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Microsoft's Sneaky Plan to Switch Chrome Searches From Google to Bing

posted by martyb on Friday January 24 2020, @08:05PM   
from the don't-mess-with-the-duck dept.

Freeman writes:

Microsoft's sneaky plan to switch Chrome searches from Google to Bing:

Microsoft announced today that, beginning in February 2020, Office365 Pro Plus installs and updates will include a Chrome extension that forcibly changes the default search engine to Microsoft's own search engine, Bing.

[...] This new policy only takes places in specific geographic areas, as determined by a user's IP address. If you aren't in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, the UK, or the United States, you should be safe—for now

[...] Predictably, the unruly denizens of Reddit's r/sysadmin—arguably, the closest thing the modern Internet has to the scary devil monastery—are unhappy.

[...] Microsoft's actual stated reasoning for the change is to automatically enable Microsoft Search within the user's browser.

[...] Aside from the potential to enrage sysadmins and users alike, we question the wisdom of conditioning users to search for internal, likely confidential data in their Web browser's general-purpose search bar.

LibreOffice + Firefox anyone?

Additional coverage at: searchengineland

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Original Submission

• One Question One Question (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @08:09PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @08:09PM (#948104)

  So what? [chromium.org]

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• Re:One Question (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday January 24 2020, @08:47PM

  by fustakrakich (6150) on Friday January 24 2020, @08:47PM (#948131) Journal

  A blacklist value of '*' means all extensions are blacklisted unless they are explicitly listed in the whitelist.

  That's the way to do it

  --
  La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..

  Parent