Microsoft's Sneaky Plan to Switch Chrome Searches From Google to Bing
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
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