Microsoft has announced that it has made a deal with Hewlett Packard, the world’s largest computer manufacturer, to distribute its Live Search Toolbar as a default on all the computers that the company will sell in the US and Canada.

Until now, HP computers were shipped with Yahoo as the default internet search engine. The agreement reminds of Microsoft’s failed attempt to acquire Yahoo! Inc. in a bid of more that $47 million, and the Redmond based company’s statement saying that after the negotiations came to a stop it would seek new ways to enhance its presence in the search related advertising market.

The toolbar that will be shipped with the HP computers will be built using Microsoft’s Silverlight Technology and will allow users to preview websites without leaving the web page they would be on. In addition to this, there will be shortcuts to some of HP’s web services, like its online photo service Snapfish.

The software giant has shown increasing interest in the growing search related ads market, where Google is by far the biggest player. In the last year, the three most used search engines in the US were Google, handling more that 60 percent of the requests, Yahoo, with about 20 percent and Microsoft with barely 10 percent.

Google has also made a similar deal with computer company Dell to sell its laptops with the company’s search page as the default one.

Microsoft said it expects the deal to make a large number of persons use its search engine. Last year the online services department was the only one where Microsoft announced losses.