Bing Cracking Down on Unwanted Affiliates
Bing has removed a number of companies from its affiliate program who were attempting to force the recipients of free plugins to download the Bing toolbar and make the search engine their default browser. This is a noble move from Bing, as they will likely lose a few thousand pounds of revenue per year, as well as losing a chance to cut into Google’s massive market share.
Google had also tipped Bing off about the website that sparked off this storm, marking a rare occasion of the two competitors working together. Both companies have a fair trade policy in which they refrain from conducting such activities. However a number of other small search engines do not have such policies in place.
