O365 people, please go vote against MS's planned browser hijack

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raz-0

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https://odinsiders.uservoice.com/fo...t-force-push-bing-as-the-default-search-engin


In case you missed it, MS plans on rolling out, as part of office 365, a module that will force chrome to use bing as it's search engine as part of a feature to give you an online way to search all your 365 content. You will have to opt out rather than opt in. MS has been silent on if this is something you will have to undo with every update to office 365.

The above link is the user voice issue telling them to stop. Please go vote for issue if you think it is a bad idea. If you don't think it is a bad idea, you might want to reassess your world view.


UPDATE: They listened. No more stupid plan.


On January 22, 2020 we announced in advance that the Microsoft Search in Bing browser extension would be made available through Office 365 ProPlus on Windows devices starting at the end of February. Since then, we’ve heard from many customers who are excited about the value Microsoft Search provides through Bing and the simplicity of deploying that value through Office 365 ProPlus. With Microsoft Search integrated, Bing becomes a single search engine for users to find what they need - both from inside their organization and the public web.



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.



Based on your feedback, we are making a few changes to our plan:


  • The Microsoft Search in Bing browser extension will not be automatically deployed with Office 365 ProPlus.
  • Through a new toggle in Microsoft 365 admin center, administrators will be able to opt in to deploy the browser extension to their organization through Office 365 ProPlus.
  • In the near term, Office 365 ProPlus will only deploy the browser extension to AD-joined devices, even within organizations that have opted in. In the future we will add specific settings to govern the deployment of the extension to unmanaged devices.
  • We will continue to provide end users who receive the extension with control over their search engine preference.
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. For more detailed information about deploying Microsoft Search in Bing through Office 365 ProPlus, please refer to this support article. Learn more about rolling out Microsoft Search in Bing to your organization by reading this user adoption guide.

Thank you for your ongoing feedback. Please continue to share with us through UserVoice.
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raz-0 said:
https://odinsiders.uservoice.com/fo...t-force-push-bing-as-the-default-search-engin


In case you missed it, MS plans on rolling out, as part of office 365, a module that will force chrome to use bing as it's search engine as part of a feature to give you an online way to search all your 365 content. You will have to opt out rather than opt in. MS has been silent on if this is something you will have to undo with every update to office 365.

The above link is the user voice issue telling them to stop. Please go vote for issue if you think it is a bad idea. If you don't think it is a bad idea, you might want to reassess your world view.
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I fucking hate Microsoft more and more every day. This above is fucking garbage. There should be laws against them making any changes to any other software on your machine.

As far as opt out vs. opt in goes. No matter who you are, no matter what software you are distributing/producing, no matter what it is being used for EVERYTHING should ALWAYS be opt in.

Opting out should be an option, but only for users who have first opted in and changed their minds. There should never in all of software be any situation where a user is automatically enrolled and forced for opt out if they don't like it.

Unless I take an intentional action everything should always stay the same. That's the default. They should never change anything, I don't care what it is, without my intent and desire to do so. This shit needs to sop and it needs to stop now.


More than just that though.

Just today my organization was pushed yet another Office 365 update, and those fuckers decided to tweak the fucking User Interface for the 5 millionth time.

I'm so sick of it. Office has had every single feature it has needed for 20+ years. its user interface in that time has done nothing but go down hill. I'd sooner use the Office 2000 menu design than the garbage they have today.

Even if they had legitimate UI improvements it would be better to keep it unchanged from a consistency perspective than go mucking with it all the time.

I'm fine with security and stability updates, but other than that I just want my office AND my OS to look and feel exactly the same indefinitely for decades on end.

They don't need a pretty or trendy interface. They just need to not change. Predictability over the long haul is the most important feature of Office. The knowledge that every singe day you come in to work and you open a program it looks, feels and behaves EXACTLY the way it did the day before.
 
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Some added info.

Going through documentation for this, unless you pushing out GPO's or are able to deploy group policy locally yourself, this will indeed periodically reinstall itself after opting out.

FYI applying pressure on this subject has gotten MS's attention. Now we have to keep it. So if you haven't voted for it, vote for it.

Also if you are a 365 admin in your organization and have something other than free support, open a support ticket over this. There is an ongoing effort to bury them in feedback on that subject too.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I fucking hate Microsoft more and more every day. This above is fucking garbage. There should be laws against them making any changes to any other software on your machine.

As far as opt out vs. opt in goes. No matter who you are, no matter what software you are distributing/producing, no matter what it is being used for EVERYTHING should ALWAYS be opt in.

Opting out should be an option, but only for users who have first opted in and changed their minds. There should never in all of software be any situation where a user is automatically enrolled and forced for opt out if they don't like it.

Unless I take an intentional action everything should always stay the same. That's the default. They should never change anything, I don't care what it is, without my intent and desire to do so. This shit needs to sop and it needs to stop now.


More than just that though.

Just today my organization was pushed yet another Office 365 update, and those fuckers decided to tweak the fucking User Interface for the 5 millionth time.

I'm so sick of it. Office has had every single feature it has needed for 20+ years. its user interface in that time has done nothing but go down hill. I'd sooner use the Office 2000 menu design than the garbage they have today.

Even if they had legitimate UI improvements it would be better to keep it unchanged from a consistency perspective than go mucking with it all the time.

I'm fine with security and stability updates, but other than that I just want my office AND my OS to look and feel exactly the same indefinitely for decades on end.

They don't need a pretty or trendy interface. They just need to not change. Predictability over the long haul is the most important feature of Office. The knowledge that every singe day you come in to work and you open a program it looks, feels and behaves EXACTLY the way it did the day before.
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I hate Outlook. Considering the intended user base (which is in most cases a fairly technically challenged user base) the interface is confusing a mess - You could seriously strip half the crap out of it and actually have a better product.
 
Smh Microsoft pushing their search engine Bing to users. I mean it's not bad, but Google's better.
 
Microsoft 2000 : Where do you want to go today?
Microsoft 2020 : Where do we allow you to go today?
 
>using o365
>using chrome
You deserve all the shit you get for being so stupid.
 
Good for Microsoft for doing this, to hell with google...

I've been trying my hardest to avoid google products and services for years now. I also use a trackball.
 
AltTabbins said:
You use a trackball. You're opinion on anything tech related is void.
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Trackballs aren't terrible if they're designed properly, the trouble is that most are not designed properly. I have used one or two trackball mice in the past couple decades that I really liked, unfortunately they were stupid expensive and I couldn't justify the cost.
 
Have to admit Edge built on Chromium is growing on me much faster than I anticipated! Actually less resource intensive than actual Chrome. Still don't agree with being forced to use certain Search Engines though. Can't see it happening in Europe though as they tried that with IE back in the day and were forced to display alternative browsers so they will not get away with forcing people to use their search engine.
 
Thanks for the heads up. Bing is great for searching for places to eat not so much other tech stuff.
Though i would prefer Bing over giving Google any more info.

Fact is there are certain websites that just plain work better on Chrome. I try not to use it any more that I have to but face it these days Firefox doesn't always handle things correctly.
 
N4CR said:
>using o365
>using chrome
You deserve all the shit you get for being so stupid.
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Have to respectfully disagree.
Sure o365 can be a pain BUT there are numerous organizations that use it. There are also plenty of websites that work better on Chrome. Something about how they are programmed.
If I had a choice would I choose something other than Chrome, sure. And usually do but there is a reason I have Chrome installed.
You could say the same things about the obnoxios Adobe programs. But there is a reason I have Adobe reader installed. One of my inventory control programs only uses Adobe to work with PDF's within the database. I prefer Foxit for everything else but there is a reason I have both installed.

So just becuase so many hate Microsoft for being popular and generally good but does things that annoy us doesn't mean we should crap on others who have found it to do just what they need done.
 
Col_Temp said:
Thanks for the heads up. Bing is great for searching for places to eat not so much other tech stuff.
Though i would prefer Bing over giving Google any more info.

Fact is there are certain websites that just plain work better on Chrome. I try not to use it any more that I have to but face it these days Firefox doesn't always handle things correctly.
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Yeah, I use Firefox as my primary (with tweaked settings, and plugins to block as much tracking as I can). I default to Duck Duck Go as my preferred search engine for the same reason. They seem to be the only search engine that respects privacy. This combination mostly works, but occasionally I just get bad results in Duck Duck Go, and have to go to Google. And occasionally websites just do not render right in Firefox, and I have to load up Chrome.

99% of the time - however - my tweaked Firefox and DuckDuckGo do the trick.
 
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