’s idea. It could very well be the result of retail giant wanting to cut all ties with Google as they aggressively market the Kindle Fire as a service, rather than a tablet. It’s Amazon’s way of getting their store into the lives of every Kindle Fire owner while cutting product search middlemen like Google out of the equation.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t switch search providers though. Amazon will most assuredly allow users to switch to Google, Yahoo or even DuckDuckGo. It does, hoever, raise questions of a possible new relationship between Microsoft and Google. We’ve been seeing it the past few years where Microsoft battles Google using proxies like Facebook.
We’ve reached out to Microsoft for comment and we’ll update if we hear back.
UPDATE: A Microsoft spokesperson gave us the all too familiar no comment.