this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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Microsoft is trying to restore Bing as the default search engine on users' browsers by spinning it as a "repair" through a utility app called PC Manager.

PC Manager is designed to boost a Windows PC's performance by freeing up memory and eliminating unused apps and files. It offers "Health check" and "Repair tips" buttons, which users can click on to see the recommended actions.

However, Windows Latest noticed the app pushing a curious recommendation: Both Repair tips and Health check nudge you to restore Bing as the default search engine on the Edge browser.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Maybe this will sound unrelated but have you seen a PC infected with tons of malware?

The web browsers tend to be the most affected apps by malware and if the user doesn't want to reinstall, forcing the web browser to change the default search engine helps a lot, because it is literally impossible to do that manually when the PC is full of shit.

Other than that, yeah, Microsoft doing anti-consumer things, as always.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (2 children)

forcing the web browser to change the default search engine helps a lot

How does changing your browser's default search engine (from another legitimate search engine) help get rid of malware?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Been a while since I experienced malware, but they typically forcibly change your browser's default search engine to a shady one with more malware, even after you try to change it to something else. Even for somewhat tech savvy users, this can be somewhat difficult to overcome.

Sounds like Microsoft is somehow overriding this with Bing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I highly doubt that personally. I'd bet money it wouldn't do this with malware just with people who have a clean system and use a different search engine.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

It doesn't. If a PC is so infected you can't change simple settings like search engine, it's time to reformat.