> there are literally thousaunds of bytes exchanged

For people on capped connections, this is a nightmare. 4kB/search, for using your computer normally! Even though 100 searches/day is only 12MB of data/month, the fact that Microsoft thinks it's okay for the OS to slurp data like this boggles my mind.

It seems a bit unlikely that users doing 100 searches a day would also be the same set of users who worry about 12MB of data usage in a month.

For example, even in the Australian market (very low competition environment), 12MB of data via 4G is trivial.

It's not Microsoft's data traffic to grab. The user is paying for it and Microsoft should treat their users with respect. Not making users pay for data that benefits Microsoft would be a start.

The australian market where most providers bill at least a MB for every connection session (1B over some arbitrary time and you're down one of your MB)

Try running computers on boats where you have VSAT/Fleet connections and every KB counts

If people slurp data from a single source they can have that data easily be made "free" by the network providers, and so are then sold back to again.

Didn't they disable this?

No, they give you the option to disable it.

Weird, I thought the same.