Microsoft can't wait for an unlikely alliance with Yahoo or for cash rebates to rev up its search business. So it strikes deals like the one today with Hewlett-Packard.

Microsoft's Live Search will be the default search-engine setting on Hewlett-Packard personal computers shipped in North America starting in January. Microsoft also has a distribution deal with Lenovo of China, which acquired I.B.M.'s PC business. Google, of course, has been dominant in search, handling 10 times more traffic than Microsoft.

"This agreement with H.P. is a strategic indicator of our increased focus on securing broadscale distribution for Live Search," said Kevin Johnson, president of the platforms and services division at Microsoft. "This is the most significant distribution deal for Live Search that Microsoft has ever done."

The headline on Vasanth Sridharan's post on Silicon Alley Insider says it all: "Microsoft's Non-Google Killer." But Hewlett-Packard is the biggest PC manufacturer in the world. Sridharan says, "This won't do much in the long run, but at the right price, these deals aren't a terrible idea."

Om Malik notes that "the distribution game used to be Microsoft's strategy" until it ran up against the Justice Department over Netscape.

"It is hard to imagine a leopard changing its spots. The desktop-search deal with H.P. is a good example."