Bing Recommends Piracy Tutorial When Searching For Office 2019 (zdnet.com)

aafrn writes: Microsoft is sending users who search for Office 2019 download links via its Bing search engine to a website that teaches them the basics about pirating the company's Office suite. This happens every time users search for the term "office 2019 download" on Bing. The result is a Bing search card (highlighted search results) that links to a piracy tutorial that teaches users how to install uTorrent, download a torrent file, and install an Office crack file. Fortunately, the torrent download links are down, but experts believe the link was used to spread malware.

Comments

It's not obvious how you get Office

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't come with any install media. Visiting the Office website, you get strung along through a bunch of pages trying to sell you Office 365 subscriptions. At the end of your rope, you then ask a search engine to find it and eventually you get in the back way (through the Microsoft Store, not the Microsoft Office official website). Working as intended.

Re:It's not obvious how you get Office

[dohzer]

At the end of your rope, you then ask a search engine to find it

You're only "at the end of your rope" once you've tried all the other search engines before being forced to use Bing.

Re:It's not obvious how you get Office

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Same is the problem when one buys a second hand machine which has been wiped. The machine has a sticker with the license number, but MS actively tries to make it hard to use. Likely they hope to sell the license again. Perhaps they should consider their strategy again, as once people find out the piracy way, their next office license number will not be made by MS.

Re:It's not obvious how you get Office

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's not 2004 any more. Search isn't the disaster area it once was. Bing is fine. Moreover Google actively censors it's results so you're not getting the whole story. Plus they've gone evil.

Re:It's not obvious how you get Office

[thegarbz]

Visiting the Office website, you get strung along through a bunch of pages trying to sell you Office 365 subscriptions.

Visiting the Office Website gives you a big button that says "Get Office" on it. Clicking that button puts you on a page that gives you the option of "Office 365 Home", "Office 365 Pro", and "Office 2019 for Home or Education". There's a separate button for business.

If you can't find Office then maybe this complicated computer thing isn't for you.

uptime

[KiloByte]

As much as it sucks, I guess it still has better uptime than Office 359. But don't worry, Microsoft innovates, so that'll change too.

download LibreOffice running under Linux instead

[najajomo]

I don't know why this deserves a whole slashdot article and you didn't even provide links to the alternatives!

LibreOffice is a powerful office suite

Distrowatch | put the fun back into computing

Disingenuous

[Excelcia]

This isn't "Microsoft sending", this is Bing's algorithm categorizing that search result. This is not news. If I were to list all the "_________ download" searches that listed a torrent or instructions for how to find something for free as the first item, this would be a long post.

This is a non-story. Why am I even bothering to take the time t

Re:Disingenuous

[Opportunist]

So ... in other words, it's just that Bing noticed this is what most people want to find when searching for Office 2019.

Yup, makes sense.

Re:Disingenuous

[geekmux]

This isn't "Microsoft sending", this is Bing's algorithm categorizing that search result.

I'm assuming you are not aware of who created, owns, and maintains Bing and its algorithms (Hint: it starts with "Micro" and ends with "soft")

This is not news. If I were to list all the "_________ download" searches that listed a torrent or instructions for how to find something for free as the first item, this would be a long post.

I think the reason this justifies an article is the comedy of errors that I've already highlighted. It's rather pathetic when the same company who maintains the search engine algorithms cannot properly police some of their own flagship product search results. One would think that a search like "office 2019 download" would be damn near hard-coded in Bing to provide the proper source, making it a hell of a lot harder for a pirate site to rise to the top of search results.

Re:Disingenuous

[dgatwood]

I think the reason this justifies an article is the comedy of errors that I've already highlighted. It's rather pathetic when the same company who maintains the search engine algorithms cannot properly police some of their own flagship product search results. One would think that a search like "office 2019 download" would be damn near hard-coded in Bing to provide the proper source, making it a hell of a lot harder for a pirate site to rise to the top of search results.

No, there should be a page that's popular enough and well-linked enough to get bumped to the highest position organically. If they have to hard-code hacks into their search engine just to get their products ranked high enough to beat the piracy sites, then they've already failed to properly market their product.

But why stick to office at all?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people sticking to office despite all the abuse?

I guess this is the same sort of question as why people insist on using windows when that doesn't work very well either, will randomly stop working as poorly as it did and just throw fits from updates, and insists on making you an ad-viewing beta-tester while at it.

Me, I use troff for writing letters, but there's plenty of clickibunti alternatives, free and paid, that people might try and even find better interoperability with other software at that. Because redmond isn't very compatible with itself, either. Sticking with them is, objectively speaking, a an expensive losing proposition.

Re:But why stick to office at all?

[squiggleslash]

LibreOffice and Google Docs, while excellent, do not have perfect compatibility with Office, and occasionally it matters.

Personally I use Microsoft's Office Starter, which you can still download for free in various places. It's a stripped down Word and Excel package, and you can always do you real work in a full wordprocessor and then finalize the look in the official Microsoft application. But not many people are aware of Office Starter's existence (or where to download it) (nor the patch needed to make it install and run on Windows 10)

It's a Bing thing

[TonyJohn]

Sorry.

Re:It's a Bing thing

[stealth_finger]

Fuck you.

Fortunately?

[hcs_$reboot]

Fortunately, the torrent download links are down

Slashdot has changed :-(

Could be worse

[Opportunist]

For all MS cares this is still better than Bing pointing to a page detailing how Libre/Open Office is superior.

Re:Could be worse

[hcs_$reboot]

For all MS cares this is still better than Bing pointing to a page detailing how Libre/Open Office is superior.

Not sure (for MS). Bing seeks credibility. These links help in this regard.

Malware

[drinkypoo]

"experts believe the link was used to spread malware."

Nah, they were only distributing office, not windows 10.

PhpMyAdmin Crack

[iTrawl]

You know they're serious people when you find out that they even provide a crack for PhpMyAdmin. It's not free enough until you crack it.

There's an old saying

[Luckyo]

"Microsoft doesn't really mind casual piracy of its products, because it hurts its competition far more than it hurts microsoft".

People might suggest this as evidence for it.

One question

[jenningsthecat]

However was this discovered? Who actually uses Bing? I'll bet even Microsoft employees use Google when they can get away with it. I hate Google as a company, and I often use other search engines, but I don't think I've used Bing more than three or four times, ever.

Oh crap - I just realized how Linux-centric I've become. I totally forgot about IE and Edge and default search engines until just now. Never mind...

Microsoft are safe...

[SimonTheSoundMan]

Surely anyone that uses Bing always searches "Google", then they use Google - they'd never see this. Microsoft has nothing to worry about.