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

Office 365 to begin setting Bing as Chrome's default search engine(docs.microsoft.com)

53 points by ecaron 6 years ago | 27 comments

Lammy 6 years ago |

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 6 years ago | |

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 6 years ago |

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 6 years ago |

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 6 years ago | |

> 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.

greycol 6 years ago | | |

I don't disagree that Bing can give great results and is better than google in at least a few areas and use cases. So I probably painted with a broad brush in that subjective statement. I do think the point that the bing results (at least for my location) are objectively worse (considering why most would make such a search) compared to google when looking for emergency healthcare information.

Primarily I use duck duck even if I occasionally fall back to the !g command. But I think anyone who is able to change their default search engine in chrome could not then argue that microsoft changing the default impeded them from easily searching for information (which would be important in any legal action). So while ddg is a great search engine I don't think it needs to be considered in the thought experiment of reasons you could sue microsoft for this change.

chithanh 6 years ago | | |

Can't confirm. I use DDG as default search provider and have to fall back to Google much more than I would like to.

Google is IME much better than Bing/DDG for local search results, and that has not changed a bit. Also, while DDG is indexing news websites and Wikipedia well enough, when it comes to more obscure wikis, article comments, or forum posts, the search results are often very incomplete.

Someone1234 6 years ago |

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 6 years ago | |

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 6 years ago |

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

lorenzfx 6 years ago |

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 6 years ago | |

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 6 years ago | |

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 6 years ago |

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

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

ecaron 6 years ago | |

Good catch. Corrected.

93po 6 years ago |

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

jodrellblank 6 years ago | |

Microsoft App-V has been a thing since 2006.

JohnFen 6 years ago |

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 6 years ago | |

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

tinus_hn 6 years ago | | |

I strongly doubt Chrome is going to support this and Firefox seems even less likely.

JohnFen 6 years ago | | |

Yes, but that support will undoubtedly be for the new incarnation for Firefox, which I also don't use.

jbob2000 6 years ago |

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 6 years ago | |

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.

mthoms 6 years ago | | |

> They are deploying this to all O365 customers, regardless.

According to the article, it's only the "ProPlus" version of Office 365.

For now ;-)

jbob2000 6 years ago | | |

No they aren’t, read the post. It’s for ProPlus subscribers only, which is a plan that includes Microsoft search.

tinus_hn 6 years ago | |

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