Microsoft might be the market leader when it comes to desktop operating systems, but its search aspirations have remained depressingly depressing. Currently less than 3% of online searches are done through Microsoft’s Bing search engine, but the company is trying to increase that number by any means necessary … apparently, including spam additions to its Outlook app on Android. .
Some users who have Microsoft Outlook installed on their Android devices have noticed that they see a new option to perform a Bing search when selecting text. This is not limited to just selected text while in the Outlook app, and applies to almost any selected text across the system. Microsoft is using the contextual text selection feature introduced in Android Marshmallow that allows developers to add their own options to the menu that appears when words are selected.
While Microsoft is only using a standard Android feature to their advantage here, it’s still a move that feels very spammy. It would be one thing if the Bing search option only appeared with the actual Bing search app installation, but including this with the seemingly unrelated Outlook app crosses the line. This is not the first time that Microsoft has used Android features to sneak into ads for its own applications and services. Even though it only seems to be showing up for certain users right now, this is a despicable thing to do, I will definitely not be using Bing after this. I mean, I didn’t use Bing before this either, but still.
