Microsoft is once again harassing Google Chrome users on Windows 10 and Windows 11 with popup desktop advertisements promoting Bing and its GPT-4 Bing Chat platform.
Due to the quality of the pixelated ads, some who received them were concerned that they were being displayed by malware, even though the embedded links led directly to Microsoft.
Microsoft has since confirmed that the popup ads are legitimate, telling BleepingComputer that this is a one-time notification.
The unsolicited ads are believed to be shown when users have Google Chrome open and configured to use Google as the default search engine.
This extension changes the default search for the address bar and the browser's New Tab Page to Bing.
Google Chrome includes a security feature that defends against malicious extensions that hijack your search engine.
When Chrome detects that an extension has changed your default search engine, it will display a prompt asking whether you want to keep this change.
This confirmation dialog is shown regardless of your initially configured search engine, whether that be Google, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, or Bing.
Like other search extensions, such as DuckDuckGo, when Google asks for this confirmation, the Bing extension displays a message asking users not to change it back.
This is not the first time Microsoft has targeted Google with popup desktop ads, previously using a similar one in July 2023 to promote Bing Chat.
Both companies have historically targeted each other with competing ads in their search engines, applications, and even operating systems.
In 2020, Google and Microsoft targeted each other with ads promoting their own browsers, with further ads shown in 2021.
We will likely continue to see the browser and search engine wars in the future as both companies strive to control users' data, browsing habits, and ad landscape.
Google Chrome gets real-time phishing protection later this month.
Google paid $10 million in bug bounty rewards last year.
New Google Chrome feature blocks attacks against home networks.
Google teases a new modern look for sign-in pages, including Gmail.
Check if you're in Google Chrome's third-party cookie phaseout test.
This Cyber News was published on www.bleepingcomputer.com. Publication date: Sun, 17 Mar 2024 17:10:25 +0000