On 19 December 2024, Microsoft announced the retirement of the Microsoft Search in Bing feature. Copilot is better at searching and presenting web and work results. Although tenant administrators might worry about the recent batch of retirements, the fact is that Microsoft retires unsuccessful products and features from Microsoft 365 all the time. The swift demise of the Office tags feature is another example.
An update to Microsoft Search means that search results available in SharePoint Online and Office.com now include Outlook and Teams messages. Microsoft has also updated Microsoft Search in Bing to include Outlook messages. All in all, these changes make Microsoft Search the go-to location when you need to find mailbox and Teams messages.
Supporters of the Bing search engine will be delighted that Microsoft 365 can link Azure AD accounts to to personal accounts to accrue Microsoft Rewards. A tenant org-wide setting is available to control the feature. Whether this is enough to convince organizations and individual users to switch allegiance to Bing from another search engine is debatable.