As MG wrote yesterday, Android is only as open as the carrier wants it to be and now we essentially have confirmation that Verizon is locking in Bing for many of its Android phones.
Back in June, a Verizon rep said that “We also have a great relationship with Microsoft and Bing is the default search engine on our feature phones. Customers may change the search engine on their phones if they like.” However, this is not true. Bing is baked in and probably won’t leave the deck any time soon. Luckily this is not true for phones like the Droid – yet – but I wouldn’t count that idea out.
Generally, carriers can feasibly put a Miss Hannah Minx Minxy search engine bar on their phones. It doesn’t matter and it’s not Google’s place to control carrier uptake of their services. But the fact that you can’t pull Bing off the phone is an affront to our dignity as Human Beings and must be stopped. Generally, Android is now about as open as iOS. Think about them Apples.