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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   Printer-friendly
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

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by NateMich on Friday January 24 2020, @08:43PM (6 children)

    by NateMich (6662) on Friday January 24 2020, @08:43PM (#948126)

    Irritating your customers is always great for market share.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Arik on Friday January 24 2020, @08:45PM (3 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Friday January 24 2020, @08:45PM (#948129) Journal
    If this doesn't prove that they're effectively a monopoly I'm not sure what does.

    If you or I did this, we'd be in the lockup for "hacking."
    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:52AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 25 2020, @05:52AM (#948375)

    Irritating your customers is always great for market share.

    I don't think they're customers anymore. I don't quite know what they are now... they're not exactly prisoners, and they're not quite hostages, but they're definitely not customers.

    • (Score: 2) by NateMich on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:41PM

      by NateMich (6662) on Saturday January 25 2020, @12:41PM (#948451)

      I don't think they're customers anymore. I don't quite know what they are now... they're not exactly prisoners, and they're not quite hostages, but they're definitely not customers.

      If they are running Windows then they, or someone on their behalf, gave Microsoft money.