Yahoo! readies customized Microsoft Internet Explorer

With both Yahoo! and Microsoft steadying paces to fend off everything-Google, Yahoo! will be releasing a "custom" version of Microsoft's latest Internet Explorer browser -- with Yahoo! Search as the default search engine. With Microsoft installing Windows Live search as the default search provider in the normal version of Internet Explorer 7 -- much to Google's chagrin -- that default search real estate inside the world's most popular internet web browser is proving to be, well, worth possibly billions (of dollars and searchers).

While Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 is hardly a revolutionary browsing experience, Yahoo's changes seem to be, according to this article, little more than window dressing on top of features already on top of Yahoo's toolbar that's been available for Internet Explorer 6 and he newer version 7 for some time now. Is Yahoo! scared that its customer experience is being quashed by Google and Microsoft? It should be -- Yahoo! needs any leg up it can get.

While still an incredibly popular internet destination -- and a worthy competitor on all fronts to Microsoft's Live search and Google search -- it does not own the conduit to get to its properties -- the web browser. With Microsoft owing that market, and with the Google-Firefox alliance, Yahoo! needs all the tools it can muster to ensure the path to its wide array of services are in front of customers as fully as possible.