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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.
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!
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
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.
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You mean like Apple slipping their browser software in with security updates?
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 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.
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.
Indeed, also making itunes an optout insted of optin when doing quicktime updates on a windows machine that has no itunes installed.
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.
Fortunately the .Net runtime installer crashes every time it tries to update my Windows machine, so I don't have this problem :).
But it takes a 6 year old to read the article and find out that the story is bullshit.
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
Google's antitrust is because of a book deal, not search market tomfoolery.
Completely different playground.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
(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 ;)
Apple Software Update (automatically installed with itunes and quicktime) presented Safari as a checked-by-default update to users. Read about it on John Lilly's blog. He's the CEO of Mozilla
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!
If you're looking for video's I can't imagine using any other search engine then Bing right now. They're better at searching youtube then youtube is, and in a much friendlier manner.
For stuff other then videos, yeah, Google is king and will be for a loooong time.
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?
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.
I can agree with GP and GGP complaint v. Apple, but this one here, that applies to like 90% of applications. They check the default locations for the icons, if not found, it puts them there. Does that behavior suck?--Yes it does, but it's nowhere near an "Apple" problem. It's universal.
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.
dont use quicktime! in the very rare instance that you need quicktime you could use quicktime alternative... http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm
Icant Believe It's Not Google!
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.
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."
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.
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.)
That's because IE7 IS a update to IE6. How the heck is Safari an update to Quicktime or iTunes?
This space for rent.
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.
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.