Giving Bing the boot
Forget about the search engine wars, Microsoft decided that getting as many people possible on Windows 10 is more important than increasing Bing's market share, at least in China. With that mindset in place, Microsoft partnered with Baidu to have the company's search engine take the place of Bing as the default search and homepage in its own Edge browser.
In reality, it's not much of a concession for Microsoft. Bing isn't very popular in China to begin with, but with "hundreds of millions of PCs" operating Windows in China, there's a big opportunity to expand Windows 10's reach by appeasing the local crowd.
"With over 600 million active users, Baidu is one of the most frequently used Internet gateways in China," Microsoft stated in a blog post. "Together, we will make it easy for Baidu customers to upgrade to Windows 10 and we will deliver a custom experience for customers in China, providing local browsing and search experiences. Baidu.com will become the default homepage and search for the Microsoft Edge browser in Windows 10."
The deal also gives Microsoft access to Baidu's new Windows 10 distribution channel called Baidu Windows 10 Express, which will make it easy for Chinese Internet users to download and upgrade to an official version of Windows 10. There are already around 10 million users running Windows 10 in China, though hundreds of millions more are using previous versions, including pirated copies.
Microsoft also inked a deal with Xaomi, the leading smartphone maker in China. to adopt Windows Azure as its cloud services provider for its Mi Cloud.
Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
From maximumpc
from http://bit.ly/1Msr3eN
