Office 365 ProPlus Will Switch Chrome's Default Search to Bing

From PC Mag: Next month, Microsoft is set to make a lot of its business customers quite angry by forcibly switching the default search engine in Chrome to Bing.

As ZDNet reports, starting with Version 2002 of Office 365 ProPlus, the extension Microsoft Search in Bing will form part of the installation. A side effect of that is the default search engine for Chrome will switch to Bing automatically. Regardless of whether Office 365 ProPlus is already installed or not, the switch to Bing will happen.

The ProPlus version of Office 365 is aimed squarely at business users and adds exclusive apps and services other versions don't enjoy access to. Microsoft's reason for automatically switching users to Bing is as follows: "By making Bing the default search engine, users in your organization with Google Chrome will be able to take advantage of Microsoft Search, including being able to access relevant workplace information directly from the browser address bar."

While it may be useful under the right circumstances within an organization, nobody likes forced change and therefore this decision is sure to generate a lot of anger. One look at the Reddit discussion regarding the automatic change makes this clear.

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