Since-Pulled Cyanogen Update For Oneplus Changes Default Home Page To Bing

ourlovecanlastforeve writes: Nestled into GSMArena's report on the Cyanogen OS 12.1 update for Oneplus [ Note: an update that the story reports has since been pulled.] is this tasty bite: "...you'll find out that your Chrome homepage has been changed to Bing." Then it's casually dismissed with "Thankfully though, you can easily get rid of Microsoft's search engine by using Chrome settings." as if this were the most normal thing to have to do after an OTA update. Is this the new normal? Has Microsoft set a new precedent that it's okay to expect users to have to go searching through every setting and proactively monitor network traffic to make sure their data isn't being stolen, modified or otherwise manipulated?

Comments

MS Needs SOME Return On Its Investment

[Anonymous Coward]

MS didn't hand out 10 million to Cy for the grin of it.

Re: MS Needs SOME Return On Its Investment

[Anonymous Coward]

Google set the precedent for preinstalled spyware. Microsoft, as always, just consolidated on the precedent set by another party. Apple is following along as well, of course.

Re: MS Needs SOME Return On Its Investment

[Enigma2175]

Google set the precedent for preinstalled spyware. Microsoft, as always, just consolidated on the precedent set by another party. Apple is following along as well, of course.

WTF are you talking about? MS was pre-installing adware and spyware on computers before Google was even a company.

Re: MS Needs SOME Return On Its Investment

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like MS set the precedent for spying on users by being the first one to sign up with the NSA in 2007. It's likely they volunteered.

There's an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Hosts files. With 64-bit compatible appropriate hosts file management tools we could prevent the phone from ever connecting to Bing. I think we should hear APK hosts file guy's thoughts about this issue.

Re:There's an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

God I love that guy, especially when he gets pissy.

Re:There's an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought he was dinner theater or something. NOBODY but NOBODY gets that excited about fscking host files.

Re: There's an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that APK
Can't write working software to save his life. Not the the principle is bad, but the implementation never works

Re:There's an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

He's a true original. He's been getting his kicks from hosts files for what, five years now? Maybe more, I can only remember so far back.

Re: There's an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the point is more, Thomas Jefferson can't make software either.

Re:There's an obvious solution

[penguinoid]

I think we should hear APK hosts file guy's thoughts about this issue.

Wasn't some "Lord of Hosts" or something mentioned in the Bible? I, for one, welcome our new hosts files overlords. Or was that someone else?

Re: There's an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Hosts is actually a retarded way to do DNS-level blocking. If you want a dns blocklist, you're probably going to want wildcards, e.g.
*.ru
*.cn
*.facebook.com

It's also a good idea to return NXDOMAIN instead of 0.0.0.0, or worse, some potentially valid value on the local network. Something like PeerBlock is a better idea for a phone that accesses many networks, and of course everyone on slashdot is running their own DNS server on their local network, right? And then of course content-level blocking is never a bad idea, e.g. NoScript and uBlock/Adblock.

APK is a fucking moron for all kinds of reasons. I don't know how dumb you have to be to not appreciate the ability to block entire top-level domains or other wildcard uses, but his software would be better if it had never been written. He fundamentally does not understand how DNS is supposed to work, and for that matter neither does anyone else who uses hosts for domain blocking. The hosts file is a fingernail away from being completely obsolete.

Re:There's an obvious solution

[davester666]

wouldn't be surprised if they pulled a Windows and also helpfully use some hard-coded IP addresses, just so freeloaders like you still pay.

Re:There's an obvious solution

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking of ``Lot of Hosts.'' It was where he moved after Sodom.

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

I like it. It's Subversive.

[Anonymous Coward]

I kind of like a funny in-your-face subversive attack into the monopolist's territory by the underdog.

Of course, the monopolist is Google and the underdog is Microsoft... except that the rapidly dwindling base of people around here who still think it's 1999 haven't realized that the world has changed out from underneath them. Go whine about the IE 6 monopoly!

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google search is a natural monopoly as all other search engines that don't use google search return shit results

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason for the monopoly doesn't affect the negative effects of a monopoly. In other words, monopolies suck no matter why they're monopolies.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Google search is a natural monopoly as all other search engines that don't use google search return shit results

The problem is that Google is starting to also return shit results. First they decided to include results with search terms that were related to what you searched for (i.e. search for "fixed" and you might get results that contained "corrected" or "solved"). Now they give you results that frequently have one of your search terms missing. Problem is that the one that's missing is the key term that I'm searching for, and there's no way I've found to force it to include the term that Google has determined is irrelevant. Combine those two behaviors and you get results that might bear a passing resemblance to what you actually searched for, but are completely useless.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't "quote marks" work for forcing terms anymore? Generic engines are overrated - if it's important info you're looking for, you already know the specialist web site you want; if you want to know stuff about random stuff, visit Wikipedia, and (most importantly of all) follow the citations. I treat Wikipedia as a modern version of the old Yahoo, a manually categorised set of link lists on particular topics.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[Rob Y.]

This has nothing to do with whether Google has today's version of Microsoft's desktop monopoly (it doesn't, by the way). it has to do with silently changing a user preference. You might argue that a user doesn't want Google as the default search engine from the start - but if they're buying an Android device, at least they know the default search engine is Google - and they can change it. To quietly change the default without being asked is a whole other thing.

Mozilla pulled this with its switch to Bing. It wasn't supposed to change the search engine for existing installations - but in some cases, it still did. I've even had it changed back to Bing after having switched it back to Google. Don't know if that happened in response to an update or what, but it's nasty.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[Anonymous Coward]

They work to some degree, but are not as strictly enforced in search queries anymore, not even optionally. For example, if you search for "hosts file", it returns terms such as "hosts/file" or "hosts_file". This might sometimes be desirable, but sometimes it's crucial that it only searches exactly what you have in the quotes.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[chmod a x mojo]

Sharpen your google-fu grasshopper.

If you ONLY want "hosts file" you search with ""hosts" "file"".

At least the first five pages of results will only return sites with / about EXACT "hosts file" in matches. No hostsfile, no hosts_file, no hosts/file, or any other combination, and no synonyms results.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[Anonymous Coward]

Try something a little more esoteric and you might be surprised at the results. For example, I wanted to see if there was a way to check my Chromebook's file system for problems, so I searched for: chromebook check disk consistency

The top results were missing the word "chromebook", and were completely useless because they were all for Windows. I modified the search by putting quotes around "chromebook" and a plus sign in front of it. The result? No change. Even turning on "Verbatim" results in the Search Tools gives me top results without the word "chromebook" in it. I can find no way to actually search for the exact terms that I entered.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[rudy_wayne]

Google search is a natural monopoly as all other search engines that don't use google search return shit results

The problem is that Google is starting to also return shit results.

Starting to return shit results? Starting? Where have you been? People have been complaining about Google's shitty search results for at least 5 or 6 year, if not more.

Problem is that the one that's missing is the key term that I'm searching for, and there's no way I've found to force it to include the term that Google has determined is irrelevant.

Yes, that's the icing on the cake. Not only does Google ignore what you type, there is no way to make them search for what you actually want.

As much as I hate all the SEO bullshit, I've learned some things from the SEO guys, one of the main things being that shitty search results are deliberate and by design, in the hope that you'll click on one of the paid ads in order to find what you want. Remember, 94% of Google's revenue comes from advertising.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[rudy_wayne]

Try something a little more esoteric and you might be surprised at the results. For example, I wanted to see if there was a way to check my Chromebook's file system for problems, so I searched for: chromebook check disk consistency

The top results were missing the word "chromebook", and were completely useless because they were all for Windows. I modified the search by putting quotes around "chromebook" and a plus sign in front of it. The result? No change. Even turning on "Verbatim" results in the Search Tools gives me top results without the word "chromebook" in it. I can find no way to actually search for the exact terms that I entered.

Yes. Google has become nearly worthless for many searches.

I was searching for a particular video. No matter how I entered the query I didn't get anything even remotely close to what I was searching for. I don't mind not being able to find it -- it's old and obscure and it is possible that it just doesn't exist on the Internet. But in that case, I should get zero search results. Not thousands of meaningless and completely wrong results.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[lgw]

Google search is a natural monopoly as all other search engines that don't use google search return shit results

I've never seen a problem with DuckDuckGo results (even though they're mostly Bing), and with "!wa" you get a better calculator than Google's. Google tailors your search results to your search history, so you don't see anything that might make you question your beliefs. Maybe that's why people think it's better?

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[im_thatoneguy]

You might argue that a user doesn't want Google as the default search engine from the start - but if they're buying an Android device, at least they know the default search engine is Google - and they can change it.

You might argue that users neither care nor know that Chrome is a google product nor care nor know which search engine they are using.

Every system these days seems to be funded by the default search option. That's why Chrome came into existence in the first place, to change the default search provider.

Re:I like it. It's Subversive.

[Rob Y.]

It's not that Chrome came about to change the default search provider. Users could certainly change the provider in IE easier than downloading and installing Chrome. There may have been some consideration towards keeping the ability to change it once Microsoft's antitrust remedies ran out, but Chrome had more to do with making sure the web remained the platform of choice for developers. And that that platform remained consistent and compatible across platforms. And it's worked. Microsoft's monopoly remains, but it's a monopoly on legacy win32 desktop software. And nobody want's to write that any more - largely thanks to Chrome and Safari and, yes, Firefox. Without Firefox, we were in danger of losing a consistent web standard. Without a consistent web standard, the iPhone would've never taken off. Without the iPhone, no Android, no Chromebooks and a much more marginal Macintosh. Seems everybody's benefited, except Microsoft. Oh, they're still doing fine, but they've largely lost the power to control the direction of the industry.

Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[Lawrence_Bird]

As another example, in late June they promised final snapshot images of CM11 for all devices. Yet relatively few actually got an update while their build system continued to churn out nightlies. Comments on the original blog post are ignored. Sure we all know it is free but don't promise people something if you have no intention of delivering on it.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[Mazhe]

Hell, not even counting the number of devices never updated to CM9... So much for expecting to have a longer phone support through CM, they can be as bad as phone sellers.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[eparmann]

[...] they can be as bad as phone sellers.

Except that you never gave them money.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[drinkypoo]

[...] they can be as bad as phone sellers.

Except that you never gave them money.

Which makes you (well, me) wonder why they feel a need to lie.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[Mazhe]

I doubt they refunded the donations from the people using the phone models they ditched.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you look at a project like 'hackintosh' with signup required, tweeting their product required, small payment required. Just dodgy. Not sure how Cyanogen compares, but you may want to be thankful for their free service.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[c]

So much for expecting to have a longer phone support through CM

It's hit or miss...

CM is pretty up-front about this; support for specific devices typically depends on a volunteer/champion who's willing to do the grunt work of testing and patching for that device. If that individual or team loses interest (or their devices croak or they just can't figure out how to work around critical bugs) and nobody is willing to step up and take over maintenance, the device can't be supported.

Generally speaking, it seems that robust and popular devices get longer support, and devices with major flaws drop support sooner. That's happened to one of mine (the tf700t is a nice device with infuriatingly shitty I/O performance), while my other (purchased a year prior) still gets decent support with CM12.1.

It's still better software support than what the manufacturer gives you.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[Rob Y.]

CM is obviously looking for a business model for monetizing their work. I can't completely fault them for that, but - assuming they're in this because they're open source and/or Android fans - selling out to Microsoft is a pretty lousy choice. Especially since it was Google's open sourcing of the OS that created the opportunity for them to exist in the first place.

So how about this... Make your business one of supporting as many devices as you can for as long as there are users willing to pay for the support. Yep, charge a small fee for maintaining devices that the OEM's orphan. If necessary, share some of that fee with the makers of hardware components that are otherwise unwilling to provide up-to-date drivers for their stuff - while still letting the public know that they might want to avoid devices with components from that vendor in the future. In short, CM could build a business by mitigating some of the fragmentation issues with Android - rather than stoking the fragmentation.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[jordanjay29]

And sadly, unless you're buying the device well into its shelf life, you don't know about major flaws until they're discovered. At which point, you've just sunk several hundred dollars into a device that you'll need to replace in a couple years to stay on top of the current version.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[c]

CM is obviously looking for a business model for monetizing their work.

I kind of thought that myself, until they screwed OnePlus with the Micromax deal. I understand the details are a bit more complicated, but alienating your most enthusiastic and visible client like that doesn't exactly strike me as something a company trying to make money would do.

selling out to Microsoft is a pretty lousy choice

If the goal is to ensure that many (most?) of the current "free" CM users don't turn into "paying" users through Cyanogen OS phone purchases, they certainly hit it out of the park with that decision.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[c]

And sadly, unless you're buying the device well into its shelf life, you don't know about major flaws until they're discovered.

I bought it well into the shelf life in spite of the known problems. The pros at the time outweighed the cons. But I didn't really consider the longevity of the community support. There are still people working on it, but not part of CM, and there are far fewer such projects than many other devices.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[Archangel Michael]

The CM Micromax Deal was dreadfully short sighted. While they gained Micromax, they pissed off a whole bunch of people. I would be on ColorOS if it weren't for a missing single feature I use regularly, single button screenshot. If they add that, I'll be off CM for good.

Re:Cyanogenmod has gone downhill a bit

[c]

The CM Micromax Deal was dreadfully short sighted.

Well, that and the whole "a bullet through Googleâ(TM)s head" nonsense.

Android is a big pool, but people still don't want to swim close to the guy who's pissing in it...

Troll is successful

[aaronb1138]

Yes, we're going to see silly stuff like homepage grabbing as a way of monetizing free products and updates. How long was Google on the default home page of Firefox?

But this part:
"Has Microsoft set a new precedent that it's okay to expect users to have to go searching through every setting and proactively monitor network traffic to make sure their data isn't being stolen, modified or otherwise manipulated?"
is pure trolling horse!@#$. Grow up already.

Re:Troll is successful

[LichtSpektren]

How is it trolling? What with the spyware that was quietly implemented in Windows 7 and 8.1, it's a perfectly legitimate question.

My coworker had a problem recently with a bit of malware that kept changing Chrome's search engine to Bing whenever Chrome was installed. It was a bitch to remove it (it was nestled in some obscure registry, and I had to decompile the bastard to find out where). The kicker is that he got it off of a program that Microsoft recommended to him to open a certain file extension.

Re:Troll is successful

[Anonymous Coward]

Except we knew that was the case and expected that behavior. Now we KNOW they support yahoo and are open about it. That's the difference. Microsoft isn't being open about what it's doing and is get caught with its hand in a lot more cookie jars than it should be.

Re:Troll is successful

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a news precedent, and Microsoft is only following a trend. Get your head out your rear fanboy.

Re:Troll is successful

[cinky]

google pays mozilla to be firefox frontpage for years = good microsoft pays oneplus for bing to be frontpage = new precedent that's how silly you sound...

Re:Troll is successful

[lostmongoose]

google pays mozilla to be firefox frontpage for years = good microsoft pays oneplus for bing to be frontpage = new precedent that's how silly you sound...

It's one thing to do it on a fresh install, it's another ENTIRELY to change my chosen settings in an update, even more so a setting that has NOTHING to do with how the OS functions or handles data. I can change my homepage in FF and it doesn't get reverted upon updating the software.

Re:Troll is successful

[LichtSpektren]

It's a shitty precedent and a shitty trend to follow. If you can't see otherwise, then perhaps you should re-evaluate just who the fanboy is.

Re:Troll is successful

[LichtSpektren]

People downloaded Firefox knowing what the default search engine would be. Users of CyanogenMod did not expect an OTA update to fuck with their chosen setting.

Re:Troll is successful

[Anonymous Coward]

Not exactly accurate. Firefox changed their default search to Yahoo! a few versions back. Updating your Firefox to that version changed it.

Re:Troll is successful

[Anonymous Coward]

People downloaded Firefox knowing what the default search engine would be.

No, most of them didn't.

Re:Troll is successful

[joelsherrill]

And even if you didn't bother to change it back to Google immediately, the inferior search results quickly will drive you to it.

Re:Troll is successful

[jordanjay29]

What if you changed it back to DuckDuckGo?

Re:Troll is successful

[Anonymous Coward]

When you only scream about it when Microsoft does it, you're a fanboy. Come to terms with that.

Re:Troll is successful

[Imazalil]

It's trolling because it's not Microsoft sneaking into the Cyonagen offices at night and switching search engine providers on their builds. Cyanogen made a decision to use Bing as the default search engine (most certainly cash was involved), but it is still a decision Cyanogen made.

Re:Troll is successful

[HiThere]

That said (and agreed with) Firefox recently changed itself to favor Bing as the default search engine. It was reasonably easy to change back, but it was still a change in existing preferences.

My suspicion is that MS is paying various companies to do this kind of garbage, and several groups are willing to bend over.

Re:Troll is successful

[Anonymous Coward]

They should just pay the end users directly. I'd set bing as my start page for money. I usually jump right to the address bar to search, anyway.

Re:Troll who?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don’t know what’s more horse!@#$ your comment or Windows 10...

Sell outs

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear CyanogenMod devs,

Go take a long walk off a short pier!!

What?

[wonkey_monkey]

Note: an update that the story reports has since been pulled.

...what?

I know you don't take much care over the summaries in the first place, but you could at least make sure your ammendments make sense.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

It makes sense to me. I know; English is hard.

People Still Run CyanogenMOD?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the whole Microsoft takeover settled that? I switched to something else the day I heard about it, anyway.

no periods = no sense

[Anonymous Coward]

. Followed by another complete thought. Try it.

Say what

[kbg]

Note: an update that the story reports has since been pulled

I think you accidentally a word.

Re:Say what

[Anonymous Coward]

Which of the following do you find hard to understand:

the Cyanogen OS 12.1 update for Oneplus [ Note: an update that the story reports has since been pulled.]

Note: The Cyanogen OS 12.1 update for Oneplus is an update that the story reports has since been pulled.

The Cyanogen OS 12.1 update for Oneplus is an update that, as the story reports, has since been pulled.

The Cyanogen OS 12.1 update for Oneplus has since been pulled, the story reports.

The story reports that the update has since been pulled.

The story reports that the update has been pulled since the story was first posted.

Re:Say what

[wonkey_monkey]

The first one, obviously, because that's what in the summary.

The problem is with the "Note:" lead-in, which serves to separate the note from the preceeding sentence. It would have been slightly better to just put

(an update that the story reports has since been pulled)

But it's problematic regardless. The use of the word "update" is ambiguous, especially coming after "Note:". "Which" would have been a much better word choice than "that." "Reports" is also troublesome to parse, being both a verb and a noun. And so on.

These are the things a decent news editor should consider when writing anything for public consumption.

Re:Say what

[Anonymous Coward]

Judicious use of commas would have made the sentence fragment quite a bit more understandable.

"Note: an update that, the story reports, has since been pulled"

Honestly, sometimes I prefer comma overuse to the horrible state of non-use they get nowadays. Mentally pulling them out is much easier than deciphering somebody's intent from an equally unclear context.

Re: Say what

[Anonymous Coward]

You're on the wrong site if you expect decent news editors to be writing the summaries.

Serve your users

[Anonymous Coward]

CyanogenMOD users are often of the hacker\tweaker variety. Android enthusiasts are often Google fans, but probably not Microsoft fans. Most of the hacker types I know HATE Microsoft as a residual feeling from their monopoly days. We didn't suddenly just start liking microsoft once they started losing.

What brain damaged individual thought that Cyanogen users would be happy with Bing? Fuck Bing. No one is clammoring for Bing, least of all, hackers.

Re:Serve your users

[Imazalil]

Accounting?

Re:Serve your users

[Archangel Michael]

Bing
Is
Not
Google

Re:Serve your users

[HiThere]

It's not residual, and it has less to do with their monopoly than with their business tactics. The monopoly just made their tactics much more abusive. They should have been disbanded as an abusive monopoly, instead they bribed the right politicians and were let off with their wrists being slapped gently with a single wet noodle.

New norm?

[Anonymous Coward]

Old norm

Cyanogen OS is NOT CyanogenMod !!!

[itsme1234]

Yes, very confusing I know.

Cyanogen OS is some kind of bastard commercial branch for OnePlus (and possibly for a few more phones).
The updates are a complete disaster, not only that you can't just get to OnePlus and easily see what to install and what's the latest version.

On the other hand the "normal" CyanogenMod you can get for your S5 or many other hundreds of phones is (usually) absolutely fine.

Re:Cyanogen OS is NOT CyanogenMod !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

As a OnePlus user, this is an amusing and annoying distinction.

I had used a couple of CyanogenMod's on my phones of yesteryear, and actually really liked their stability and features. While I don't usually have any issues with my OnePlus (at least, any more than any stock Samsung phone), some of those features are sorely missed. The baseline CyanogenMod I used was nicely integrated, assorted apps played well together and shared common interface elements. The OnePlus CyanogenOS feels like a halfway point between CyanMod and Samsung.

Definite suckage!

[Anonymous Coward]

Changing user defaults on a system update is UNACCEPTABLE One+One. I have one of your phones, and paid a pretty price for it. If you screw me again and change my settings I WILL NOT BE HAPPY! And I will NEVER recommend your phones to anyone EVER again!

Similar behaviour as other free Software

[slashHandle]

muTorrent does the same and changes default search engine
"We are among many products that support the production and distribution of our free software through advertising..." http://forum.utorrent.com/topi...
That's one way developers of free software get paid ...

Android HOSTS editor apk

[Anonymous Coward]

It's safe to network the computers BUT you must install your own protection. DNS poisoning attacks can cause reckless traffic.

-> iPhones "Can't Do" what Android can do!

apk HOSTS editor for Android enables it to maintain name resolutions in memory with "no DNS." Reducing network traffic and LESS TRAFFIC means you have (among other things) safer ability to spam Slashdot!

-> This one simple HOSTS trick, psychiatrists "Hate Him!" because he won't take his fucking medication!

P.S.=> HOSTS might crash your OS but not your butt hole?

Re:Android HOSTS editor apk

[rudy_wayne]

HOSTS might crash your OS but not your butt hole

Most useful information ever posted on Slashdot!

+5

Accepting Evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Has Microsoft set a new precedent that it's okay to..[suck]

It's definitely not a new precedent (people have tolerated that kind of nonsense on their videogame consoles, phones, video players, etc. and except for geeks, I haven't heard a lot of outcry.

Regardless of newness, the question of whether or not it's ok, depends on who you are and what your expectations are. Do you have one of these?

Obviously if you are a rational user without a lot of self-loathing and lack of dignity, then you'll at least implicitly have something like that. (Make my day, anyone: disagree with the previous sentence.)

Perhaps the time has come, for it to be less implicit. And that's up to you: you have to demand it.

Or alternatively, accept that we're in a post-social-contract society, whereby your own computer being your adversary is almost certainly one of the least of your problems. (But if you're that far out into nihilism, I don't know why we're still talking to each other. Enjoy your Crapple iProducts.)

How is this microsofts fault?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people blaming microsoft when this was done by CYANOGEN?

Maybe I'm missing something....

"The new software comes with everything that Google has included in Android 5.1.1 (mostly bug fixes), but also some Cyanogen-specific things. First off, you'll find out that your Chrome homepage has been changed to Bing. Thankfully though, you can easily get rid of Microsoft's search engine by using Chrome settings."

Note the "Cyanogen-specific" part. Yes, microsoft definitely had them do this, but as far as I recall, microsoft is not developing, nor releasing, Cyanogen mod updates. Direct your anger at the appropriate source. I know, it's hip and cool to hate microsoft, and bing is pretty freaking bad, but direct your anger at those who silently changed your settings without consent.

Re:How is this microsofts fault?

[HiThere]

When someone bribes someone else, both the giver and the recipient of the bribe have committed a crime.

Re:How is this microsofts fault?

[tehcyder]

When someone bribes someone else, both the giver and the recipient of the bribe have committed a crime.

Generally, the recipient has committed the greater crime though.

If a criminal bribes a police officer to reveal the address of a witness so that he can go round and intimidate him, in terms of the public good, it is the police officer who is the worse offender.

Bing...disease....

[Anonymous Coward]

I received a fortune cookie the other day. For the translation portion it showed the word disease, defined as 'bing'... Nice!

Chrome?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is even using Chrome? Disabled the damn thing the day the phone came. All Google services were added to Privacy Guard, despite all warnings from the OS.

Not pulled

[Anonymous Coward]

Please update the article that the update was *not* pulled. A few days after this post, I still got this updated on my One Plus One.