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An agreement between Microsoft and HP, announced this morning, demonstrates one of the ways that the Redmond company will try to come from (way) behind in the Web search market. The deal will also provide an interesting gauge of Internet searchers' willingness to forgo Google.

Under the deal, starting early next year, all HP consumer PCs in the U.S. and Canada will ship with a Microsoft Live Search toolbar preinstalled, and Live Search will be set as the default for the search field inside Internet Explorer on the same machines. The arrangement is notable because HP is the biggest PC maker, with 18.2 percent of the worldwide business and consumer market last year, according to Gartner research.

The companies didn't disclose terms of the deal, but in the news release, Microsoft executive Kevin Johnson called it "the most significant distribution deal for Live Search that Microsoft has ever done." It's also a boost for Microsoft's Silverlight technology, which will be incorporated into the toolbar. Dell, the No. 2 PC maker, has a similar deal with Google.

Such agreements are grounded in the notion that many PC users will lack the know-how or desire to change their search settings.

Of course, even after the Microsoft agreement takes effect, lots of HP users will just conduct searches from the Google home page.

But to the extent people use built-in search fields, the HP-Microsoft deal raises some important questions, with broader implications: When their queries are directed to Live Search, how many HP users will be conscious of the fact that it's not Google? How many of those people will want to switch the default to Google? And how many of those will actually do it?