Microsoft has apparently found the free time to build a standalone app whose only job is switching your default search engine to Bing across every browser on your PC. It is not force-installed through Windows Update yet, and it is not available in the Microsoft Store either. It is a standalone executable hosted on Microsoft’s official download servers, and we wonder why it even exists.

The app is called Microsoft Recommended Search Settings, and once installed, it prompts you to add extensions to all your installed browsers, which does the job of switching to the Bing homepage experience. After finishing installation, you also get redirected to the Microsoft Rewards page, which is basically a bribe for switching.

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[–] 11 points 2 days ago* (1 child)

Calm down guys, it's just some random exe on their server they made sometime in history.

Maybe they wanted to push it, but then reconsidered. Maybe the fines would have been larger than the revenue from this move or whatever. It's how those megacorps work (and why they shouldn't exist).

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