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Microsoft, naturally denies any such thing. In the company's IE Blog Dean says 'On upgrading from IE6 to IE7 on Windows XP, IE7 carries forward the user's IE6 autosearch setting'.

This is not good enough for Google. The search engine does not fear the beta testers of IE 7 who are perfectly capable of changing their default search engine or even of the upgrade market in general. Google is more concerned of the millions of new machines that will be sold with Vista without a previous default. Afraid that user inertia or ignorance will allow MSN Search to remain the standard search engine, Google is complaining to the anti-trust

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authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Oddly enough, considering the complaint, Google's close relationship with the Mozilla Foundation means that the search engine effectively bankrolls Mozilla in return for being - yes, you guessed it - the default search engine on Firefox.

Meanwhile, the mood over at Google HQ will not have been improved following the news that online retail giant Amazon has dropped Google as the underlying search engine for its A9 search service in favour of Microsoft.

The move has led to speculation as to whether and how much Microsoft paid to be the default on Amazon. Certainly Amazon itself did not appear to be brimming over with enthusiasm for MSN Search.

'Our engineers have done some testing and evaluation, and overall we concluded this was an interesting option to discover information,' David Tennenhouse, Chief Executive of Amazon's A9 search service told the Washington Post. On whether MSN's technology is superior to Google's Tennenhouse said, 'It will be up to users to try that out.'

Although landing Amazon will be seen as a coup for Microsoft it has a mountain to climb to catch Google and Yahoo! Last month Microsoft's share of the US search market was just 11 per cent.