Microsoft Wins Key Search Deals

Microsoft, facing a bleak economy and rivals that have outflanked it in the consumer market, announced a milestone for the next version of Windows and a raft of deals designed to boost its online-search business. Microsoft announced a five-year deal with Verizon Wireless to make its Internet-search service broadly available on the wireless carrier's mobile phones and a similar agreement with Dell covering that hardware maker's PCs. The Microsoft agreements displace an existing search deal that rival Google had with Dell and another that Google was previously negotiating with Verizon. The agreement with Verizon, starting in the first half of this year, will make Microsoft's search engine easily accessible from nearly all of the handsets from the carrier.