Microsoft has been pushing Bing pop-up ads in Chrome on Windows 10 and 11. latest Windows and The edge reported Friday that the ad encourages Chrome users (in bold) to use Bing instead of Google Search. “Chat with GPT-4 for free in Chrome! Get hundreds of daily chat sessions with Bing Al,” the ad says. If you click “Yes”, the pop-up window will install the “Bing Search” Chrome extension and set the Microsoft search engine as the default.
If you click “Yes” on the ad to switch to Bing, a Chrome pop-up window will appear asking you to confirm that you want to change the browser's default search engine. “Did you want to change your search provider?” the pop-up asks. “The 'Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome' extension changed search to use bing.com,” the Chrome warning states.
Directly below that alert, apparently in anticipation of the Chrome pop-up, another Windows notification warns: “Wait, don't change it again! Doing so will disable Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome and you will lose access to Bing Al with GPT-4 and DALL-E 3. Select Keep it to stay on Microsoft Bing.”
Essentially, users are caught in a pop-up war between one company trying to pressure you into using their ai assistant/search engine and another trying to keep it at its default settings (which you'd probably want if you installed Chrome in the first place). ). . Big tech's battles over ai and search supremacy are turning into ugly virtual shouting matches right in front of users' eyes as they try to navigate the web.
There doesn't seem to be an easy way to prevent the ad from appearing.
Microsoft reportedly confirmed the authenticity of the pop-up in statements to latest Windows and The edge, shamefully presenting the measure as an opportunity for users. “This is a one-time notification that gives people the option to set Bing as their default search engine in Chrome,” a company representative wrote. “For those who choose to set Bing as their default search engine in Chrome, when you sign in with your MSA (Microsoft Account) you also get more chat turns in Copilot and chat history.”
In a reminder of how friendly its intrusive ads supposedly are to user freedom, it added: “We value providing our customers with options, which is why there is the option to dismiss the notification.” Engadget emailed Microsoft to request independent verification, but the company did not immediately respond. We will update this article when we hear back.
latest Windows described the announcement as coming from a “server-side update” and said the announcement was not part of a Windows update. Instead, the outlet speculated that it is linked to BCILauncher.EXE either BingChatInstaller.EXEtwo processes that Microsoft reportedly added to “some Windows systems” on March 13.
