Verizon Jams Bing

As if the recent Blackberry outages didn’t cause enough frustration for Blackberry users, they and other smartphone users on Verizon have another complaint. Verizon recently changed the Storm 2 and other smartphones so their browser search boxes can only be used with Bing. Prior to this recent change the search box could be set to search Google, Wikipedia, or other sites. Bing is now the only option so Google users will need to go to Google’s website and then conduct their search. The move is reportedly part of the five-year search and advertising deal Verizon signed with Microsoft earlier this year for a rumored $500m.

Verizon’s reputation with consumers is already poor with rampant rumors of bogus charges added to users bills with no explanation.  Partnering with Microsoft will draw further scrutiny to Verizon.