Google and Dell in $1 billion Microsoft busting deal

In a move clearly targeted at breaking Microsoft's dominance of the desktop, Google and Dell have reportedly sealed a deal worth up to US$1 billion for the leading PC maker. According to a Wall Street Journal report, Dell, which is going through a rough patch, will receive up to $1 billion from Google to pre-install Google desktop on its PCs, which would also ship with a default browser home page sponsored by both companies.

The reported three year deal is indicative of a new strategy by Dell to cast its net wider to include products than the mainstream desktop players. Last week, Dell struck a deal with Intel rival chipmaker AMD, which for the first time would see the PC maker include non-Intel processors in some of its server range.

The move also follows an aggressive strategy by Google to attack Microsoft's dominance wherever possible on the desktop and in thebrwoser space. Google pays Mozilla to have its search box as the default on the Firefox browser which has about 11% marketshare. The search leader has also complained to the US Department of Justice and European Commission about Microsoft's intention to make it's own search box as the default in the upcoming Internet Explorer 7 browser which will be released next month.

Google also intends to bring to market products that cut across Microsoft's desktop software offerings. It has recently released Google Calendar, which offers similiar functionality to Microsoft's Outlook and bought a company called Writely, that makes a web-based wordprocessor.