scary stories to read online: Windows Phone 7 Launches, as Does Google Search App

For all the big tech companies' saber-rattling, they know the value of offering their product on a competitor's platform. Over the summer, Apple announced Bing for the iPhone, joining Google and Yahoo. "Microsoft has done a real nice job on this," Apple CEO Steve Jobs told the audience at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference.

So it's totally unsurprising that Google's decided to offer a search app for Windows Phone 7: After all, the more time people spend using Google products, the better for the search-engine giant. And Microsoft doesn't lose much by allowing its arch-competitor's app onto its platform; Microsoft execs like to drop buzzwords like "choice" at every opportunity, and forbidding Google's offerings from their smartphone would very likely draw its own share of protest. (Whether Google's presence affects mobile market share for Bing, which is deeply integrated into the Windows Phone 7 experience, is another question entirely.)

Google's free app seems fairly standard-issue, features-wise. Users can type in a keyword and scour the Web, images, local and news. "The initial release of the Google Search app includes several features that help you to search faster," wrote Jon Skeet and Nick Radicevic of the Google Mobile Team, in a Nov. 8 posting on the Google Mobile Blog. "Suggestions appear automatically as you type, you can choose to repeat a query from your search history, and your current location is used to provide more relevant results."

Google's announcement comes just as the first Windows Phone 7 devices launch in the U.S. market. AT&T is offering the Samsung Focus and HTC Surround for $199 with a two-year contract. In T-Mobile's corner, the HTC HD7 retails for the same price with a data plan.

Windows Phone 7 is launching first on those GSM-based networks, before arriving on CDMA networks such as Verizon in early 2011. Microsoft has dictated fairly strict terms to manufacturers regarding the phones' design (three mechanical buttons, minimum 1GHz processor, etc.), but the first devices hitting the marketplace nonetheless offer enough tweaks to keep things interesting: The HTC Surround features a slide-out speaker and kickstand, the Samsung Focus boasts a slim body, and the HTC HD7 includes a 4.3-inch screen.

For anyone purchasing a Windows Phone 7 during the initial launch, Microsoft is offering online support (among other things) at its Windows Phone Website. The Help and How-To page can be found here.