Microsoft has started showing Windows 11 and 10 users a pop-up banner on the right side of the Chrome interface again, offering them to switch to Bing search. In a statement for Windows Latest, the company confirmed that it is testing a “one-time” notification that encourages people to use Bing as their default search in Google Chrome. The pop-up also advertises Bing’s free access to ChatGPT-4.
“This is a one-time notification giving people the choice to set Bing as their default search engine on Chrome. For those who choose to set Bing as their default search engine on Chrome, when signed in with their MSA they also get more chat turns in Copilot and chat history”, Microsoft said.
Interestingly, this Bing pop-up banner is not part of the Windows update, and it may be related to BCILauncher.EXE or BingChatInstaller.EXE, which were added to some systems on March 13. Microsoft has signed these two files and they can be found in the c:\windows\temp\mubstemp folder. A pop-up banner associated with the aforementioned files may appear when you browse the web in Chrome and offer to change your search engine to Bing.
Microsoft insists that this is a one-time notification that will not appear again after the user selects “No” or “Yes”. At the same time, the banner does not have a close button, you need to provide an answer to make it disappear.
If you agree to Microsoft’s offer, Chrome will be equipped with the Bing extension, which will replace the default search engine.
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