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

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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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @09:06PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @09:06PM (#948144)

    Remember back in the good old days that they would get in trouble for doing this kind of thing?

    Pepperidge Farm remembers [wikipedia.org].

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 24 2020, @09:48PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday January 24 2020, @09:48PM (#948169)

    Yeah, I remember: While that was being prosecuted and decided, they increased their lobbying spending considerably, and all of a sudden the prospect of a breakup and any real punishment went away. They learned their lesson well: Bribing the government is good for business.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @10:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @10:26PM (#948187)

    I 'member