Are Microsoft on the make?

Ok, so I was browsing the web today (nothing unusual there) and I logged off my hotmail account and was taken to MSN as usual (Microsoft being crafty with their hit counts there, I wonder how many real hits the MSN web site gets? e.g. how many people meant to go there lol).

Well, anyway, Microsofts strategy worked today because I was interrupted by something else and went away without closing my browser window. When I came back MSN was up on the screen and I figured, what the heck, i'm bored, so I read the article which caught my eye and seemed curious.

Well, at some point during my browsing the browser crashed (something to do with Flash) so I re-opened it and went to try and find the article again. So, I visited a couple of MSN sites (and only Microsoft sites) but none of them where the same one that appears on hotmail log out (frustrating). I was about to, for the first time ever, deliberately logout of hotmail just to visit MSN and find and finish reading the article when I noticed that a new browser tab had been opened on my behalf in the browser window I was about to close (not opened by me).

Curious (since my browser had just crashed and re-loaded whilst browsing MSN) I opened it up. It was pointing at "Microsoft Live Search" and it had automatically entered the search criteria of "HDTV" and performed the search.

Now, firstly, I never use Microsoft Live Search (Google is truely the best, and not an ad whore like the others!) and secondly, I didn't clicked anything that remotely might have justified this outcome.

This is deeply concerning, are Microsoft getting paid money for people searching using Live Search for terms like HDTV? Are Microsoft trying to fake usage of their search engine to bost their market position? are Microsoft in fact "on the make"? its hard to see another reason why Microsoft might automatically carry out searches from my system on their search engine (which I might well not try to block at the firewall).

Now, I'll grant you i'm a big fan of Google :D, but, you know why i'm a big fan of google? precisely because they don't perform automatic searches on my behalf in a sneaky fashion >.<