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Microsoft Changing Users' Default Search Engine

Posted by timothy on from the now-what-did-we-say-about-playground-behavior? dept.

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."

38 of 389 comments (clear)

  1. Once more with feeling by Nefarious+Wheel · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:Once more with feeling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well I made the cardinal sin of reading the article. There is no proof and what he "found" was irrelevant. He said the warning came up about when he booted. Guess what? When you boot ALL the services that are installed and set to auto-start do something - they START. Microsoft didn't do this; at least you sure can't prove it by this idiot. He most likely has some stupid malware/spyware/crapware installed that did it. Shoot, you can post any poorly researched crap on the web these days and people will link to it as long as it says "MS is teh evil".

      I need to have Digg's "OK this is lame" to bury this article.

    2. Re:Once more with feeling by gstoddart · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you actualy read the article, he admits he doesnt know what was trying to change the default search provider, or what it was being set to. All he knows is his google toolbar said a change was being made.

      Also, if you look at the timestamps, the Search shows up at 7:41:27.

      The oddly named "gupdate1c99e2ec" below it (as in "Google Update" maybe?) fired off at 7:41:26 -- precisely one second before it.

      Maybe he should be looking at items before that "gupdate" item to see what happened before that.

      (Now, I've had MS change my default browser before -- I'm just not convinced that what he's got shown matches what he saw.)

      Cheers

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:Once more with feeling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Wait, the guy has NO evidence that it was "Search" that changed it. Only that the entry is at the approximate time. But what else happened at that same time? Right before the supposed culprit is the google update service running. More likely what happened is that they (being google) changed the entry on their own which, while in the end would've still been google search, their own software detected as a change. Similar situation to a firewall having a rule to allow a certain exe access to the network, that exe being changed by a software update, and the firewall firing off an alert that the signature has changed.

      And nowhere does his "evidence" suggest Bing/Live as what the search was changed to. For all we know Mr Oreilly's computer was trying to make hotsexxx search his default.

      But I guess riding the bandwagon is too much fun to notice little details, eh?

    4. Re:Once more with feeling by gmagill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, too bad it couldn't be modded "Sarcastic" And how many times have they even prevailed? Near constant litigation is just a cost of doing business, eh?

    5. Re:Once more with feeling by Le+Tmraire · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You are clearly not European. There have been many antitrust suits in the past by the European commission against European companies. The problem is that building up a case costs a lot of time. The recent antitrust suit against Microsoft was started in 1998, with a first ruling in 2003. Just to give you some kind of perspective.

    6. Re:Once more with feeling by fenderized · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Let me get this straight; your evidence that the EU just wanted to go after the big "evil" American company is that they didn't go after another bit "evil" American company?

    7. Re:Once more with feeling by hey! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The secret, as in many business situations, is cash flow. As long as the cash is coming in, you can weather any storm. If you have better cash flow than the other guy, you can outlast him in a fight.

      If you look at a monopolist's legal expenses as a black box, cash spent on litigation, fines, and settlements is analogous to R&D. You put cash in on one end, you get ownership of a technology out the other. The companies you crush aren't going to rise from the dead. The stockholders are happy to get any cash they can out of a settlement, they aren't going to try to restart the company as a going to concern. Trying to win back ownership of some technical area once the monopolist is entrenched is not likely to be profitable; ownership of that area is more valuable to the monopolist has part of its portfolio than it is to the victim company's investors.

      So the monopolist goes on doing the illegal things it has always done, just different enough so that the next company in its sights has to assemble its case from scratch. That takes cash.

      Now we have an interesting situation with Google. Google has cash too: 17B to Microsoft's 23.9B. But here's something interesting: the current ratio. That's the ratio of short term assets (cash-like things) to short term liabilities. For Google, that's 10.1; for Microsoft that's 1.7. Microsoft has roughly twice the amount of cash on hand than it needs to keep running. That's healthy. Google, on the other hand has 10x the cash it needs to keep running. That's insanely healthy. It means they've got insane amounts of money to spend.

      If Microsoft manages to use its monopoly power to steal Google's business, this picture will change quickly. Google's revenues would dry up fast. So if there is some kind of illegal anticompetitive thing going on, Google had better react fast, but if it does, it has the cash to put up a good fight.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  2. Google Owns Search by jork · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re:Google Owns Search by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I doubt they would even notice anything different. They look for a box to type in words and blue text to click. And Bing's copycat style confuses even somewhat savvy users.

      Watch this and you'll see what I mean. People think Google is a web browser. They probably think Bing is part of Internet Explorer. And I'm sure the overwhelming majority of users have no idea they can change their default provider, or even what that means.

    2. Re:Google Owns Search by williamhb · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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?

      It's not foolproof. In the UK, "hoovering" is a synonym for vacuum cleaning, but Hoover no longer dominate the vacuum cleaner market.

    3. Re:Google Owns Search by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I know what you mean, I like the old Google too.

  3. Want more ad money? Bash Microsoft ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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...

    1. Re:Want more ad money? Bash Microsoft ! by Dunbal · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What happened to the geeks to could reverse engineer executables and actually point to the specific CPU instruction that actually did it?

            That sort of died out when video drivers hit 80MB, printer drivers hit 40MB, OSes hit 2+GB and god knows how many MB of bloated code are needed to switch a default search engine. I'd say at least 15MB. No one can be bothered to sift through all that shite anymore. It was easy when programs were 16k.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:Want more ad money? Bash Microsoft ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Huh? So all the hundreds of thousands of games and applications being cracked are 16k of executable code?

      Way to wave the white flag.

  4. How is this news? by basementman · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:How is this news? by Darkness404 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Most software companies though don't have something that ships with ~95% of all new PCs. Most software companies do not have monopolies. About the only widely used software that I think comes close to this is that Flash asks if you want the Google toolbar if you are installing on Windows. However, that still is different because Google and Adobe are not the same company.

      --
      Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
  5. Re:Surprise surprise... by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You mean like Apple slipping their browser software in with security updates?

  6. Too late. I already switched my default. by Queltor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Too late. I already switched my default. by dangitman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But you explicitly said that you based your decision on "not being part of the herd". I hear that breathing is pretty popular among "the herd" too, perhaps you should try not breathing for a change?

      Your "popular doesn't mean good" argument also has corollaries. By the same token, popular does not equal "bad" and unpopular does not equal "good."

      You use of the phrase "the herd" also implies that people who choose the popular option do it unthinkingly, that they don't "conduct their own tests and make their own decisions." But, of course, many people do that and make the decision to use the popular item.

      I just found your comment amusing, because it reminds me of the "individualists" who flock to subcultures in an effort to become "alternative" - but as soon as their subculture/music/fashion becomes popular they don't like it anymore. They tend to be worse fashion victims and conformists than those in the mainstream, all the while maintaining that they are unique and beholden to nobody. I mean, why did you like that music in the first place? Isn't it still good music if it suddenly becomes a popular hit?

      --
      ... and then they built the supercollider.
  7. I wonder what we'd say if the shoe was on... by vux984 · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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.)

    1. Re:I wonder what we'd say if the shoe was on... by dAzED1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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"?

      You're deliberately installing the google search bar. You're doing it with intent. It should be obvious that if you're installing the google search bar, you're going to be using google search. It's not as though installing the google search toolbar causes gmail to be your default webmail, or some other unrelated google product. "Windows Search Helper" however does not imply that some other Microsoft product will be tied in. It's not intentional/obvious on the part of the user.

    2. Re:I wonder what we'd say if the shoe was on... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Mod parent up and grandparent down...

      I'll mod what I fucking like... Get your own mod points if you don't like it.

    3. Re:I wonder what we'd say if the shoe was on... by DavidD_CA · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Just to throw in a "me too", I have had Google set as my default search engine for well over 3 or 4 years on many machines and installations.

      I've since installed a wide variety of Microsoft apps, including Live Messenger, Windows Desktop Search, and Search 4, and never once has it changed my preference.

      I think Live Messenger *asked* me if I could, but I said no and it didn't.

      His findings don't even suggest that it was his default search that could have been changed.

      I suspect there's a chance that if anything was updated without his approval, it might have been one of the alternate search providers within IE. I could definitely see a Microsoft update which changed this setting from Live Search to Bing... and I don't think it would be necessarily evil to update their URL.

      --
      -David
  8. Re:Wrong Summary! by sexconker · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No, we need FUD.
    Also, we need idiots who use the Google toolbar in Firefox, apparently. Who the fuck uses that with FF?

  9. Parent does have a point... proof? by Animaether · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  10. There's no proof... by Ceseuron · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  11. Re:So... by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But it takes a 6 year old to read the article and find out that the story is bullshit.

  12. So some guy wrote an article about... by uxbn_kuribo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.
  13. Ock the Knife... by Animaether · · Score: 3, Insightful

    (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 ;)

  14. Best part about freedom!! by WarJolt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  15. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Someone needs to document the patches and the dates of all of the Microsoft 'anti-competive' user-preference changes through patching...

    I remember at least the following:

    1. reinstalling of MSN Messenger through a patch
    2. setting MSN Messenger to restart on boot even after preferences were turned off (after upgrading Outlook Express maybe)
    3. Setting homepage to 'live.com' or 'msn.com' with any Internet Explorer upgrades
    4. MSN Explorer randomly appearing after uninstall
    5. Putting 'Free Hotmail' link back into links with any IE patch
    6. Telling me to 'turn on automatic updates' even if they've been turned off.. with every update

    There's a lot more.. just can't remember them..

  16. Re:Really? by orngjce223 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    and the FF plugin ".NET Framework" that installed automatically and apparently can't be uninstalled...

    --
    Note: I was 13 when I wrote most of this. Take with several grains of salt.
  17. Re:Surprise surprise... by Brian+Gordon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's wrong with that? You already have IE installed. IE8 is much faster and actually secure at all. Leaving anyone on the planet using IE7 would be a sin and killing it with fire is one of the most honorable things Microsoft has ever done.

  18. Re:Really? by markkezner · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You shouldn't have had to jump through hoops and go into the registry to uninstall the first version. The registry editor is not safe for mere mortals anyhow.

    --
    Dangerous, sexy, turing complete: Femme Bots
  19. This is relatively innocuous, compared to by melted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  20. Poor Microsoft is just misunderstood. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.)

  21. Lies, damn lies, and statistics by gsasha · · Score: 5, Insightful
    It is of course possible to formulate the selection criteria so that Google will come extremely unprominently shown somewhere at the bottom. Which Microsoft did in this case, quite successfully.

    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.