“Every Dell machine we buy at home that comes with the Google toolbar, it’s not a good day in my family when that happens,” stated Steve Ballmer at a Microsoft gathering on May 1.

A couple decades ago, Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) signed a deal with IBM that gave them the leg-up for operating system market-share against Apple Inc.  And then in the 90’s, Microsoft developed their own browser called Internet Explorer which became the default with all Windows operating systems giving them the leg-up against Netscape’s browsers.

Today Microsoft signed a deal with Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HPQ) to spread Live Search Toolbar which could give take some marketshare away from the Google Toolbar.

Through this deal, HP will install copies of Live Search Toolbar on all Internet Explorer browsers and the toolbar will link to various HP services such as Snapfish, a photo website that HP acquired in 2005.

Google has similar deals with Dell Inc. and the Firefox browser.  About 40% of those who surf the web use the browser default search as their primary search choice according Angus Norton, senior director at Microsoft Live Search.

This deal comes shortly after Microsoft pulled away from the negotiation table for acquiring Yahoo!

Information Source:
[1] Associated Press: Microsoft signs search distribution deal with HP by Jessica Mintz

 
Tabblo, a social network where users can upload photos and integrate stylish templates along with those photos has announced today that they are being acquired by Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ).  Hewlett Packard’s appeal in the purchase was fueled particularly by Tabblo’s large network of 150 thousand tabblos (users) and 5 million uploaded photos.  The company started in May 2006.

Tabblo.com will stick around and will be applying new technologies as a result of the acquisition.  HP also owns Snapfish.com, which is also a photo-sharing website.   Tabblo and Snapfish will remain independent of each other.  The founder of Tabblo is Antonio Rodriguez.

“Tabblo is a very cool company with a great product. They’ve got Flickr-like community, they blogged critically about Yahoo while sponsoring Techmeme and I’ll tell you - I often show off the Tabblo of the kids in my family to people who visit my house. Naysers called them an also-ran but they deserve a big congrats today” stated Marshall Kirkpatrick, Director of Content at SplashCast.

The announcement was made official by the Tabblog.