HP said Thursday it plans to make Yahoo the default search engine in IE, and to included a co-branded browser toolbar in PCs it ships in North America. The new offerings would ship with PCs once Microsoft releases IE 7. The browser will be included in Windows Vista, set to ship in January.
In the meantime, consumers can download the co-branded toolbar. In Europe, HP has started shipping PCs with Yahoo as the default start page when people launch IE.
Web portals have been working hard to get their services in new PCs, since it increases the chances of consumers sticking with them, rather than use a competitor's products. Google, for example, announced in May that Dell had agreed to ship 10s of millions of computers with its software and services installed.