19 ms·
Microsoft to force Chrome default search to Bing via Office365 ProPlus installer
- kUdtiHaEX 7y agoThat sounds like an excellent plan.
- giovannibajo1 7y agoI haven’t followed closely, but Chrome took many steps over the years to make sure software installers couldn’t sneakily install extensions. How is this possible?
- est31 7y agoGoogle does offer a method to install extensions in an automated way for business use cases: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6306504?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6306504?hl=en I guess that Microsoft uses that method in the Office 365 ProPlus installer (also targeted at businesses).
- giovannibajo1 7y agoThis seems a method for enterprise administrators that centrally manage Chrome installation. That page doesn't seem to show a way for third-party software providers to bundle extensions into installers.
- sempron64 7y agoSince Office is a first-class Microsoft component in Windows Update, I'd assume they can use the Windows Updates mechanism to set any group policy or registry settings they need to manage Chrome.
- merb 7y agowell the default office365 installer, is bad anway. without https://config.office.com/ https://config.office.com/ it already installs a lot of unnecessary crap. sadly in config.office.com they made the choice to opt-out the feature (it's a checkbox: https://imgur.com/a/O43EI2M https://imgur.com/a/O43EI2M sorry for german language)
- styx31 7y agoNo particular advice here, I just want to point to the fact that bing allows users to search their organization documents (office 365 files) when using bing [1] when connected with their org account. This feature is named "Microsoft Search in Microsoft 365". It's not mentionned in the article. See original ms doc article for details [2]. So it's not just a way to force users to use bing, it's also a way to push this feature in front of them. > By making Bing the default search engine, users in your organization with Google Chrome will be able to take advantage of Microsoft Search, including being able to access relevant workplace information directly from the browser address bar. Microsoft Search is part of Microsoft 365 and is turned on by default for all Microsoft apps that support it. [1] https://support.office.com/en-us/article/find-what-you-need-with-microsoft-search-in-bing-0b64be13-f20f-4e17-82b6-4deaea4940fb https://support.office.com/en-us/article/find-what-you-need-... [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/microsoft-search-bing https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/microsoft-sear...
- giancarlostoro 7y agoI think if the installer explains it clesrly and transparently then its fine. It should be entirely opt-in. Matter of fact default search engine should be entirely opt-in on first time use. Microsoft needs to really do a better job with these sort of decisions to make sure they arent stepping on a landmine.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- diffeomorphism 7y ago> By making Bing the default search engine, users in your organization with Google Chrome will be able to take advantage of Microsoft Search, Also, if you are not doing that, they will still be able to, just not directly from the browser address bar.
- judge2020 7y agoChrome also already has a feature for searching Drive files from the search bar[0], so it makes sense for MS to be on a level playing field. 0: https://9to5google.com/2019/12/02/chrome-google-drive-search/ https://9to5google.com/2019/12/02/chrome-google-drive-search...
- dessant 7y agoThis is good news, given the circumstances. Google doesn't show a welcome screen in Chrome to select your default search engine, and this action somewhat helps with mitigating that imbalance. Considering Chrome's market share, it's only a matter of time until Google will be required to show a search engine choice screen in the browser, they were already ordered by the EU to do it for the default Android browser and search engine.
- boudin 7y agoI don't know how forcing people to use another search engine is better is good news. It's not like Microsoft is giving a set of options here. The way microsoft is trying to force its products through its other products (like edge and bing in windows 10) is sad and really annoying.
- dessant 7y agoMicrosoft is doing the same as Google, they set a default search engine that can be changed, instead of offering an active choice before setting a default. Both companies behave inappropriately, but then again, actions like these are needed to highlight how choices are made for us, and to shake us out of complatence.
- funnybeam 7y agoActually Microsoft are installing a chrome plugin that forces the search engine to Bing so users can’t change the default back until they remove the plugin
- v7p1Qbt1im 7y agoWhen you install Chrome you expect the search engine to be set to Google. When you install O365 ProPlus you sure as hell don‘t expect it to change search engine parameters in separate programs.
- PunchTornado 7y agohow is forcing Bing on customers is good news? Microsoft, Internet Explorer creator, is a trillion dollar company, not a startup looking to disturb the market in face of tech giants.
- est31 7y agoThe title only mentions "Office 365 installer", but note that only Office 365 ProPlus is affected, which is a product targeted at businesses.
- starfallg 7y agoConsidering MS Office has overwhelming market share in the office suite space for businesses, this will surely attract attention from the regulators, no?
- Phylter 7y agoOnly if it ruffles enough customers feathers.
- LorenPechtel 7y agoHopefully the regulators will whallop them with a big clue-by-4. They've already gotten in trouble for trying to leverage their position before (tying IE to Windows). They're now a repeat offender.
- mkup 7y agoI guess, Google can, in turn, extend Windows 7 support in Chrome until 2029.
- Edward9 7y agoI really like these corporative battles. Seems it's the only thing that keeps the market being for consumers and not for profit.
- tr4cker 7y agoI don't like malware tho'
- rkagerer 7y agoPeople are going to get fed up with all these stupid, user-hostile tricks coming from the major tech companies. I'm not just talking about this one incident. There's a bar that's not only lowering, but crashing fast. Ploys like these tend to be a symptom from companies about to become obsoleted by innovators who actually understand and give a shit about their target audience.
- thrwaway69 7y agoI have been hearing that for a decade. I remember the time when installing anything would change your browser's search engine. Those companies are still alive and going. What eventually hurt their market space wasn't some trendy hippie customer oriented startup but other "lesser evil" big companies with bigger pockets.
- close04 7y agoI think people are slowly getting used to all the tricks the major tech companies use and they are going to see this as more and more acceptable and even perfectly normal. And those companies know this. I'm sure they pay very qualified people to tell them how far and how fast they can take it to get what they want without truly alienating the people. The stuff that many people find perfectly acceptable today would have been absolutely outrageous 10-15 years ago.
- rkagerer 7y agoThere's nothing hippie about capitalizing on the opportunity created when a market leader alienates its customers by letting its products rot with pain points. In some ways Google is just as sinister as Microsoft ever was. It's not any sort of intentional master plan, it's simply what happens when you lose sight of the user. Some of the crap being pulled by today's incumbents... They might as well put a little imp in the box that beats you with a whip to drive the behavior they want from you. All of them began as tiny startups with a couple of smart people and disruptive tech... take a long enough view and I'm still optimistic the cycle will continue.
- 7y ago
- idclip 7y agoOh they are burning down the house pretty badly. I think even good ol bill is cringing at recent events. My god .. But, it takes a fire to feed a forest sometimes. Let them
- jannes 7y agoCringing?? Are you familiar with the MS of the 90s? The stuff that happened on his watch was not much better.
- idclip 7y agoI am, but honestly, i actually feel this is worse.
- solarkraft 7y agoChanging people's defaults search engine is worse than EEE?
- idclip 7y agoCombined with ads in word? Sorta. I still remember the toolbar days. They were indeed dark.
- Longhanks 7y agoThis infuriates me insanely. By what right does Microsoft think it is ok to manipulate a third party software by injecting their own code?! This is outright malicious. Malware. I hope the EU fines them and forces Microsoft to stop such actions (as they forced them to stop bundling IE with Windows a couple of years ago). It's time these big corporations get broken up. It really is. Stop f*cking with my hardware and the web.
- tr4cker 7y agoAgreed
- mister_hn 7y agoTrue, but we forget how also Chrome attempts to set itself automatically as standard browser in Linux _WITHOUT_ asking. That is also a malicious behavior, isn't?
- chithanh 7y agoSpare me the whataboutism to justify Microsoft's actions. If Chrome did that it would be objectionable too.
- mcny 7y agoExactly. Imagine if Google changed your windows installation to point shortcut to win word to point to a new chrome window in kiosk mode that opens docs.new...
- bgdnyxbjx 7y agoChrome literally did something like this. When the user searched the web from the Windows search box, it used to open their default browser to bing.com. Chrome started to inspect the url and redirect to Google.com. So Microsoft changed it to open Edge to block this bs.
- 7y ago
- rjmunro 7y agoIf this is something that IT admins can opt in to, rather than compulsory, it sounds like a good feature. The article hints that might be the case. If this happens by default, in a user hostile way, Google could respond by having their installers set the default search engine in Edge to Google.
- close04 7y ago> Google could respond by having their installers set the default search engine in Edge to Google Just to guarantee that every user has a reason to be pissed off?
- tr4cker 7y agoIt seems kind of fair...
- funnybeam 7y agoUnfortunately it’s opt-out rather than opt-in. Pity the poor help desks that missed this announcement and get swamped with tickets next month
- blackearl 7y agoIt's opt-out. Here's the email they sent out to admins recently: You must exclude the extension before you install or update to a version of Office 365 ProPlus that installs the extension for Microsoft Search in Bing. Implementing the exclusion after the extension has been installed will not remove the extension. • For new installations of Office 365 ProPlus, the Office Deployment Tool may be the best method, as outlined in this support document • For existing installations of Office 365 ProPlus, modifying the Group Policy may be best. Enable the policy setting Don't install extension for Microsoft Search in Bing, which makes Bing the default the search engine. • If you use Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager (current branch), from the Features section, set Microsoft Search as default to the Off position. • If you use Microsoft Intune to deploy Office 365 ProPlus, clear the check box Microsoft Search as default on the Configure App Suite pane.
- 7y ago
- kome 7y agoGoogle did the same for years with any kind of installer, I remember installing CCleaner and finding Chrome on my computer for no reason. They put chrome everywhere using super shady techniques.
- tr4cker 7y agoAnother reason to hate MS.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tinus_hn 7y agoPreviously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22121150 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22121150
- rvz 7y agoI don't know why people here are surprised about this. Companies like Microsoft are not interested in acting in the interest of users and their privacy, but they do whatever they please with their products; thus you don't own them. If there are laws to prevent this, they'll find other ways in bending them to continue to do nasty things. With that, personally I don't trust any company with a closed source OS these days and will treat all closed source programs as malware.
- kunglao 7y agoI think a large number of people can't tell a browser and the search engine apart anymore. They are so entangled, internet to people means something that when they click on it, it shows the iconic Google search page. Wonder how that happened. I heard that Google is introducing Chromebooks to school kids. By the time these kids graduate, they'll be confused by any computer that is not a Chromebook. I think if the OS, browser and the search engine belongs to the same company, its perfectly fine to set it as the default. As long as on first launch they give a clear option to choose something else.
- ragerino 7y agoIt's old Microsoft all over again!
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoOld Microsoft never went away, despite what the kids think. It just put on some new clothes and pretends it has been reformed.
- kkkkkkkkf 7y agowhich company does not?
- kalleboo 7y agoGoogle doesn't really have any right to complain as they've had Google Chrome and the Google search bar as drive by installs in third party software installers https://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/20123/ https://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/201...
- danShumway 7y agoYeah, but I have a right to complain. Microsoft pulls a consumer-hostile move, and the first thought of a lot of commenters on here (not just you) is, "what is the impact on Google?" Who cares about the company? Stop messing with my computer behind my back. 200 years from now, someone on Mars will be reading the headline "Google Drones Lethally Injecting iPhone Owners On Sight", and there'll still be people on HN who's first reaction is to wonder whether or not that counts as anti-competitive towards Apple.
- wizzwizz4 7y agoThis is an enterprise system, though; it won't be running on your computer, but business computers. Still bad, but less bad – arguably on the level of Google pushing its search engine in Chrome and Firefox to begin with.
- eh78ssxv2f 7y agoI think the defaults matter a lot in such cases. Does anybody remember if that checkbox for installing google chrome was checked in by default or not?
- Proven 7y ago"force"? what default search isn't "forced"? and what's the problem anyway - isn't it customizable?
- acd10j 7y agoPeople here are justifying Microsoft stance of modifying default browser in third party browser, What if they get away with this and what we could see is that, after every windows update Microsoft would change default search engine in Windows to bing.
- trimboffle 7y agoWhy can’t users choose their default search on installation?
- ourmandave 7y agoSeesh, even Adobe gives you a McAfee checkbox.
- Causality1 7y agoIt's all the more infuriating when you consider how Windows 10 throws a hissy fit if you should dare to change your default browser from Edge to something else.
- SmellyGeekBoy 7y agoNot just the constant notifications but it even shows messages on the lock screen!
- jaimex2 7y agoSounds like a Chrome issue if true. Bug report filed yet? :)
- executesorder66 7y agoLoving the new Microsoft.
- chirau 7y agoA lot of a weird arguments here. You are OK with Google being the default and not Bing? Sounds silly to me. Have you heard of "other browsers" on iOS and how Apple forces them to use Safari specs? This is more of you folks having an issue with Microsoft itself, not what they have done. Because your favorite company is doing it already and you just choose to look away.
- SteveSmith16384 7y agoI don't mind what the default is when I install a browser since I know to change it, but I have issues with any piece of software altering the settings of another unrelated piece of software that I've already configured.
- Kuraj 7y agoI'm not OK with software messing with my other software. I install Office because I need it, not because I think it and everything else Microsoft has made is the best thing ever.
- ajay_sibri04 7y agoUse open office then??
- s_y_n_t_a_x 7y agoLets not pretend browsers are like other software. They are essentially a VM that can run remote untrusted code. Software has changed the start page, search providers, and installed plugins into browsers for a very long time, this is nothing new.
- JC5413789642675 7y agoHow many users are going to get "stuck" because of the text below, from the MS bulletin? "Once this feature has rolled out, your end users can change their search engine preferences only via the toggle in the extension; they cannot modify the default search engine in browser preferences."
- thrownaway954 7y agoi hate to say this, but at this point it really doesn't matter which search engine i use as they all have ads as 90% of the results above the fold :( it saddens me that this is what has become of the search market :( and let me just get this out of the way now by saying, no, i will not use duckduckgo as my search engine cause it has given me nothing but _the_ most irrelevant search results i have ever seen.
- _tkzm 7y agosince google does chrome os, microsoft should simply ban all google products from their platform altogether as a direct cmopetitor :D :D :D I'd love to see them fight it out.
- moron4hire 7y agoBy what source is the claim that this is being forced verified?
- JC5413789642675 7y agohttps://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/DeployOffice/microsoft-search-bing https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/DeployOffice/microsoft-sear...
- albreth 7y agoThis source confirms the exact opposite. The extension install can be prevented by using the documented group policy.
- moron4hire 7y agoAdditionally, it looks like this is a product intended for enterprise deployments, where the admins would probably already be comfortable with managing group policies. This is basically how software ends up on your computer in big companies. Because otherwise you could be like Deloitte and have some jaggoff management consultant leak all your clients' private email addresses because they didn't follow internal technology policy and used Google Docs to stow it all.
- proactivesvcs 7y agoMicrosoft introduced a feature in Internet Explorer 11 to specifically combat this type of abusive action, that is the interference of browser settings by third parties, via extensions. It's a shame to see them on the other side of their users' interests.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y agoI thought Chrome had similar protections (both in terms of policy and technical enforcement) - while of course the browser can't protect itself against software running with root privileges, it can ensure that any attempt to pull this off requires tampering that would clearly be considered malicious by most, and I thought that Chrome was doing just that.
- pojntfx 7y agoUse Linux.
- bla3 7y agoThe Edge team is trying really hard to create a "we do things right" story around their project. They must be annoyed that a different department squanders the goodwill they're working so hard to create with stuff like this. If you're a team in a big company and you're trying to optimize for long-term success, you better have the power to stop other teams that try to drive short-term success with campaigns that hurt you.
- minedwiz 7y agoThe Microsoft chart in this comic is still pretty accurate: https://bonkersworld.net/img/2011.06.27_organizational_charts.png https://bonkersworld.net/img/2011.06.27_organizational_chart...
- uncle_j 7y agoVery large companies like Microsoft usually have a problem of the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
- CamperBob2 7y agoThey should go next door and ask how that's working out for Boeing.
- uncle_j 7y agoWell there is a bit of a difference it is unlikely a web browser is going to directly cause of a person's death.
- villahousut 7y agoIs this the same Edge team which forces a Bing search bar on your New Tab page, even if you've removed Bing as a search provider in the settings?
- mtgx 7y agoI think Google has restricted such installers from installing stuff in Chrome, so I imagine only Microsoft is capable of doing something like this now because it owns the OS underneath the Chrome browser. If that's true, that's quite an abuse of power, and Google should report Microsoft to the EU. Not to mention the whole "forcing" of a monopoly software onto users on a monopoly OS probably won't look all that good to the EU either.
- zadkey 7y agoThe EU courts are going to have a field day with this one. I expect some fines to come out of it. They talked about this in the reddit article that was linked,but I feel it warrants further discussion.
- ec109685 7y agoGoogle is likely just going to block this behavior.
- solarkraft 7y agoHow, when installers get root privileges?
- propogandist 7y agoChrome browser is constantly updated, whereas installer just runs once. They can change things in an update
- C1sc0cat 7y agoA counter to the incessant nagging google forces on people who use google search with a browser other than chrome
- blobs 7y agoI moved back to linux (fedora) a while ago, what a relief and what a joy it is compared to Windows. I use Firefox with duckduckgo search engine, no pages full of ad results like with google nowadays. I cannot think of 1 single reason to install Windows 10 and use Chrome browser, you just bite yourself with that choice.
- zeta0134 7y agoThe primary reason I boot into Windows is to play videogames, especially VR, which just isn't stable on Linux yet. But that's not a bad compromise either; my Windows boot is for companies that are happy to sneak rootkits onto the OS to detect cheaters, and honestly I'm totally okay declaring my Windows partition unsafe, and booting back to a sane OS to do real work. It's really a shame, because the core OS underneath Windows 10 is fairly solid. It's specifically the user interface and Microsoft's behavior around telemetry and advertising their own products at the expense of the end user that turns me off Windows as a platform. Like, I feel like if they focused on making Windows a solid and boring OS that was so stable and reliable that no other choice made sense, their overall brand image would improve so much. Experiment elsewhere, the OS is not the place to tarnish your users' good will.
- jakear 7y agoPlease do correct me if I’m missing something, but this seems like a lot of uproar over not much... the article states that this only applies to enterprise, who would most certainly have IT admins, and those IT admins are able to block the extension through Group Policy. They’ve also been given one month prior notice about the change. This also only applies accounts which are owned and operated by IT, making it IT’s decision what happens on them, not the actual users. Disclaimer: I work at msft, nothing related and no knowledge of this besides the article. Opinions are my own.
- farisjarrah 7y agoI was an IT admin for a company of 100 people. If you mess with employee's browsers or browser layouts or search functionality, you are going to get a LOT of angry users. Furthermore, Microsoft is forcing companies who do not want this functionality to take evasive action to prevent this from happening. It's not the fact that this functionality is useful or the fact that this functionality isn't evil thats making people angry. Its the fact that they are forcing changes on people that people may not want or need. That is user hostile behavior.
- jedieaston 7y agoIf you use your work Office 365 licenses on your personal machine (as is heavily encouraged in Education since you get 5 BYOD devices), this will automatically install when your machine is updated to 2002, and IT can't do anything about it since they don't manage your personal laptop.
- Kneecaps07 7y agoIt's not just Enterprise. Plenty of small businesses use Office 365 as well. They don't all have on-site IT staff, and they often don't have competent IT consultants who keep an eye on this stuff.
- JC5413789642675 7y agoA bit underhanded, given the text from the bulletin. "Once this feature has rolled out, your end users can change their search engine preferences only via the toggle in the extension; they cannot modify the default search engine in browser preferences."
- Mindwipe 7y agoThis feels very stupid from MS, the bad publicity must surely outweigh the tiny increase to a product that's not substantive and underperforms anyway. Presumably a product decision by the same people who though inserting 200% additional whitespace into Outlook would go down well.
- adriantam 7y agoIANL, anyone feels this is an invitation to another antitrust investigation?
- downvoteme1 7y agoI think people are missing a key point here . This is included with the pro plus installer which is exclusively a business product. My company installs a bunch of tracking and other crap software on my windows machine in the name of data privacy, security and other bullshit. All it does is makes my i7 laptop with 16 gigs of ram behave like a slow crappy laptop. So if you have an issue with this complain to your work organization because somebody higher up made a decision to go with Pro plus .
- cosmiccatnap 7y agoHave you ever tried to 'bing' a python error you've ran into? This is specifically bad because it's a business product meaning that trying to get work done will only get harder.
- rosybox 7y agoI use Bing regularly, I made it my default search engine just for kicks about 2 months ago just to see how terrible it was and for the most part I can't even tell the difference. Sometimes I can't find what I want and then I search Google and it can't find it either. I can think of exactly two times in the last two months when Google found something Bing couldn't. One was when I searched for Hearthstone cardback browser and Bing couldn't find the link to it, but Google did, but it was like halfway down the page. I actually prefer not giving Google any more info about me and still getting decent search results. Honestly the worst part about Bing is coworkers seeing I use it. It's kind of embarrasing, but it's stupid that it is because it's actually a good search engine.
- wolco 7y agoThe truth about this experiment is you don't know what you are missing on both ends because you only attempt to find the missing item.
- lucb1e 7y ago> the worst part about Bing is coworkers seeing I use it. I use Bing Images (because I don't like DuckDuckGo's image search) and link people there sometimes, and I used to have a Bing-branded wallpaper just to call attention to that there is a choice. Didn't even work, nobody around me finds that weird, many already use DDG or chose to remain with Google. Bing seems to have switched away from branding a Bing logo onto their wallpapers, though, so that's no longer a thing.
- qwerty456127 7y agoThat's stinky but doesn't really hurt. Once I was given a new Windows 10 PC at the office, I've tried Edge (the classic, non-Blink version) and sicked to it because it's A LOT faster than Firefox. I haven't bothered to change the default search engine and the results Bing gives are Ok.
- jupp0r 7y agoYMMV, bing search results do not work at all for me.
- qwerty456127 7y agoI guess this may depend on the subjects you search information on and the country/language. I used DuckDuckGo and StartPage before that and was satisfied too. On a rare occasions when these wouldn't give me what I need I just go to Google manually.
- jaboutboul 7y agoI know this generally sucks, but given google's recent track record maybe this isn't the worst thing.
- floatingatoll 7y agoHN may not be the target audience for this feature, but I've absolutely proposed writing a browser extension to synthesize confidential search results with public search results before, because it's a need that remains unmet to this day. If Bing is integrating their confidential cloud with logged-in search, that is a game-changer. I hope everyone gets past the visceral reaction against it and starts building browser extensions that compete. It is possible to do this without depending on a single search engine to perform synthesis for you. Metacrawler can live again.
- aj7 7y agoAnd just try to save your Excel spreadsheet to Google Drive without having to click all over the place. And autosave only works when your stuff is saved to their infrastructure? Childish, destructive behavior.
- mthoms 7y agoAutosave only working when saving to your local OneDrive folder is infuriating. As every HN reader knowns, there is no good technical reason for this. It's anti-competitive bullshit, pure and simple.
- sdoering 7y agothanks for pointing this out. I have to use MSO in the future because of corporate st. would not have realized this until to late.
- paultopia 7y agoit would be nice if some of the CFAA abuses that are a plague on the world actually get directed at companies who do this kind of crap
- tracker1 7y agoDear Microsoft, Shit like this literally undoes every bit of goodwill you earn. Much like replacing user's wallpaper for Win7 EOL (why you didn't just put notification text like "Windows $VERSION - End Of Life - Unsupported" in the bottom corner instead is beyond me). I mean, I WANT to see the new MS, which is really present on the developer tools and azure side of the business. Windows and Office teams seem to be bent on destroying that at every chance... it's time to fire some upper and mid-level managers that have these attitudes and make these decisions.
- shmerl 7y agoTime to move to Linux.
- tracker1 7y agoI'd been running a hackintosh at home for a few years, switched to linux in october with a new PC. Still on windows at work though. Aside: I actually do appreciate some of MS's efforts regarding open source, devtools, .Net Core, VS Code and even most of what Azure does.
- shmerl 7y agoIf you do any gaming, Linux is surely better than hackintosh these days. Though MS can still be viewed as hostile towards it.
- tracker1 7y agoI don't do much... I've been using Steam a little more since the switch though... I have nerve damage from about a decade ago, and fast-twitch reflexes aren't what they used to be.
- pferde 7y agoThe world has moved on from Pong, you know. :) There is plenty of great games with which you can take as much time as you want in every step.
- zpallin 7y agoThe article does not mention whether or not Firefox will also be affected. Does anyone know if Office365 ProPlus already does this or are they just ignoring Firefox?
- fdjlasdfjl 7y agoHey EU, it looks like Microsoft hasn't had enough of an anti-trust beating!
- GlitchMr 7y agoThis is malware, as simple as that. Chances are Google will soon blocklist this extension as side-loading extensions is NOT supported, see https://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-from-malicious.html https://blog.chromium.org/2013/11/protecting-windows-users-f....
- sequoia 7y agoGoogle is doing everything it can to tighten its stranglehold on the entire WWW, if another behemoth like Microsoft wants to put up a fight, I say have at it! I certainly am not shedding any tears for Google, who relentlessly funnels people into their tools, automatically logs them in in chrome, pushes their products into schools to get young people into their data-vacuum as soon as possible. Not to mention shady practices like AMP trying to force developers to use their own version of HTML & serve their content on google.com, "or else say goodbye to your search ranking." MSFT is definitely "picking on someone their own size" and certainly not doing anything more underhanded than what google routinely engages in, so I don't see the issue.
- zamadatix 7y agoOne doing it is bad so 2 doing it is great? Competition is usually good but I don't think this kind of competition is actually helping get rid any of those problems just changing who's name might be on the particular problem today. No amount of giant tech companies shuffling is going to result in the return of an even playground for all in those areas.
- jlarocco 7y agoAt this point it's hard for me to feel sorry for anybody still using either Google or Microsoft. They've both been bad actors for years now, and the excuses people come up with to keep using them anyway have worn very thin.
- eh78ssxv2f 7y agoI agree that nobody needs to shed tears for Google. However, what's more concerning here is that it's the users who would face the brunt of this decision.
- OrgNet 7y agoWhile this is bad, Google got Chrome installed on many computers using equally bad practices (Chrome defaults to Google search), which might be worst because they got executable files installed.
- misir 7y agoWhy people are complaining about that? If you don't want it just change your search engine to whatever you want. That just take a minute. PS: Just for experimenting I switched to Edge (new) & Bing to see what's different. And I really liked Edge, it's faster than chrome and has some privacy controls like cross domain cookie handling. Tried firefox before edge. But did not liked it, because It's ui is crap also some functionalities may not work because devs are optimizing the websites mostly for chrome. But Bing as a search engine is not powerful like google because of lack of data.