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Microsoft Changing Users' Default Search Engine
BabyDuckHat writes "Cnet's Dennis O'Reilly caught 'Windows Search Helper' trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. This isn't the first time the software company has been caught quietly changing user's preferences to benefit its own products."
This is on the exact same track as the behaviour that brought them their first major antitrust suit. Perhaps the Bing switch is "an essential part of the operating system". Bunk.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
That's most surprising.
Oh wait... no it isn't.
This is my biggest beef with Microsoft - thinking they know what you want more than you do, and installing crap on my PC(or changing preferences) without asking.
BING = But It's Not Google
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
When the general public think about searching the Internet they think of Google, even the phrase 'Google it' is fairly common. I wonder what the success rate is for this strategy?
Tim,
Please read the story yourself;
It's not Firefox that Vista tries to change but IE8. Google's toolbar caught the action in IE8 and alerted him to the change. He then said that there was no alert option offered in Firefox's Google toolbar.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
Par for the course. Now that they're busted, I'm sure one of their unethical employees, or even better, one of those slimey shills they employ under the table, will come out and say "Oh, it was an accident."
Microsoft, to IT what human sewage is to clean water.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
So MS does this to attempt to trick people into using Bing, yet Google is the one with the antitrust investigation? Seriously, who came up with this? A 5 year old could see the difference between MS and Google and see that MS is obviously abusing its OS monopoly while Google is simply the best at what it does.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
What's new? As someone who hasn't used Windows since 1995 I have no sympathy.
Funny how "geeks" here accept such crappy evidence as proof of any wrong doing. What happened to the geeks to could reverse engineer executables and actually point to the specific CPU instruction that actually did it?
Take the FUD surrounding DRM, take this crappy story, no geek has ever been able to point to that level of proof. Seems like the virus and malware authors being crappy programmers are happily able to reverse engineer windows binaries and find bugs.
Seems like F/OSS world is filled with wussies who need source code to figure things out. Ever heard of a game crack author crying about not having source code? LOL.. turn in your geek cards...
Software companies have been doing this for years. They get paid to bundle toolbars and other junk with legit software and unless you are careful and remember to untick the necessary check boxes they install. Ask has been the most recent offender in this area, doing it's best to carve out a small niche in the search market.
A Magic the Gathering Article and Forum Aggregator
We haven't had a clear-cut antitrust case against them since... I'm not really sure. I mean the TomTom vfat issue is pretty close...
Anyway, TFA didn't explicitly determine that MS was responsible, and at this point I find it difficult to believe that MS is this stupid. Still, we can hope. Maybe MS will get that antitrust watch rescinded.
So they blatantly violate who knows how many anti-trust laws and abuse their near monopoly to finally destroy google. You know this day has been coming, we all do. Then they pay a "huge" fine five years from now when the government finally gets around to punishing them for it.. Say four, five hundred million dollars? A billion this time. Brilliant, that's a great investment if you're MS.
There are some things Google does very well. Others, not so well.
I'm using Bing now to see if I like it. It's like UNIX. It's like non-Apple MP3 players. I'll give the underdog a try so I don't have to be part of the herd. Besides, most popular doesn't always mean best.
I wonder what he'd say if the shoe was on the other foot.
This quote in particular annoyed me:
"I was relieved that Google prevented the change, but I couldn't recall asking the company to do so."
If he'd installed the google toolbar (which by default sets your search to google), would he have been so similiarly "relieved" if Microsoft had popped up a warning message that "An attempt has been made to switch your default search away from Microsoft Search"?
Somehow I doubt it.
Instead I suspect we'd see a rant about Microsoft putting up scary warnings if you try to use an alternative search. But I'm just speculating on that... but the facts are just as bad:
He doesn't actually know what caused the search engine change attempt. All he did was approximately coincide the warning popup with his event manager stating that the windows search service started. But this all happened within a short time frame of 'booting his PC up' so he doesn't know. (Gee Windows Search Service started up a short time after the PC started... big surprise... and then this popup... it must be connected. Yeah, because its not like EVERYTHING ELSE in his computer wasn't going off at that point in time... much of it not leaving traces in the event log either.
And, Hell, because google blocked the change, (to his great relief) I doubt he actually even KNOWs what it was going to be changed to. So really, I doubt he even knows it was going to be set to Bing.
I'm not saying it wasn't going to be Bing. And if it was the first time he'd booted his PC after installing Windows search, then yeah, I could see it happening more or less as he described. Although by the act of installing Windows search, aren't you implicitly requesting to, you know, use Microsoft search... so this is hardly 'evil'.
In any case, I've had windows search for a long time and its never surreptitiously tried changing my default search engine. (And it would have gotten away with it too since I don't give google the run of my system either.)
On Tuesday Microsoft also pushed an update for their .Net runtime that again tried to install a some kind of Firefox extension. I had already removed this extension and the associated registry entry a few months ago when the latest .Net runtime was installed. Here they are doing it again.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
If the guys posting stories can't be bothered to read the articles, why should I?
Fuck this place, I'm out.
Just looking at Bing you see that aside from being heavily laden with background graphics it is more or less a functional copy of google's search engine. Why is it that microsoft has never been able to innovate anything interesting on their own? What's the matter M$ can't you succeed in the market without copying others' hard work? Every little bit of success they've ever had has involved stealing or copying from the success of others. Ballmer's past vitriol against google demonstrates an important internal mindset: they are VERY jealous of success and long for the early glory days when microsoft first had a taste of this. Their past actions towards Netscape show that they will do anything to return to these days.
I for one will never switch from google -- besides the fact that they take the minimalist approach they also provided a search engine with the mindset "what can we do to enrich the world" vs. the microsoft mentality of "how can the world enrich microsoft".
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Picasa defaults to change your IE search to Google.
This post climbed Mt. Washington.
Well, I can't prove it based solely on the Event Viewer logs, but it's safe to say the search service is the prime suspect.
/. reader that runs around wearing a T-shirt with a hidden message in binary on it, and refuses to play WoW on anything but a Mac so he can "stick it to the man".
His proof is the event view showing the MS Search service "starting". You know, the one that's actually for searching your own computer. And the timing of it was right after start-up.
I'm not saying it was, or it wasn't. But his proof is flimsy at best. His conclusion something I expect from the typical college age
How about some actual proof of what happened. For all we know this tool downloaded something that asked him to change search engines and in his haste to get to porn (which btw Bing is king at), just clicked through without looking, and when he rebooted next time the change tried to happen. Or it could be that the MS Search service tried to hide a change. But I don't buy it based on his SS of a service starting (wow) and his own "jump" to a conclusion. Especially since if it were true there should be reports of it all over.
The IE search default is Live Search (now Bing)... I've installed stuff before and seen it changed to Google without my intervention. Along with the prompt to install Google Toolbar alongside completely unrelated products that have nothing to do with Google.
Not that I care that much... I don't use IE anyway. Just noting that I've seen it happen, this sort of thing has gone on for a long time and Microsoft is not the only one to do it. Nor is it restricted to search. During the browser wars of old I recall every browser would prompt you to set it as default when you opened it. Same goes for MP3 or video players and file associations.
The singular piece of evidence he provides is a sole entry in the windows event log that the search service has started.
I wouldn't put something like this past MS, but the story got nothing.
They simply HAVE to know it is wrong. They have dealt with too many legal and court proceedings not to know. A complaint should be filed with the DOJ on this indicating that Microsoft has NOT changed its behavior and that either new proceedings should be started or old remedies should be reconsidered. It is a clear example of Microsoft not learning its lessons and should be broken up into separate companies as originally planned.
The guy got this warning when he booted up his computer - then mentions that he didn't give permission to any search engine change. What, after he booted up? I guess not. Perhaps he did so before he shut it down? Perhaps he did so several days ago and whatever he installed* told him that the system would need rebooting to finish installation, and he ignored it (like most people).
* I'm saying "whatever he installed" because I'm looking at my Vista Business N 32bit install with Internet Explorer 8 (upgraded from 7 a day or two back), and..
- Google is still (it was in IE7) my first-listed search provider
- I can find no "Windows Search Helper" service (there's a "Windows Search" service; different thing, presumably)
- I can find no "Windows Search *anything*" in IE8's Add-ons list.
Hitting Google with "Windows Search Helper" yields the story and... well.. supposed anti-malware sites that are ever-so-useful in telling me what it is or where it comes from (sarcasm.)
So for all we know, he installed.. who knows what, something.. and that something may very well have asked him if he wanted to change the default search to Bing.
I wouldn't put it past Microsoft to do something like this.. but as of yet, my Vista machine isn't showing any evidence of it; nor does the article.
'course the other part of the article is 'sane'.. letting the google toolbar (if you have that installed anyway) make sure that your default search is Google if you're so-inclined as to have two search fields with the same provider (if I installed it, I'd set the IE8 one to Bing and leave the Google Toolbar one to Google, but that's me... then again, I tend to use Firefox), seems like a pretty good precaution to take.
I know I'll probably get modded as a troll for this, but the article doesn't offer any actual evidence that Microsoft is changing search engine preferences without users knowing it. Even the author himself doesn't say that there's conclusive evidence. He writes in his article:
"Vista's Event Viewer identified the Windows Search Service as the likely source of the attempt to change my search default."
and
"Well, I can't prove it based solely on the Event Viewer logs, but it's safe to say the search service is the prime suspect."
The author of the article doesn't bother to conduct any meaningful research into the purpose of the Windows Search service or what it actually does. Now I'm all for throwing the punches at Microsoft for the stupid crap they pull and I wouldn't put it past them to do something shady and underhanded like this. However, this article is little more than the rambling conjecture of a computer illiterate who can't tell the difference between a system service and an online search engine. If you're going to post articles about the devious, dirty deeds of Microsoft at least have the common sense to post articles with at least some level of truth behind them.
I have noticed that IE7 and IE8, anything typed into the URL field will go to Bing, unless it is 100% qualified. I know MS has always wanted everything to go through it's servers, but now it seems it is getting more extreme. If you don't type in HTTP it will go to bing. I also recall a time, or maybe not, when you could the URL field to go to google. In any case, the idea that a URL will go to a search engine never made sense to me. If the URL is not sufficiently qualified, then it should return a 404. The security risk of expecting a URL to return something other than the intended target is certainly a securty risk.
But no one else is any better. I have noticed on Adobe updates that they try to sneak in Yahoo tool bar. Apple will change the default browser to Safari with any little excuse, almost at every reboot. I don't know what google is doing, but since I prefer it to other things, I haven't had any issues in trying to get rid of it. I suspect when they begin to lose market share, all hell will break loose.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Just Bing it! Thank God I'm on a Unix box.
... nor do they really care. What Microsoft DOES know is what IT wants: knowledge of your buttons and which ones they can press to make money flow out. Isn't that what so-called behavioral marketing is all about?
See, you're really nothing more than a human slot machine to Microsoft, and Bing is just one of their attempts at a "system" to let them cash in more often than the house does.
something changing his browser settings? And this made /. today?
Is it THAT slow a news day in IT? Hell, if I wrote an article everytime something tried to change my browser settings, or install some search engine toolbar, I'd have to quit my job because I'd be writing articles all day.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
(subject line courtesy of "Journey of Man - A Genetic Oddysey")
Or...
Could it be that that page is relatively new and most people who had IE7 went to a different page before* , where most people will have gotten their Google search provider; rather than this page.
Could it be that most people already know Google (and likely already have it installed) and are less-inclined to click on it than the more exotic search providers?
Could it be that Bing! was recently-launched, causing most people to click on it just to see what all the fuss was about?
* The old page sucked quite badly as well. I wanted to add Google from a Dutch IE7, which landed me at an English-language search providers page, and after adding Google it always landed the machine at google.co.uk(!). Took some manual registry mangling to get it to point to google.nl (not my machine, tyvm) instead. Looks like the IE8 points things to a dutch page, at least; though only 4 providers seem to be offered there... Wikipedia, Bing, 'Kenteken opzoeken' ( license plate search ) and Harware.Info price comparison visualiser, along with the 5th option of 'make your own search engine' (love the shoddy translations from English).
Naw, you're right, they probably tried burying the Google option. That's probably why they list it twice, too ;)
You can choose a different OS. I don't think Microsoft did anything wrong. As a consumer the responsibility of picking a product that behaves the way you want is in your hands.
Funnily enough, clicking on any "Add to Internet Explorer" button in Firefox opened a window suggesting I install IE8 to use the feature - any button except for the button under Bing. That one opened a message box informing me that Firefox doesn't support this search provider.
So worst case scenario is that your default search engine is changed, you notice it the first time you search for something, you take 30 seconds to change it back, and that's pretty much the end of it. No software has been installed, no software has been deleted, and the amount of work you have to do is less than if you had to blow your nose.
This is why I don't use it. It changes stuff all the time, against my will. And tries to sue the people that make the OS I use! They're goin' down..
From TFA: "Well, I can't prove it based solely on the Event Viewer logs, but it's safe to say the search service is the prime suspect." He noticed this warning when the PC booted up, and looked through the logs and saw a service with the word "search" in it, that started up at the same time. Guess what? Services start at bootup.
You can hate Microsoft all you like, but the author MADE THIS UP based on his uninformed speculation.
Exactly, the search service is an indexing service. It has nothing to do with searching the web. Slashdot doesnt need proof, it needs its daily 3 minutes of hate.
Installing the Winamp toolbar (comes with Shoutcast) does the same thing. Changes your search engine in Firefox, you actually have to go to about:config and manually replace a string to get your old default back for the URL-bar searches.
In all honesty, I don't forsee Microsoft ceasing this behavior anytime soon. If you're using Windows, you might as well surrender to the notion that you WILL encounter these sorts of inconveniences on a frequent/semi-frequent basis. I understand that it's an underhanded practice, but it's also just another unfortunate fact of life for those who use MS products. If that includes you, you'll just have to get used to it.
Not sure if this is funny or sad. Seeing was believing:
Search Box > "Find More Providers..."
Takes you here:
http://www.ieaddons.com/en/searchproviders
With the following
Bing, NYT, Wikipedia, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, OneRiot, ESPN, Truveo, Google, Bidtopia, Freebase
Go Freebase and Bidtopia, you *almost* caught Google. Keep up the good work!
Isn't my personal preference setting "my data", which is being violated for the purpose of monetary gain?
Would this be seen by a court as a crime?
"Bing expands its piece of the search market pie in June": http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/07/bing-grabs-a-larger-piece-of-the-search-market-pie-in-june.ars
Ned Ryerson. BING! right again!
I'm shocked, Shocked! to find antitrust activities going on this establishmentl
more cowbell
I'm hardly surprised. For months, each (occasional) time that I start IE7 it asks me if I want to change my default search engine, and refuses to store my negative answer.
and some morons were saying 'too much fuss was made about microsoft'. now lets see them say the same thing about this one.
Read radical news here
This is not surprising or new behavior for them, *everything* they make puts their interests ahead of the user's
Why in hell do people continue to pour money into this monstrosity of a software company?
Is it some kind of learned helplessness?
Is it a common misconception that all software companies treat their customers with self-important condescension?
How much abuse must you go through before you leave?
The Google Toolbar, silently and at a later date from install, steals the 'new tab' default page in IE8.
Just let them play the game, change things back the way you like it, and quit complaining.
More software to consciously deny in WSUS. I thought The "Genuine Advantage Notification Tool" was bad enough.
The game.
Icant Believe It's Not Google!
This article is flamebait. It's pretty much making up an assumption based on guesses.
I've had Vista on my work desktop going on 7 months and XP on my PC at home going on 7 years now. Both boxes are used all day.
Not once, Not one single time, not ever, did my default search program ever change. In fact the only time it was changed was after installing the Google toolbar by my choice. The only thing that remotely comes to mind when it comes to something changing my PC's settings is the stupid Google button that appears next to the start button every time the Google toolbar updates on my XP box at home. At least it's easy to remove but I've removed it twice now.
I got IE8, I watched my Search icon automatically change from MSN Search to Bing. I got all the MS updates and extras through Windows update. I've installed Windows search 4.0 on the Vista PC, Office Live, and Live Essentials. I use Bing. Hell I'm Beta testing Microsoft products. and Google is still the default. About the only thing I don't have is the MSN toolbar, which I don't need since I have the Google toolbar.
Am I doing something right to keep MS from changing my choice or does MS love me too much to screw with my settings?
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
This isn't Windows - it's entirely up to the installer author whether or not to create icons (desktop, start menu, start menu favorites, quick launch bar (yeah, there's more...)).
Most installers give you the option to install them or not. Okay.. most -older- installers do. Ever since 'usability experts' decreed that users want -less- choice, things just get tossed everywhere, whether you like it or not. More user-friendly to have 20 icons in the quick launch bar, apparently? whatever.
But even if you don't give that option - there's no reason the installer can't detect whether the user removed the icons -after- installation when you're installing an update.. and just not re-install them (or prompt the user).
It might not be able to easily figure out -where- a user relocated icons, if that's what they did, but presuming you're only upgrading and not changing anything, those old icons (shortcuts) should still work just fine from wherever the user put them.
The only reason most installers don't is per that usability stuff. Say you removed the icon for QuickTime, now you install the update, so you expect to have QuickTime available... but you search and search on your desktop (as the layman you are), and.. no QuickTime icon. "Did something go wrong during installation?", you might ask yourself, and re-install again. Still no icon. So poste hate-mail in a forum and give Apple some bad press; even though it'd be your own fault, as you decided at some point in the past that you didn't want that icon.
and so do you.
What a surprise, coming from a company that has made it's living STEALING, yes STEALING, money from the people of the world. If they we're in any other business they would be forced to sell a product that works. They would be forced to fix the product already out instead of releasing a new version. The people have spoken, and they are Dumbshits that deserve to have money taken from them I guess. If Microsoft was still on windows 2000, just bug-fixing, they would probably now be at a profit statement more in line with every other company in existence because of the 9 years of Zero Income and we would have a nice, solid, computing platform that is robust enough to do anything with exception handling for EVERY SITUATION and configuration.
why I use bsd/linux/some other free OS.
This is relatively innocuous, compared to the thing everyone seems to be missing - namely, IE8's default setting due to which (if you don't disable it during install) it will send all your search queries, browsed page URLs (except in HTTPS mode and on the intranet) and a few other bits and pieces of data to Microsoft for the purpose of "providing you with related sites". Of course the real purpose is to collect data to feed to Bing and adCenter.
This is why Sergey Brin is running around scared, and this is why Google is releasing their own browser in a hurry (it too sends all your browsing data to Google, for the same purposes).
You see, IE still has something like 70% marketshare, and all that browsing pattern data is hugely useful for things like:
1. Discovering new sites not yet within the crawl graph
2. Improving relevance of search results
3. Fighting spam
4. Establishing true popularity metrics for web resources.
5. Extracting behavioral information for the purposes of ad targeting.
6. Establishing (through correlation with a truth set) your gender, race, ethnicity, age, income bracket and preferences (for ad targeting, too).
7. Geolocation
8. Etc, etc.
This means MSFT now has ginormous amounts of data it didn't have before, and it can sic their PHDs on it and "fucking kill Google". It is no coincidence that they pushed IE8 as a "mandatory" update. I will not be surprised in the least if within a year Bing has substantially higher relevance than everyone else.
Google has no answer to this, short of paying Mozilla a ton of money to embed the same thing into Firefox. Since this pretty much amounts to spyware, I doubt Mozilla will go for it.
And how long before one of the Microsoft "updates"... kills your XP installation dead. It will of course include a lovely pop-up in shades of blue offering you an instant upgrade to Windows 7, just enter your credit card details...
You think that's bad? I installed Linux once and it didn't let me install any of the software I wanted to use!
I've been waiting for this story. It changed to Bing for me for IE 8 and Firefox on my Vista laptop a couple of weeks ago. I was rather surprised, to say the least. At the time I believed that the cause was the Windows Live Messenger I had installed recently. I don't run any toolbars.
I had to go into about:config to fix things.
I have both Windows Vista and Windows 7 RC1 running, have installed IE8, Silverlight, and have all my updates turned on... and it hasn't happened. My default IE8 search is Bing, but that's only because I set it that way. What's funny is that when I installed Google Chrome, it looked at my IE settings and asked me if I wanted to keep using Bing, to which I replied 'NO'.
I'm sorta wondering if this dog really bites.
This is my sig.
... that goes, "Bing!"
Big Ass, Dumb-Ass bing
Being A DUMB ASS AGAIN, Bullies' Ingracious nefarious grousing (hehehehe)
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
But I like Bing. As much as like my Zune. Srsly.
Just today, we read on /. that Zango sued Kaspersky and lost, setting a precedent that will no doubt have an effect on malware vendors. I posted a reply which fits perfectly with THIS story in THAT thread!
For those who don't want to click, the gist of it was that Zango gained money via deceit (changing software to gain profits) and was classed as malware. MS are doing the same as Zango!!!!!! Any business obtaining money by deceit is trading ILLEGALLY. Tsk tsk Microsoft. In this climate of spyware/malware becoming a larger target in the public eye, I can't believe this could turn out rosy for Redmond.
You moved your mouse. Please restart Windows for changes to take effect.
They got hammered in Europe and would have in the USA if the idiot judge had been able to resist the silly idea that he was a TV celebrity.
With the last anti-trust complaint the browser was at least on the OS disk, now they're leveraging their monopoly to replace a Google URL with Bing, that is EXACTLY why we have anti-trust laws.
Google should file an anti-trust complaint IMMEDIATELY, don't wait until Microsoft has stolen some market share complain NOW.
Thank you, you made my day!
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I used my addressbar to search a rather long search term that should have hit google, but instead hit bing which said it couldn't find anything. I was baffled to say the least. My search terms point to google's "I'm feeling lucky" entry, by the way - but put the terms in google search if the terms are too specific.
Happened today. True story.
Microsoft is not bad, it is just misunderstood.
People think that Microsoft is a computer company that is abusive. But that's not true. Microsoft is an abuse company that uses computer equipment as a means of delivering abuse. Seen in that way, Microsoft is completely successful at what it tries to do.
(I am not liable for any damage displaying this opinion causes to your monitor.)
I don't bother with any of those silly toolbars.
Google is (and has been) the default in Firefox for me, no attempts made by MS to change it either on this PC or the others I use during the course of an average week. That's on a mixture of XP and 7 as well, FWIW.
Both of the referenced articles are utter nonsense. The purported change of search engine pointed at the Windows file indexer, not the Internet search. The most likely explanation by far is that the Google toolbar mis-fired its warning on initialization after an upgrade. The facts and illustrations in the article support this. As for the "previous time" the company has beeb "caught", this has already been shown to be http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/microsoft_update_quietly_insta.html/ (read the comments) completely false as well. I am really sick of this site's propensity for publishing any ridiculous attack on Microsoft as if it were gospel. None of the headline authors seem to have any critical thinking skills whatever. I have enough morons in my life without having to wade through them for tech news.
This is not a self-referential sig.
Search something like "bill gates evil" in google and bing. Compare. Discuss.
It's 'two minutes hate,' you idiot!
Sorry, I still have like 15 seconds left.
Mono. Need I say more.
I actively tried to switch the default search engine to Google, and guess what, it was hard to find even knowing what I'm looking about.
If I was Google, I'd file an antitrust petition against this NOW.
Hello, FUD
I think you had better say more as I for one have no idea what point you're trying to make.
Mono is an open source suite of tools designed to provide a common programming platform that happens to integrate with DotNET.
Besides which, anyone who complains about Microsoft setting the default search engine probably needs to be spending less time on Slashdot and more time learning how their computer works so they can just change it back if they don't like it.
As a mainly Linux user with a couple of XP machines, even I don't see it as a problem...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
"What is bing ? bing is an application written by Pierre Beyssac which measures the RAW bandwidth of a remote network link. Let me ad some precisions. By "remote" I mean a link not directly connected to your computer. For instance you can measure the bandwidth of a link between you ISP and the rest of the internet. By "RAW" I mean that you can measure the intrinsic bandwidth of the link not what's left once the other users have taken their share. So even if a link is saturated and you can only get 1KBps out of it bing will be able to tell you whether it is a 128Kbps link or 256Kbps or more. Now don't expect miracles. You will not be able to measure the bandwidth of an ethernet link in a remote end of the internet through your modem at a time when the internet is completely saturated."
Bing appears to have been around since before 1999.
I think Microsoft has a legal problem on it's hands. This is long-established GPL software. Is Bing not software too? Could there be 'brand confusion'? What about prior art etc. etc.
*** Don't be dull.***
But... It's Not Google!!!
Apple
Hope they go to court over this and finally learn a hard lesson. You can't change the settings on a user's computer without his knowledge and approval. Doing so, makes you a criminal capable of going to jail .... if enough people set up a class action lawsuit, they WILL get M$ on this. Sony was caught and faced a big fine for doing this, as for M$ trying to use the old, well it's our OS and we can do what we want with it...those days are over as per the previous Anti trust case against them in EU.
When will they learn, I guess we are doomed to repeat are failures...no?
It was just an accident, Microsoft have never stopped to manipulating the Windows paltform to give itself an unfair advantage ... :)
"This is why Sergey Brin is running around scared, and this is why Google is releasing their own browser in a hurry (it too sends all your browsing data to Google, for the same purposes)"
... Unveiled by Microsoft .. on May 28, 2009'
.. was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on 2 September 2008'
Like how was Chrome released in response to Bing, when Bing came out some eight months afre the first release of Chrome?
'Bing
'Google Chrome
I wish everyone would leave my search alone. It isn't just Microsoft. I have to fight with Yahoo! and Google too. Yahoo! tries to sneak in a change when I install some open source programs. Firefox randomly switches to Google when ever it thinks I'm not looking.
So how is Bing different?
Bill B
"Both of the referenced articles are utter nonsense. The purported change of search engine pointed at the Windows file indexer, not the Internet search. The most likely explanation by far is that the Google toolbar mis-fired its warning on initialization after an upgrade"
.. It took all of about two seconds to realize that Windows Search Service attempted to change my search default"
Assuming the change pointed at the Windows file indexer, and we have no evidence as to this, apart from your writings, why would this cause the default Firefox search option to change?
"The first thing I saw when I booted my PC yesterday evening was a notice that Google had prevented my default search setting from being changed
I've had msnbot rejected from my site for many years. The just under a year ago I get a request from someone working for MSN Live Search asking to remove the block from robots.txt. I said, "no" and gave her the short version of my falling out with Microsoft (just the 1995 to 1998 subset).
Then I started getting hits from Bing. Their support site only mentioned msnbot gathering information, so how did my site get index? Well, this had to stop.
So, I wrote a filter that would redirect anything with a REFERER from bing.com to google.com with the same search query. After running for a few weeks now, I see that some IP addresses never return, but most come back from Google - often with more specific search queries than the first time. I still haven't heard a word from the confused Bing users about it, though. So I'm guessing that it works well for keeping the completely clueless out.
Never assume its malicious. Likely the intent was to change from Live which is the normal default to Bing which is their new system but forgot to accomodate for people who have already picked a different search provider. Simple oversight/stupidity and not thinking things all the way through more than explains everything.
I'm pretty sure you just clicked 'yes' without reading the message when it was asked, I still have no problems on my system, still at Google.. Also if it really is the case, then you should also bitch at Google and Apple, they do exactly the same thing.. people these days just don't really read what they are 'yessing' to and blame the system..
Change the user preferences
Yeah, yeah, no surprise here.
A snake cannot change its spots.
But what color ARE those spots, exactly. . ? I wondered about this and decided to do a quick (Google) search for Microsoft's Mission Statement, and found this. . . (From here.
So either the people with decision-making power working over at Redmond have failed to read the darned thing, or employees live in a state of cognitive dissonance, REALLY, HONESTLY believing that they are working to, "help people and businesses throughout the world realize their full potential."
And if that's the case, Microsoft isn't just evil. It's insane.
Good to know.
-FL
On Internet Explorer, their excuse is that they're starting you with a clean slate configuration, even though their configuration files should be able to be interpreted and imported since MS designed them. But with Firefox? What's their excuse for changing a 3rd party application's configuration? Maybe this is a sign that MS is directly supporting Firefox under Windows now?
Twinstiq, game news
Chrome is a response to IE8, which was in development for quite a while. They saw it coming from afar.
It was apparently a google search update that tripped the warning. A commenter on the guy's own page got the same popup and let the change go through, just to see what was going on. Lo and behold, it was Google and nothing else.
If you look just below the "search" service the author points out, there is a "gupdate" service that ran right before it. That is Google update, and that is what triggered the popup.
This isn't some insidious new attack by M$, it's a dumbass wannabe tech journalist who couldn't be bothered to do an ounce of research, he just wanted to jump on the "bash microsoft" bandwagon. Google's search change alert is just a bit cautious, and triggers on a GOOGLE search update.
Microsoft knows better than to do something like this, they'll use all sorts of dirty tricks, but something like this would land them in hot water before you can say "Bing".
The author of this article should repeat my sig to himself in the mirror three times daily. That might help him out a bit.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
IE7 doesn't do this unless you install MSN, Yahoo or Google toolbar in which case it does send your browsing data to the respective parties. This was a cause of much consternation for Microsoft, because only illiterate retards install MSN toolbar, while Google toolbar is actually marginally useful, so it sees some voluntary uptake in the more sophisticated demographic.
I know it for a fact MSFT records every URL, to the tune of tens of billions a day. And not only URL. They have the tech to store and process this much data. Google does, too. I don't know how much Yahoo stores and what it collects.
I also know it for a fact that at least for Microsoft this IS new.
there is a browser setting, in both firefox and internet explorer, that allows the browser to get updates for search engines that are configured for use in the search box.
i think it was just a case of the browser fetching an update and bing.com replaced live.com.
no harm, no fowl, just another uninformed person of the media ranting about something they know little or nothing about.
I am glad to see Bing being pushed as a new search engine. Google has a crude interface, is the product of a company that keeps all of its products in beta, and while Microsoft may be a large company at least they don't engage in as many unethical data mining practices as Google. I sincerely hope Bing takes off and gets 90% of the market by next year at this time.