Microsoft Backtracks On Plan On Forcing Office 365 Users To Use Bing

Whenever you buy a product, companies typically encourage users to buy into their ecosystem. This is why it didn’t really come as a surprise to learn that Microsoft would be forcing users who use the Office 365 installer to use Bing, where it would install a Chrome extension that essentially changes the default search engine to Bing.

However, unsurprisingly given the popularity of Google, many users were not thrilled by the idea of being forced to use a search engine and not given a choice. So much so that Microsoft has since heard the outcry and has announced that they will be backtracking on their plans to force Bing down the throats of users.

According to Microsoft, “But we’ve also heard concerns about the way we were planning to roll this value out. Most importantly, we heard that customers don’t want Office 365 ProPlus to change search defaults without an opt-in, and they need a way to govern these changes on unmanaged devices.”

For those who are installing Office 365 in offices via an office admin, Microsoft has stated that IT admins will also be given the option of not deploying the browser extension if they do not want to. The company adds, “Due to these changes, the Microsoft Search in Bing extension will not ship with Version 2002 of Office 365 ProPlus. We will provide an updated timeline for this rollout over the next few weeks.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Bing (Microsoft), Chrome, Google, Microsoft, office 365