Microsoft has triggered anger by announcing that an upcoming version of Microsoft Office 365 ProPlus will change Chrome users’ default search engine to the company’s own Bing. The change — which in less generous terms is called “search hijacking” — will start reaching Chrome users in February and will eventually show up in the Firefox …

Browser maker Opera’s expansion into money-lending services in Kenya, India and Nigeria apparently violates Google’s rules against short-term loans, a report from research and investment firm Hindenburg Research concluded. The news has pushed Opera’s stock 22% lower since Wednesday, a move that should help Hindenburg make money because it bet that the company’s share price would fall.  The Hindenburg report …

Mozilla laid off about 70 employees Wednesday as part of an effort to preserve funding for its top new priorities like protecting privacy and fighting surveillance online. The nonprofit is best known for creating the Firefox web browser, but it also is expanding into new areas including password management, file sharing and private network connections while doubling down on its longstanding …

Microsoft spent the last year giving its Edge software a browser brain transplant, and now the company is convinced it’s smart enough to help everyone who uses it. Microsoft stripped the beta label from the browser on Wednesday, and you can now download it from Microsoft’s Edge website. Introduced in 2015, Edge was part of a modernization effort that stripped …

Google’s Chrome team, advancing its web privacy effort, later this year will begin testing the “privacy sandbox” proposals it unveiled in 2019. The Chrome tests, which Google announced Tuesday, are part of an effort to make it harder for publishers, advertisers and data brokers to harvest your personal data without your permission and to track you online. Other browsers, including …

This story is part of CES, where CNET covers the latest news on the most incredible tech coming soon. If you’re buying a PC, you may be trying to decide whether you want a big laptop with a big screen or a little laptop with a little screen. But thanks to new folding display technology, Intel has built a prototype …

This story is part of CES, where CNET covers the latest news on the most incredible tech coming soon. The first PCs using Thunderbolt 4 will arrive this year along with Intel’s new Tiger Lake processor, but it appears the all-purpose port won’t be any faster at transferring data than the 4-year-old Thunderbolt 3. There’s still room for other improvements, but …

This story is part of CES, where CNET covers the latest news on the most incredible tech coming soon. Manna, an Irish drone startup that — as its name suggests — sends food down from the heavens, has inked a deal with a Qualcomm-backed networking company to help its aircraft navigate the skies. The three-year deal with fellow Irish company …

Uber has begun turning on a PIN system that’s designed to improve the safety of riders by ensuring they’re getting into the correct driver’s car. The verification system is part of an effort to improve the ride-hailing service in light of safety and sexual assault concerns about Uber that emerged in 2019. Uber tested the “verify your ride” PIN system …

This story is part of CES, where CNET covers the latest news on the most incredible tech coming soon. Those wireless earbuds should sound better and their batteries should last longer with new audio technology coming to Bluetooth over the next year or so. The technology, called LE Audio, offers a better balance between sound quality and power consumption, industry …