Amazon and Google no longer friends? Kindle Fire HD integrates Bing instead of Google

We earlier learned that a few major companies are trying to reduce their dependence on Google for content and services. For example, Apple is ditching YouTube on iOS 6 and is also moving away from using Google Maps. Amazon is itself going for Nokia Maps instead of Google Maps in its new Kindle line. But in an even more drastic move, Amazon actually integrates Bing search instead of Google in the Kindle Fire HD.

Eliane Fiolet of Ubergizmo was able to get a hands-on experience with a Kindle Fire HD, and were quite surprised to find that the tablet’s Silk mobile browser had Bing as the default search engine.

“Bing comes as the default for Silk, Amazon says, but users will have the option of switching to Google or Yahoo if they wish,” writes Eric Abent at Slashgear. Eric speculates that Microsoft may have sponsored Bing’s prominent placement in Amazon’s Silk browser, although the company would not comment on the matter.

But given that Microsoft is having a hard time getting users to switch from Google to Bing on the desktop, this could be one of their ways of aggressively pushing their homegrown search engine to reach more users. Some commentators, however, say that Amazon is doing this on their own accord, given that Google may already be challenging Amazon’s dominance in e-commerce, with its own sale of ebooks, music and the like.

The question now is this. Will more smartphone and tablet manufacturers follow suit?