Office 365 to begin setting Bing as Chrome's default search engine

[Lammy]

This seems like it will just start a cat-and-mouse game with Google releasing Chrome updates to break their extension, like Firefox's "extensions.installDistroAddons" toggle.

Also I assume "Version 2002" means "2020, February", but that seems unnecessarily confusing in a way the Windows 10 "20H1"-style versioning isn't. Doubly so considering Office XP was co-branded "Version 2002" eighteen years ago! https://i.imgur.com/4814T6a.jpg

[rchaud]

Your assumption is probably correct, but it also seems like an unusual coincidence, as 2002 was when Microsoft reached a final judgment on the case that DOJ brought against them in 1998 [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...

[mike_d]

I remember the great lengths Microsoft went to cleaning up Browser Helper Objects, toolbars, and extentions that kept changing the IE default search engine and homepage.

Chrome will need to add similar enforcement, and will likely end up removing the ability for addons to change these settings like Microsoft eventually did.

[greycol]

It might be a bit of a stretch but I wonder what standing someone has to sue when search results are noticeably worse and changed in this way.

e.g. I just searched "<my town name> emergency" in google and bing. Bing came up with a travel site and several news articles. Google came up with a map with the local emergency department as the highlighted pin and urgent care as subsequent pins.

Google's little blurbs are also very handy in this case with instructions popping up as the first result when I search snake bite treatment and seizure care. (Actually I went through a few more emergencies after that and was pleasantly suprised how good google was at turning up instructions for emergency care)

It wouldn't surprise me if the monetary pressure associated with medical care in the US and the deep pockets of microsoft made them a tempting target.

[falcolas]

> search results are noticeably worse

This is not an endorsement of this article's allegations, or even of of Bing. But.

DDG uses Bing as one of its primary sources of data, and IMO DDG results are better than Google's for me both professionally and personally today. Maybe DDG is doing some special sauce behind the scenes, or maybe they're blending results from multiple sources, but that quality of search means I'm not at a point where I can unilaterally dismiss Bing and promote Google. Google's search results have just slid backwards too much lately.

[Someone1234]

If you want to prevent this without installing the Office ADMX January update, you can set the following registry entry:

      [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officeupdate]
      "preventbinginstall"=dword:00000001

Save the above in a .Reg file and execute.

[jlgaddis]

FWIW, the (untested) PowerShell equivalent would be:

  New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officeupdate" -Name "preventbinginstall" -PropertyType DWord -Value 1

[ecaron]

The comments on the bottom, plus the UserVoice (https://odinsiders.uservoice.com/forums/920533-distribution-...) really emphasize how this change is impacting customers.

[lorenzfx]

Isn't this behaviour making use of their market power and should be looked at by the antitrust authorities?

Overriding user's preferences with a forced installation of an extension reminds me very much of the old Microsoft I had hoped was gone for good.

[justinclift]

Co-incidentally, they've started using their Windows monopoly to push Office via adverts (eg in Wordpad) now too.

Hopefully the anti-trust / monopoly authorities do decide to pick this up, as it'll be the 2nd time around for MS.

They obviously didn't learn from the first, so the measures this time around will need to be much, much stronger. :)

[basch]

Im not going to pretend most people probably dont want chrome, but lets not ignore all the dark patterns and confusing language they used to get installed and take their market share in the first place.

[mtarnovan]

> Office 365 to begin setting Bing as Chrome's default browser

shouldn't that read "...Chrome's default search engine"?

[ecaron]

Good catch. Corrected.

[93po]

Looking forward to the day that windows apps run in a container that prevents access to anything but itself and requested permissions

[jodrellblank]

Microsoft App-V has been a thing since 2006.

[JohnFen]

At least they're warning us! Sadly, we're forced to use O365 where I work, so this makes me doubly glad that I don't use Chrome.

[anotheryou]

> Support for the Firefox web browser is planned for a later date.

[jbob2000]

Read the post before you get your knickers in a twist. The purpose of this change is so a special type of business client can allow their employees to search not just the web, but also their company’s internal resources.

Considering that most businesses provide their employees with company laptops, this isn’t something that is going to affect consumers.

[jabberwik]

If I'm that special type of business client that is actually using Microsoft Search, cool, maybe I want an easy option to change the default engine. But that should be opt-in. Because Microsoft Search is also opt-in. They are deploying this to all O365 customers, regardless.

[tinus_hn]

For that special kind of business that can’t use group policy to set the search engine, surely.