Alt headline: WTF Is This Bing Icon Doing on My BlackBerry ?

I haven’t seen much on this anywhere in the media: Most of my office suddenly noticed today that these damn Bing icons things on their BlackBerrys. And, you cannot delete the sticky little buggers (but you can hide it ^[1]). If you want to use Google, there is no longer any app for that ^[2] — you have to go to Google.com.

Apparently, this began getting rolled out back in November. It seemed to have gone wide recently.

I am totally offended by the latest stupidity ^[3] of Verizon ^[4]: I’m not sure who to be more upset at: Microsoft, for wanting to hijack my mobile device, or Verizon, for giving them permission. I used to think Mister Softee epitomized evil, but it now looks like they have a little buddy.

And in true Microsoft fashion, a spate of problems have come along with this new Icon. Are they related ^[5]? I don’t know, but it sure as hell wouldn’t surprise me.

Time to go open source — this could be the greatest thing for competitors to these two behemoths ever . . .

~~~

You can file an FCC complaint here ^[6]

http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm