Google Wins Bundling Deal with Dell

May 26, 2006 By Geoff Duncan

In what Google's touting as possibly the first of several agreements, Dell will bundle a number of Google desktop software products on its computers.

In a move that’s gotta be raising hackles at Microsoft, leading PC manufacturer Dell and Google have entered into a three-year revenue sharing agreement which will see Google desktop software bundled on Dell systems, starting by the end of May 2006 for systems aimed at consumers and small businesses, and later to large corporate customers. Google and Dell will share profits stemming from the deal; income will mostly stem from affiliate revenue from Google’s established relationships with online retailers.

According to the companies, the deal includes bundling Google Desktop Search, the Google Toolbar, as well as a default co-branded Internet home page. At a Goldman Sachs investors conference yesterday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted this may be just the first of several agreements between the two companies.

The deal appears to have been struck after Google rival Yahoo withdrew from pursuing a deal with Dell, and Google apparently outbid Microsoft for the lucrative desktop positioning on Dell systems. The appeal of the bundling deal is the belief that many customers never replace or upgrade software purchased with PCs; thus, the Google software will be part of many Dell customers’ computing activities for the functional lifetime of the computer.

The search capability in recent versions of Google Desktop has come under fire from privacy and security advocates for its capability to comingle desktop and Internet search queries, which partially involves sending usage data back to Google.

Showing 4 comments

Karl Viklund at 2:40am 28th May 2006 Just have to apologize for my bad english in my post above. Realy need that edit button ;)
Guess I just have to check better for errors before posting next time :)
Karl Viklund at 2:37am 28th May 2006 I have been using Yahoo Mail since 98 and I will keep on doing that as long as they exist but I have never used their search engine amny times. A few years at least it delivered terrible results compared to Google, so the switch was easy after that Altavista more or less died. I think that Altavista could have been the todays Google if they have played their cards right back in 97-98. They were realy strong then and much better then Yahoo. Suddenly Google came from nowhere and have dominated every since then.
Ian Bell and Dan Gaul at 8:06pm 27th May 2006 I am using the Google toolbar for quick and easy searches. I think MSN and specifically Yahoo! are still huge here in the states. MSN is big because its the default on most PC's, but Yahoo! still has a big cult following too.
Karl Viklund at 3:10pm 27th May 2006 This can be big. At least in the US where it seems like ppl are not using Google as much as like in Sweden. Only 50% for the leading search engine is not that much if you think about it. I mean, who use anything else the Google???