Microsoft is back to its old tricks. The tech giant's search engine, Bing, has a new way to encourage people to use Microsoft services.
Last week, Windows 11 pirates gained a new and unlikely ally in Microsoft Copilot. This week, it's Copilot that has the new ally, but it's hardly a surprise.
Right now, if you search for ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, or Gemini, Bing will show you a search bar that's a shortcut to Copilot.
"Copilot, Your AI companion," reads the element. Below that text is a text bar that lets you message Copilot.
The behavior, which was first spotted by Neowin, is the latest in a series of tactics by Microsoft to dissuade people from using competing services.
Earlier this year, Microsoft used a similar method to try to steer people away from Google. In January, searching for Google through Bing resulted in essentially a copy of the Google interface but that interface was powered by Bing.
Microsoft has since stopped trying to trick people into using Bing, but the company's leadership must have liked the idea. The new prompt to use Copilot is quite similar in how it tries to convert users searching for a competing service.
Desperate and deceptive? That's debatable.
Microsoft promoting its services through other Microsoft products has always been a point of contention. It's an interesting situation, since I know people who feel strongly about it but don't agree on whether it's an issue.
If your car got a flat tire and the repair shop you went to explained that the store also has breakdown coverage that you could get for a monthly fee, I doubt you'd be surprised or upset. But many, including myself, dislike when Microsoft promotes its other products while you use a Microsoft service.
There are two key differences between my tire shop analogy and Microsoft's approach: point of sale and scale.
If I go to a store and they try to sell me something, that's to be expected. If I'm using a product and it tries to sell me something, I'm probably disappointed.
Windows 11, Bing, and other Microsoft services are products. Searching for something through Bing isn't like me going to a store. It's using the product, which is more akin to driving on a tire.
Promoting Copilot through Bing when I search for Gemini is like my car suddenly displaying an ad for breakdown coverage while I’m driving.
Scale is also a factor here and in similar cases. Monopoly laws are in place, at least in part, to prevent companies from being able to use dominance in one area to gain an unfair advantage in another. That's why Microsoft had to split Teams from Office.
In the case of Bing promoting Copilot, I don't think there's a monopoly issue. Bing is far from dominant in the search space, so promoting Copilot probably isn't much of an advantage.
But I suspect many will have a sour taste in their mouth after getting pushed to use Bing when searching specifically for something else.
People complained when Bing promoted Edge after searching for the Chrome Web Store. I suspect similar outrage with the latest Copilot promotion.
A common "gotcha" argument is that other tech giants use similar tactics. But my mom always said, "two wrongs don't make a right."
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