Acer Aquires Gateway, Google Loses Search Partner to Yahoo?

August 27th, 2007 by Loren Baker, Editor | No Comments

Acer computers announced today its plans to acquire Gateway for $710 million which would establish the company as the third largest computer vendor in the world.

After the deal, the companies will form a multi-branded firm which ships 20 million PC’s a year.

One question is, which search company will be the Acer partner of choice amongst these many brands?

Currently, Acer is a Yahoo Search distribution partner, shipping its computers with Yahoo tools such as default search, the Yahoo toolbar, and one-click ’short-cuts’ to Yahoo web channels & offerings.

Gateway is a Google search distribution partner, shipping computers with default Google search and a cobranded Google Gateway personal homepage as the IE browser start page.

If Acer keeps the Gateway brand running, it may continue to honor the deal with Google, or apply its Yahoo Search partnership to all PC’s under the Acer umbrella.

If so, with so many PC’s being shipped worldwide with default search tools, the company Acer chooses to run with will benefit greatly in a gain of search distribution.

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