In its latest attempt to rival its strong competitor Google, Microsoft announced its interest to strike a deal with the world’s largest PC maker, Hewlett Packard, to place a toolbar on new PCs that directly links to its Live Search engine homepage. Microsoft seems to be targetting its latest venture to popularise its toolbar and chip away the dominance of the current search leader Google.

By the effect of the agreement, which will take place somewhere in next January for new PCs manufactured in the US and Canada, will eventually displace the current agreement, the one HP has with Yahoo. This only means that Microsoft is gearing up to take head-on with both Google and Yahoo and also optimize its search capabilities.

Microsoft does not want to disclose the terms and conditions of the agreement right now. But, as per the agreement, Microsoft’s Live Search engine will be available as the default service on the new Internet Explorer browser that will be loaded on the new HP computers.

A spokesman from Microsoft’s platform and services division sounded very excited about their latest move and said that it would be the most significant distribution deal for Live Search that Microsoft could have ever done with any other company.

But as far as the web search is concerned, Google continuously extends its lead in web search and services which was confirmed by a research firm stating that Google’s US web search market share surprisingly rose to a record number of 61.5 % in April itself, while Yahoo’s share had comparatively declined to 20.4 %. Microsoft was tagged far behind Google and Yahoo, and slipped to 9.1 %.

Now, in order to catch up with its greater rivals in web search business, Microsoft will start a new initiative programme to boost its efforts to gain more web search market share. This initiative includes the introduction of a new “cashback” programme to reward and encourage people who search and finally make a purchase through its Live Search. The ‘cashback’ initiative has been welcomed open-handedly by many advertisers.