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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."
It's already hard enough to switch to Google. Why is the most popular search engine at the bottom of the list? Could it be that it's weirdly labelled "Google Search Suggestions" unlike the very clear "Bing Search"? I thought that addon was just the suggestions the first time I saw it. If Google had started at the top then it would easily float there. Microsoft probably buried it so the Most Viewed providers would get viewed more and stay at the top.
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.
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.
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.
Yup. This is what you get when you use software made by for-profit groups. Say what you will about how capitalism (greed) is good, how it promotes competition and growth. Sure - but it also puts a stopper in it. People that really care about making good software make it free. Between them, and corporate businesspeople, I think I trust the former when it comes to making my software.
Now go ahead and mod me overrated.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
That's hilarious. In order to "not be part of the herd", you're specifically allowing your choices to be dictated by said herd.
... and then they built the supercollider.
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.
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!
And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Christ, tell me about it!
This is why i completely blacklisted those fuckers forever and permanently removed all their software.
I don't give a damn about music (read: recent music), why the fuck would i ever want iTunes?
Oh well, looks like i will be having none of that anymore. Oh poor me.
This kind of shit is just as bad as malware and it really really should be brought to the legal departments.
But in saying that, they probably have some shitty agreements that people click on that prevents anyone doing anything to them.
Fuck Apple and Microsoft.
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.
They haven't just copied Google either.
The Bing Travel page is almost a pixel-perfect copy of the Kayak travel site.
It seems imitation is the strategy of the Bing team.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
That's a good point; I hadn't even caught that. This article is basically the definition of assumptions.
Not to say it's wrong, but it is not even remotely well-sourced.
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.
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.
That's because IE7 IS a update to IE6. How the heck is Safari an update to Quicktime or iTunes?
This space for rent.
Well, Microsoft has certainly been dragged through the courts often enough, but it would appear they rarely get around to paying their fines.
Nobody would care about MS having a monopoly if they actually made the best software. Or if they released all their software for free, as Google does.
which is totally what she said
He's talking about the search bar that comes with IE (I think 7 and 8, but I am not sure about 7). It's like the search bar that comes with Firefox. Unlike the Firefox add-on though, which by default searches 7 different engines and has the capability to add literally hundreds more, the MS one by default only searches Bing and allows you add maybe 10 more. One of the ones you can add is Google, but as GP points out it's at the bottom of the list and not well labeled.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
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?
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.