Microsoft recently launched into the beginning of a 5-year deal that brings the new search engine Bing to Verizon Wireless subscribers. The deal was actually announced back in January of this year before Bing had even arrived, leading people to assume that the search service in question was going to be Live Search. Verizon customers are probably happy to find out that they’re getting Bing instead and not the now-defunct Live Search.
Already, Bing has been made available on Verizon’s portal page, where it functions as the phone’s default search engine. Also, high-end browsers like Opera which are available on some Verizon handsets will also feature Bing as their default search engine going forward. Most importantly, Bing is being pre-loaded on the majority of Verizon phones, both smarthphone and otherwise.
According to Charles Johnson, Microsoft’s general manager for mobile media, in the first 20 days after Verizon launched the Bing partnership (which began last month), the mobile search engine handled 19 million queries – 10 to 15 times the previous rate.
But you don’t have to be a Verizon customer to use Bing on your mobile phone. Anyone can access the mobile version of Bing by heading to m.bing.com from your mobile browser.
