Microsoft Removes Bing Obstructive Ads From Games

Microsoft has stopped an advertising campaign for its in-house search engine Bing played out via Windows 11, in which a pop-up was displayed that even overlaid games in full-screen mode in a highly penetrating manner.

Bing ads were displayed above all programs

After user protests, Microsoft halted delivery of a recently launched banner campaign targeting users who use Google Chrome and have set Google as their default search engine.

Microsoft allowed its pop-up ads to appear in operating systems even when users were playing a game in full-screen mode. The same applied to all other applications that were overlaid by advertising. The ads were delivered to the system tray and asked users to please use Microsoft Bing as their default search engine for Chrome.

Microsoft has now told WindowsLatest that the campaign has been stopped. One is aware that the advertising ignored the notification settings of the operating systems and overlaid all programs. In view of this, the procedure has been stopped for the time being while the situation is being investigated.

Microsoft implements the advertising pop-ups using a small program called BGAUpsell.exe, which is related to the background service Bing Service 2.0, which in turn is supposed to “improve” Bing on Windows 10 and 11. Among other things, the tool checks whether Edge has been used within the last 48 hours. In addition, Microsoft seems to be able to recognize which default search engine is selected in Chrome, so that the advertisements are only displayed on systems that are configured accordingly.

The Redmond-based company keeps doing similar actions and recently ensured, among other things, that the installer for Google Chrome was downloaded via the Microsoft Edge browser identified as possible malware. Google uses similar tactics and, for example, displays advertisements for the Chrome browser when accessing YouTube, Gmail, or other services from its range with the Edge browser.