Microsoft backtracks on Office search changes

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According to Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft has backed off its plans to change the search engine to Bing for its Office 365 Pro Plus customers. See for more
[See the full post at: Microsoft backtracks on Office search changes]

--Joe

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AlexEiffel, rc primak, jburk07, Mr. Natural, woody

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At last! Some sanity returns…..

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The only question is, how long it will last before MS tries something else like that.

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rc primak, AlexEiffel, woody, Average-Jane

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Really?  Today February 11 2020, at around 12.00hrs (GMT+1) my browser search in Chrome and Firefox was Highjacked, some sites were cut off, my hosts-file date was changed to that moment.
I didn’t have any updates, they were stopped for weeks, was using VPN,
=> so Woody’s backdoor (0Day) misuse is quite valid, I think

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Nothing to do with Microsoft then.

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rc primak

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Sounds more like malware than anything else, or some very poorly-behaved browser extensions.

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Microfix, b

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[Fred]

jabeattyauditor wrote:

Sounds more like malware than anything else, or some very poorly-behaved browser extensions.

No [AT]Jabeattyauditor it wasn’t malware alltogether; there was a Cnet download involved, and Windows had taken over the searchengine plus the website-checking.
So, I saved my logs to pass on, and went back two weeks in time by putting back an image
Till now the February updates from yesterday seem to be okay

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• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Fred.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by PKCano.

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Have you considered the possibility that what you downloaded from CNet was infected or contained search-engine-redirecting adware?

It’s not uncommon…

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rc primak

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No doubt about it, CNet Downloads do stuff like this all by themselves. I use other download sites whenever possible because of the bad behavior of CNet Downloads.

-- rc primak

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geekdom

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If you read the linked Microsoft article, Update to Microsoft Search in Bing through Office 365 ProPlus, you’ll find that Microsoft is not completely abandoning the idea but planning on putting more administrative controls in place.

--Joe

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AlexEiffel, rc primak, woody

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Mnnnnnfffft! Here’s what the (unsigned) Office 365 announcement says:

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. 

Incredibly, spectacularly tone-deaf.

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I think it depends on the implementation of the new controls. For an organization that is used to dealing with large organizations where a controlled rollout (i.e Windows 10 feature releases) is the usual method, you’d expect Microsoft to implement a finer grained control. They have been very ham handed in this so far though.

I really don’t have a problem for an Ofice 365 organization to decide to use this extension. From what I’ve read it could be useful for finding internal information/documents/people. But, controls should be at least down to departments/AD organization units if not to individual users.

--Joe

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rc primak

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woody wrote:

Incredibly, spectacularly tone-deaf.

Microsoft reversed course, just as you, Susan and I thought they would.

It will now be opt-in rather than opt-out, as it always should have been.

As MJ Foley said, “But “customer feedback” has yet again saved the day.”

There’s nothing tone-deaf about that, even if it took them a couple of weeks.

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rc primak

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Can you clarify? What do you think is tone-deaf about their response?

I’m not a fan of Bing in any form, but they’re providing a bunch of options for deployment of the Bing search (if you want it, for whatever reason), and they’re not forcing it upon anyone.

Isn’t that what we usually ask for?

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Fred

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jabeattyauditor wrote:

but they’re providing a bunch of options for deployment of the Bing search

Microsoft doesn’t have to provide a thing. Anyone who wants to change search engines in Chrome, Firefox… can do so today without Microsoft’s “help”.

So yes, they are tone-deaf.

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That’s great when your user count < 2, but for large organizations (the folks actually using Office 365 Pro Plus), the ability to manage and support a consistent application package matters a bit more.

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rc primak

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That is not the case in enterprises, where it helps to have everyone using the same search engine for corporate documents; and this proposed change only applies to enterprises.

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rc primak

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