Yahoo reached a deal for prime real estate on all Acer PCs shipped globally, with a cobranded toolbar, homepage and search engine, the companies said Wednesday. In a deal that extends the battle for the PC among Internet companies, Acer laptops and desktops shipped starting Oct. 1 will direct users to an Acer-Yahoo homepage when they click on a Web browser, complete with Yahoo portal content such as the Yahoo search engine, news, music, sports and the Yahoo Personal Assistant. The pact mirrors an agreement between Dell and Google earlier this year, and ups the ante with Microsoft and other companies battling to drive PC users to their Internet-based services. The PC desktop has become a battleground for companies fighting to increase their brand awareness and Internet ad revenue. The coming launch of Windows Vista highlights the issue because Microsoft is moving toward putting more and more Internet capabilities, such as search, on its OS, which would make it the first item users see when they boot up their computer. SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe In May, Dell agreed to install Google homepage and search tools on all desktops and notebooks shipped to consumers and small and midsize businesses worldwide, effectively kicking Microsoft out of a position it had occupied for years. The Yahoo-Acer deal does essentially the same thing, and while Acer isn’t nearly the size of Dell, it is the fastest-growing PC vendor among the top 10, and is based in Asia, the fastest-growing PC market in the world, according to market researcher IDC. Yahoo and Acer referred to the agreement as a multiyear deal, but did not specify how many years, nor whether it would involve any kind of revenue sharing. Acer will factory-install the co-branded toolbars and homepages on all of its desktops and laptops, the companies said. Once Microsoft launches Internet Explorer 7, Acer will set Yahoo as the default search engine for IE7 on all of its computers.Neither Yahoo nor Acer representatives were immediately available for comment. -Dan Nystedt, IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)Related Links: Google, Dell Join Forces in PC Deal Yahoo Mobile Available for Windows Smart Phones Yahoo Plugs Security Hole in Web Mail ServiceCheck out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content brandpost Four Leadership Motions make leading transformative work easier The Four Leadership Motions can be extremely beneficial —they don’t just drive results among software developers, they help people make extraordinary progress wherever they lead. By Jason Fraser, Director, Product Management & Design, VMware Tanzu Labs, Public Sector Sep 21, 2023 5 mins IT Leadership feature The year’s top 10 enterprise AI trends — so far In 2022, the big AI story was the technology emerging from research labs and proofs-of-concept, to it being deployed throughout enterprises to get business value. This year started out about the same, with slightly better ML algorithms and improved d By Maria Korolov Sep 21, 2023 16 mins Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence opinion 6 deadly sins of enterprise architecture EA is a complex endeavor made all the more challenging by the mistakes we enterprise architects can’t help but keep making — all in an honest effort to keep the enterprise humming. By Peter Wayner Sep 21, 2023 9 mins Enterprise Architecture IT Strategy Software Development opinion CIOs worry about Gen AI – for all the right reasons Generative AI is poised to be the most consequential information technology of the decade. Plenty of promise. But expect novel new challenges to your enterprise data platform. By Mike Feibus Sep 20, 2023 7 mins CIO Generative AI Artificial Intelligence Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe