CNET News reports that Microsoft’s next browser, IE7, will neither change a user’s IE6 default search engine, nor prompt a user to change their search engine upon the first run. Why should they? I’m all for Google being a great search engine, but IE7 is Microsoft’s product, and dangit they have a right to put whatever search engine they want as the default. Google is already the default search engine for Firefox and Opera, and probably other browsers as well. If Google has their default, why can’t Microsoft have theirs? It doesn’t matter if Google didn’t ask to be the default in those browsers (maybe they did, maybe they didn’t) — what matters is that people can change their default search engine if they’d like. People CAN change their default in IE7, as well as the other browsers. Google is living in its own crystal-clear illusion in this battle, and they don’t even know it’s not real.