[nickjj]

I would consider things like automatically searching Bing for typing anything into the Windows search bar a pretty annoying feature. Especially when 99% of the reason to use such a search is to find a local program or Windows setting to open.

Problem is with the 20.04 edition of Windows, there's no user friendly way to do turn that feature off.

Putting all of the privacy settings to the most restrictive values doesn't disable it, nor does turning off internet search in search in the policy editor. You have to dig around and create manually named registry keys. IMO that's unreasonable behavior.

But that makes you think there's likely dozens if not 100+ other things like that. I hope Windows tool makers don't stop uncovering these things.

I wonder if anyone will call out MS for having an option in the policy editor to disable internet search when using Windows search, while it doesn't actually disable it. What would the legal action be there? Maybe a GDPR violation since now the personal things I type into my computer are sent to Bing without my consent.

[millzlane]

I use this for redirecting my searches https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/foxtana-pro-r...

FTA "Force Windows 10 and Cortana to use Firefox and your favorite search engine instead of Bing! This is the official port of Chrometana Pro for Firefox."

[unicornfinder]

If memory serves the group policy setting does work but only on the Enterprise version of Windows 10.

[nickjj]

Right, but this should be on the purchase page of the OS. No one would know such a thing beforehand.

It's a combination of a purposeful lack of information and a sketchy UI decision because the option in the policy editor is there to interact with on the Pro edition of Windows. It should be at least greyed out like other Windows settings are when you can't use it for your edition of Windows.

You shouldn't have to pay $84+ / year (Enterprise edition) to disable having everything you type into the Windows search menu get searched on Bing. It used to be something you could turn off on all editions of Windows in earlier versions of Windows 10.

If MS were more open about user privacy, users wouldn't need to develop third party programs to discover and disable all of the traps MS lays in their OS to spy on folks.

[jedieaston]

Just checked: in Windows 8.1 (and therefore, all versions of Windows 10), the "Don't search the web or display web results in Search" Group Policy works fine in Pro/Enterprise/Education/Business. The "Disable Microsoft Consumer Experiences" one only works in Enterprise/Education, however.

If you are on Home, and don't have gpedit.msc, make a new DWORD in "Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer", call it "DisableSearchBoxSuggestions", and set it to 1. Upon reboot Bing will no longer appear in your start menu.

[nickjj]

On my Windows 10 Pro 20.04 edition, that group policy has no effect. The only way to get rid of it was to use the registry edit you've also referenced.

[jedieaston]

Odd. Did you run gpupdate /force afterwards? I've deployed it to Pro boxes before with no issues.

[nickjj]

Nope, I enabled the setting and rebooted and still saw the search results.

Does gpupdate /force do something different than what rebooting would do?

Also did you do it on Pro boxes with the 2004 update? This behavior of the setting not working only started with 2004.

[syntheticcorp]

I'm now running a 2004 updated Pro host with that Group Policy setting and don't see any web search results. I also checked my registry and I don't have that DWORD key.

Rebooting will refresh the group policy, so that should have worked. Maybe try also enabling the "Do not allow Web Search" policy which is adjacent in Admin Templates > Windows Components > Search. That seems to be all the configuration I have to make it work.

[lostmsu]

Thank you! That is the thing, that finally worked!

BTW, you only need to log off/log on again.