In well over a decade of journalism, I've seen a fair amount of copied designs, but I've never seen anything as blatant as Bing's attempt to hoodwink people into believing they're using Google. Since time immemorial, people have used default apps to look for better alternatives, and to switch to those instead. Back in the day, Internet Explorer was often used to download Firefox or Chrome, before being forgotten forever. Now, the same thing is happening with Bing—Microsoft's search engine—and the company clearly isn't pleased with that.
If you haven't changed any defaults on the Microsoft Edge browser, Bing is your search engine. When you type the word "Google" in the browser's address bar, you'll see a page that you may mistake for Google search, but it's actually Bing deceiving you into believing that you're using your preferred search engine. Bing will load a page that looks a lot like Google, complete with a fake Google doodle, a search bar, results laid out in Google's design, and show other spoofed Google UI elements. This was first spotted by 9to5Google.
The worst part is that the spoofed page even hides Microsoft Bing's branding entirely by hiding the top bar. You can reveal that by scrolling up a little. When you search for any term other than "Google," Bing's branding and the search bar at the top are prominently visible.
It's clear that Microsoft has noticed that people are using Bing to locate Google, their preferred search engine, and chose to try a sneaky way to stop losing users to Google. Parisa Tabriz, who's the vice president of Google Chrome, expressed her displeasure at this move on X (formerly Twitter). Her post reads, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but Microsoft spoofing the Google homepage is another tactic in its long history of tricks to confuse users & limit choice. New year; new low @Microsoft." If you're unhappy with such tricks, you can easily switch the default browser on Windows 11.
Editor's note: We have reached out to Microsoft for comment but haven't yet gotten a response.
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