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
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 24 2020, @09:06PM (2 children)
Remember back in the good old days that they would get in trouble for doing this kind of thing?
Pepperidge Farm remembers [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday January 24 2020, @09:48PM
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
I 'member