Good News: Microsoft Won't Force Office 365 Pro Plus Users to Use Bing

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Nearly three weeks ago, Microsoft decided the all-time style to heave its search engine share would be to force Function 365 ProPlus users to use Bing. The justification for this behavior was that Bing was going to automatically start displaying information from your visitor when y'all performed local searches. Mandatorily. Without your consent. Microsoft framed this every bit an reward, claiming "By making Bing the default search engine, users in your organization with Google Chrome will exist able to take reward of Microsoft Search."

Users, needless to say, were not happy about this. Except, obviously, information technology isn't needless to say, considering someone at Microsoft actually idea this was a good thought. Sysadmins and users akin got cranky on the topic and raised enough of a stink that Microsoft caved.

Microsoft, however, tin't resist albeit that without telling us how many people loved the idea of being forced to utilize its search engine.

On January 22, 2020 we appear in advance that the Microsoft Search in Bing browser extension would be made available through Office 365 ProPlus on Windows devices starting at the stop of February. Since then, we've heard from many customers who are excited well-nigh the value Microsoft Search provides through Bing and the simplicity of deploying that value through Role 365 ProPlus. With Microsoft Search integrated, Bing becomes a single search engine for users to detect what they demand – both from inside their organisation and the public web.

Merely we've also heard concerns about the manner we were planning to scroll this value out. About importantly, we heard that customers don't desire Office 365 ProPlus to modify search defaults without an opt-in, and they need a way to govern these changes on unmanaged devices.

I'd just love to see the numbers on how many people wrote in excitedly praising Microsoft for forcing them to apply a search engine they did non choose, request, or opt into, versus how many felt this was a grievous alienation of protocol. I'm willing to bet I know which way the numbers run.

Regardless, though, the of import signal is that they aren't doing this. Admins volition be able to flip a toggle to deploy the solution, but it will only be deployed to Advertizement-managed devices, even if an system has opted in. This will modify at an unspecified time to come date as the adequacy is more widely deployed.

At that place'south nothing wrong with using a search engine to admission corporate data if that fits the role and practice of what search engines are for in your line of work, but end users never like existence shoved into using a solution. Likewise, users who took advantage of the multiple installation licenses they received nether Office 365 ProPlus will non wind upwards having the search engine default inverse on their personal hardware likewise.

So, the good news here is that Microsoft won't exist making a disliked and unpopular change to Office 365. The bad news is that we had to explain this to people who actually work in the software industry.

Elevation image credit: Microsoft

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