From CNET 6/2/09:

Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that it is looking into an issue in which users of Internet Explorer 6 are forced into having Bing as their default search engine.

"We are aware of the issue with Bing on machines running IE6 and are investigating a solution," Microsoft said in a statement. "This issue is not impacting IE7 and IE8 users."

Although it is only affecting its older browser, many people still use IE6 and Microsoft has faced a lot of regulatory scrutiny over how default search preferences are set and changed within Internet Explorer.

A lot of people use older browsers because they can't afford to upgrade their computers to be able to run newer browsers, a problem that is affecting more people because of the terrible economy.

Here are some more tech details from Search Engine Land 6/2/09:

It appears that Bing is overriding the default search provider set by users of Internet Explorer 6. Several IE6 users have complained that since Bing launched, the search provided went from Google (which they set manually) to Bing. To makes things even worse, when the user tries to set the search provider back from Bing to Google, it doesn’t allow them.

Microsoft's new search engine, Bing, is an improvement over it's old search, which was execrable. It's getting close to comparable to Yahoo now, but it still isn't as good as Google. Microsoft must have figured this out and decided to give itself a captive audience.

If not for the corruption of the Bush regime, Microsoft would have been broken up into several companies under our antitrust laws. This still needs to happen. Our economy is damaged by Microsoft's use of anticompetitive tactics to make its low quality products market dominant.

Breaking up Microsoft is part of restoring the rule of law to this country and should be included as part of any serious economic recovery plan.