Microsoft indeed learns that if they want Bing to succeed it will need to sleep with the enemy, at least through promoting Internet Explorer rival Firefox. The proof: Bing is now offering “Firefox With Bing.”

Bing, through a blog post invites people to download a special version of Firefox where Bing is used as the default search engine. It is packed with a search bar that well, searches on Bing through “AwesomeBar” address window.
You can download Firefox with Bing here: www.firefoxwithbing.com/

Recommending a rival product is a first for Bing. Experts agree that it’s a much needed move should Microsoft want to go grow further. Pushing in their very Internet Explorer is a religion that has met countless controversies over the past few years. Internet Explorer is bundled in Windows Operating Systems and other Microsoft products.

This notes Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand.com is a big move since Firefox 4 added Bing as option in serving search results October last year. But users can of course see this as more than reciprocating Firefox’s love.

Firefox usually uses Google as the default search engine, so a search on its tool bar will yield results from Google, along with Advertisements from Adwords. That’s part of the deal between Google and Firefox. And yes, that deal existed even before Chrome came into play and it has continued despite Chrome’s existence.
Bing on the other hand is not the default search engine on Internet Explorer. This is contrary to what many assume. It will only appear as default on machines that has specific hardware which made deals with Microsoft – which is still quite a lot. But on a clean machine with no previous OS, there is no default search engine for IE to use.