Microsoft will no longer be forcing the Chrome default search engine over to Bing

A few weeks ago, we reported on some plans that Microsoft had as part of a new Office 365 installer that would include a new Chrome extension that would switch Chrome’s default search engine to Bing. This, unsurprisingly, didn’t go down too well with many companies and IT admins who don’t want these sorts of restrictions enforced on their company. Microsoft has decided to backtrack and soften their stance on the whole matter.

The company posted a note from the Office 365 team about how they will not be enforcing this change anymore:

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

Microsoft says these changes now mean that the Microsoft Search in Bing extension will not ship in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, and India this month as they remove this feature from it. “We will provide an updated timeline for this rollout over the next few weeks,” says the company.

The response from Microsoft sounds noble, but how they ever thought it was a good idea in the first place is beyond me. I guess, with Microsoft restoring their reputation as one of the good guys in tech again, they have let that power go to their heads and somehow believed they could get away doing whatever they wanted. Thankfully they have realized and are no longer going down this dark path. The dark side has been thwarted once again.