Earlier in the year Dell announced a partnership with Google for all new machines shipping out of Dell – a machine’s browser homepage would default to a special Google landing page offering Dell and Google products and news.

Now, according to the Taipei Times, Yahoo have snapped up HP (having already snapped up ACER to the same deal) to have browsers on new HP desktop and laptop models in Europe default to the Yahoo homepage. Users in the US will have a cobranded HP Yahoo toolbar preinstalled on their machine.

I’m not at all fond of the Yahoo toolbar or any other toolbar for that matter (if I can’t get it in my Firefox bookmarks bar or search for it in the top left on one of the FF searches then I’m not too bothered). All the same, its a good deal for Yahoo as continue to battle it out with Google for search engine domination, HP being the second largest global PC manufacturer behind Dell.