Microsoft has recently introduced Bing ads for Windows 10 and 11 users browsing Chrome. The ads aim to attract users to Microsoft’s web browser by allowing them to chat with GPT-4 for free on Chrome and get hundreds of daily chat turns with Bing Al. If the user clicks “Yes,” a pop-up appears to install the “Bing Search” extension on Chrome and set Microsoft’s search engine as the default. However, if the user clicks “Yes” to switch to Bing, a Chrome pop-up will appear, asking users to confirm that they want to change the browser’s default search engine. This is a Chrome warning.
This situation creates a pop-up battle between a company trying to promote its AI assistant/search engine and another company aiming to keep the user with the default search engine, which the user may prefer if they installed Chrome in the first place. This conflict highlights the ongoing battle between Big Tech companies over AI and search engine dominance, which can frustrate users. Unfortunately, there seems to be no easy way to stop ads from appearing.
Microsoft has confirmed the pop-up news in a statement to The Verge, saying that this is a one-time announcement that allows people to make Bing their default search engine on Chrome. According to the company representative, when users sign in with a Microsoft account and set Bing as their default search engine on Chrome, they will receive more chats in Copilot and chat history.
A report from Windows Latest indicates that this ad comes from a server-side update that is not part of a Windows update and possibly originates from BCILauncher.EXE or BingChatInstaller.EXE. Microsoft added these two processes to “some Windows systems” on March 13.