This seems like it will just start a cat-and-mouse game with Google releasing Chrome updates to break their extension, like Firefox's "extensions.installDistroAddons" toggle.<p>Also I assume "Version 2002" means "2020, February", but that seems unnecessarily confusing in a way the Windows 10 "20H1"-style versioning isn't. Doubly so considering Office XP was co-branded "Version 2002" eighteen years ago! <a href="https://i.imgur.com/4814T6a.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://i.imgur.com/4814T6a.jpg</a>
I remember the great lengths Microsoft went to cleaning up Browser Helper Objects, toolbars, and extentions that kept changing the IE default search engine and homepage.<p>Chrome will need to add similar enforcement, and will likely end up removing the ability for addons to change these settings like Microsoft eventually did.
It might be a bit of a stretch but I wonder what standing someone has to sue when search results are noticeably worse and changed in this way.<p>e.g. I just searched "<my town name> emergency" in google and bing. Bing came up with a travel site and several news articles. Google came up with a map with the local emergency department as the highlighted pin and urgent care as subsequent pins.<p>Google's little blurbs are also very handy in this case with instructions popping up as the first result when I search snake bite treatment and seizure care. (Actually I went through a few more emergencies after that and was pleasantly suprised how good google was at turning up instructions for emergency care)<p>It wouldn't surprise me if the monetary pressure associated with medical care in the US and the deep pockets of microsoft made them a tempting target.
If you want to prevent this without installing the Office ADMX January update, you can set the following registry entry:<p><pre><code> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\office\16.0\common\officeupdate]
"preventbinginstall"=dword:00000001
</code></pre>
Save the above in a .Reg file and execute.
The comments on the bottom, plus the UserVoice (<a href="https://odinsiders.uservoice.com/forums/920533-distribution-upgrades-servicing/suggestions/39494872-do-not-force-push-bing-as-the-default-search-engin" rel="nofollow">https://odinsiders.uservoice.com/forums/920533-distribution-...</a>) really emphasize how this change is impacting customers.
Isn't this behaviour making use of their market power and should be looked at by the antitrust authorities?<p>Overriding user's preferences with a forced installation of an extension reminds me very much of the old Microsoft I had hoped was gone for good.
Read the post before you get your knickers in a twist. The purpose of this change is so a special type of business client can allow their employees to search not just the web, but also their company’s internal resources.<p>Considering that most businesses provide their employees with company laptops, this isn’t something that is going to affect consumers.