It is no secret that Microsoft’s Bing search engine is not very successful in competing with Google. A quick search on the Net MarketShare website is enough to realize the absolute dominance of the Mountain View giant, with just over 70% of the market, followed by the Redmond solution, which represents about 13% of Internet users.
Still, Microsoft does not seem to have given up on the competition and is taking a curious step to try to increase its user base. Android device owners who have the Outlook application installed are reporting the appearance of a “Bing Search” option in the system’s contextual menu, which appears when selecting snippets of text.
The most peculiar thing about this situation is that Bing Search also appears outside the email app, even if Bing is not installed. According to Mishaal Rahman of the XDA Developers website, who analyzed the Outlook code, there is mention of an “integration with Edge”, which may indicate that it is necessary to have the company’s browser installed and set as the default for Bing to appear. However, this does not guarantee the implementation of the feature, and in our tests, only one “Search on Edge” option was integrated into the menu.
This is not the first time that the Redmond giant has acted invasively on smartphones. The company is being sued for “spying” on the clipboard with the LinkedIn app. Apparently, the professional social network analyzed the content copied by users on iPhones.
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It is worth remembering that Google and Microsoft announced a partnership to boost the use of Progressive Web Apps (PWA) in the Play Store. The companies made integration between their tools for creating PWAs with the intention of facilitating the work of the developers, while making the solutions more robust.
Source: netmarketshare