Battle of the Search Engines Is On!

While installing some Windows Live applications on one of my test machines today I received a very interesting balloon message. Google blocked the Windows Live installer from changing my default search engine to Live Search!

Hmm... Are the days of competing software programs playing "nicey-nice" about who the default browser, music player, or streaming video player, now over? When it comes to search engines we're talking big money $$$ on the line and it looks like Google isn't going to take Live Search for granted.

This could get interesting from a competitive standpoint, but also could get out of hand from a user experience perspective. Imagine it becoming harder and harder for an end user to change their default applications without the incumbent application throwing up all kinds of roadblocks to give the user multiple chances to back out of the change, or just plain 'ol making it harder.

The plot thickens and search is the new battleground.

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