The eBetween subsidiary, which is also backed by ZDNet (NYSE:ZDZ) investor Softbank Holdings, has signed deals with companies including CNet Inc. (Nasdaq:CNET), Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), America Online Inc. (NYSE:AOL), EarthLink (Nasdaq:ELNK), Lycos Inc. (Nasdaq:LCOS) and Trend Micro. Those companies will be able to contact users the first time they set up their systems, and place icons for their services directly on users' desktops.
Since many PC makers have already signed deals with Internet service providers and portal sites, eBetween is initially going after the "white-box" or non-branded market, which it says makes up 35 percent of the industry.
The technology effectively allows the companies to interrupt the Windows setup process to offer consumers options for Internet service providers and other deals.
"What we do is before bringing up desktop we'll ask the users, 'Would you like services offered to you as icons?' If they say no, nothing happens, they're just taken to the desktop," said Laurent Gharda, vice president of marketing for Phoenix (Nasdaq: PTEC). "If they say yes, then three or four more icons are added to the screen."
Interrupting Microsoft Corp.'s startup screen is something that has previously been somewhat difficult for PC companies, since Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) has its own deals with Internet service providers and others.
Gharda: 'Fair and legal'
But Gharda said that since his company will be getting the users' permission to alter the desktop, "we feel and our attorneys feel that this is legal and fair."
And Phoenix has shown Microsoft some ways that the technology could be used to the company's advantage, he said.
Microsoft was not immediately available for comment.
Gharda would not discuss what other plans Phoenix has for eBetween, but the technology would essentially allow his company's partners to get much closer to consumers than they have been able to in the past.
Earlier reports have suggested that the company would let advertisers pitch products during the boot-up process, for instance.
Junkbusters worried
And that has some people worried.
"I'm all in favor of breaking Microsoft's monopoly on the first screen, but if it means a constant parade of ads, that's probably not progress," said Jason Catlett, president of privacy advocate Junkbusters.com.
Gharda would not say what plan the company specifically had for the technology, but he stressed that they would not do anything without users' permission.
"The fact that we happen to make money off the transaction is great, but we realize that if we were to alienate users, we wouldn't make money at all," he said.
The first computers featuring the new BIOS will start appearing this fall, he said.
