Microsoft Changing Users' Default Search Engine

BabyDuckHat writes "Cnet's Dennis O'Reilly caught 'Windows Search Helper' trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. This isn't the first time the software company has been caught quietly changing user's preferences to benefit its own products."

Wrong Summary!

[hrieke]

Tim,

Please read the story yourself;
It's not Firefox that Vista tries to change but IE8. Google's toolbar caught the action in IE8 and alerted him to the change. He then said that there was no alert option offered in Firefox's Google toolbar.

Re:Want more ad money? Bash Microsoft !

[Darkness404]

What happened to the geeks to could reverse engineer executables and actually point to the specific CPU instruction that actually did it?

They got legal threats after the DMCA was passed.

Google does it too

[LotsOfPhil]

Picasa defaults to change your IE search to Google.

Re:Surprise surprise...

[lostmongoose]

Indeed, also making itunes an optout insted of optin when doing quicktime updates on a windows machine that has no itunes installed.

it is all happening agian

[fermion]

This is really annoying. If I pay for a machine, and I pay for the software. then I don't want it changing the options. I want to set what will happen. And I want it to work efficiently, without useless overhead put in simply to increase bragging rights of the vendor.

I have noticed that IE7 and IE8, anything typed into the URL field will go to Bing, unless it is 100% qualified. I know MS has always wanted everything to go through it's servers, but now it seems it is getting more extreme. If you don't type in HTTP it will go to bing. I also recall a time, or maybe not, when you could the URL field to go to google. In any case, the idea that a URL will go to a search engine never made sense to me. If the URL is not sufficiently qualified, then it should return a 404. The security risk of expecting a URL to return something other than the intended target is certainly a securty risk.

But no one else is any better. I have noticed on Adobe updates that they try to sneak in Yahoo tool bar. Apple will change the default browser to Safari with any little excuse, almost at every reboot. I don't know what google is doing, but since I prefer it to other things, I haven't had any issues in trying to get rid of it. I suspect when they begin to lose market share, all hell will break loose.

Re:So...

[X0563511]

Google's antitrust is because of a book deal, not search market tomfoolery.

Completely different playground.

Re:Once more with feeling

[Anonymous Coward]

If you actualy read the article, he admits he doesnt know what was trying to change the default search provider, or what it was being set to. All he knows is his google toolbar said a change was being made.

Any atribution of this action to Microsoft, or that the provider was being set to Bing are suppositions - there is no evidence of that provided.

Re:Want more ad money? Bash Microsoft !

[X0563511]

Ah, but it's entirely relevant to reverse engineering executables. Which means it is directly relevant to the post you replied to.

Re:Surprise surprise...

[Brian Gordon]

Apple Software Update (automatically installed with itunes and quicktime) presented Safari as a checked-by-default update to users. Read about it [jubjubs.net] on John Lilly's blog. He's the CEO of Mozilla

Re:Once more with feeling

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they'll find some way of avoiding any type of legal problems, they always do.

They always do??? Are you f**king kidding me? They've had more lawsuits than pretty much any other software company...

Re:it is all happening agian

[Informative]

There are OSes such as you are asking for. MS is just not one of them.

If I pay for a machine, and I pay for the software. then I don't want it changing the options. I want to set what will happen. And I want it to work efficiently, without useless overhead put in simply to increase bragging rights of the vendor.

Re:Surprise surprise...

[Thornburg]

And putting all Apple apps back onto the desktop and at the top level of the Windows start menu every time you upgrade, irrespective of where you'd tidied the previous version up to.

I can agree with GP and GGP complaint v. Apple, but this one here, that applies to like 90% of applications. They check the default locations for the icons, if not found, it puts them there. Does that behavior suck?--Yes it does, but it's nowhere near an "Apple" problem. It's universal.

Re:Really?

[nabsltd]

Actually, Microsoft released a new version that can be uninstalled or disabled using the standard Firefox Add-Ons UI.

But, the first version was pretty easy to uninstall...it took me about two minutes after the Firefox restart that highlighted the new add-on to find the registry entry (somewhere under the Mozilla key in the Software hive) and delete it.

Re:Surprise surprise...

[discorob3]

dont use quicktime! in the very rare instance that you need quicktime you could use quicktime alternative... http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm [free-codecs.com]

I strongly disagree

[Animaether]

This isn't Windows - it's entirely up to the installer author whether or not to create icons (desktop, start menu, start menu favorites, quick launch bar (yeah, there's more...)).

Most installers give you the option to install them or not. Okay.. most -older- installers do. Ever since 'usability experts' decreed that users want -less- choice, things just get tossed everywhere, whether you like it or not. More user-friendly to have 20 icons in the quick launch bar, apparently? whatever.

But even if you don't give that option - there's no reason the installer can't detect whether the user removed the icons -after- installation when you're installing an update.. and just not re-install them (or prompt the user).
It might not be able to easily figure out -where- a user relocated icons, if that's what they did, but presuming you're only upgrading and not changing anything, those old icons (shortcuts) should still work just fine from wherever the user put them.

The only reason most installers don't is per that usability stuff. Say you removed the icon for QuickTime, now you install the update, so you expect to have QuickTime available... but you search and search on your desktop (as the layman you are), and.. no QuickTime icon. "Did something go wrong during installation?", you might ask yourself, and re-install again. Still no icon. So poste hate-mail in a forum and give Apple some bad press; even though it'd be your own fault, as you decided at some point in the past that you didn't want that icon.

Re:Once more with feeling

[fullgandoo]

Still better that Safari on Mac which doesn't allow anything but Google as the search engine.

Re:Once more with feeling

[socceroos]

Honestly, I don't know why you care. Google search still outstrips all the other search engines put together. Its not like you're going to need Bing.

Hogwash

[mozzis]

Both of the referenced articles are utter nonsense. The purported change of search engine pointed at the Windows file indexer, not the Internet search. The most likely explanation by far is that the Google toolbar mis-fired its warning on initialization after an upgrade. The facts and illustrations in the article support this. As for the "previous time" the company has beeb "caught", this has already been shown to be http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/microsoft_update_quietly_insta.html/ [washingtonpost.com] (read the comments) completely false as well. I am really sick of this site's propensity for publishing any ridiculous attack on Microsoft as if it were gospel. None of the headline authors seem to have any critical thinking skills whatever. I have enough morons in my life without having to wade through them for tech news.

Re:Once more with feeling

[uglyduckling]

I think you have been misinformed [inquisitorx.com].

Re:Once more with feeling

[h4rm0ny]

Funnily enough, everytime my package manager updated Firefox on Ubuntu, my chosen search engine (Yahoo) seems to get bumped back to Google. Google of course being one of the big funders of Mozilla. Same annoying thing. But apparently Microsoft's change only affects IE6, so who cares?

Re:Wrong Summary!

[gbjbaanb]

I do, you insensitive clod!!!

I like the ability to click the 'word search' buttons for my search. The gmail button is nice too. Don't care about the rest though.

Re:Once more with feeling

[macs4all]

Still better that Safari on Mac which doesn't allow anything but Google as the search engine.

Maybe not out of the box, but the FREE Safari plugin Inquisitor [inquisitorx.com] allows the search engine to be changed at will, and much more.

The site does a really poor job of explaining this, but trust me, Inquisitor will do the trick.

I have read that Inquisitor may not work with Safari 4 yet (which may be outdated information). Here is another free plugin, Glims [machangout.com], that will allow the changing of search engines in Safari 4 for Mac.

As a Mac user, it IS kind of odd that Safari 4 for Windows allows the selection of Search Engines, but Safari 4 for Mac does not...

Re:Once more with feeling

[UnknowingFool]

*Sigh* It's not a crime to be a monopoly; that's not why MS was convicted. It's a crime to use monopoly powers to stifle competition. In this case (1) OS X isn't the dominant OS. (2) Safari isn't the dominant browser even on OS X. (3) Google isn't owned by Apple so Apple setting them as the default search engine doesn't stifle competition as Apple isn't in the search engine business at all.