6 ms·

Without respect to the facts, it's funny as hell to see this called "a new low" when browser bundling is what got them sued by the United States 20 years ago.

default-kramer 6y ago
This is worse in my opinion. In the '90s, you could argue that precedent hadn't truly been set yet. Now that case is almost common knowledge in tech. They can't even pretend to have an excuse this time around. Until today, I thought "Microsoft is doing pretty good." Now I want nothing more than to see them sued/fined heavily for this. EDIT: I can see now that I wrote carelessly. By "This is worse" I meant "This is more blatantly illegal." Not "This is more detrimental to the world." The '90s browser bundling was probably much more detrimental, but not unexpected behavior. But the recent behavior was very unexpected to me. I had to use Task Manager to kill it. I can't believe Microsoft would be so bold as to not even give me some small, hard-to-read "no thanks" button somewhere.
- corty 6y ago
  Microsoft in the last few years managed to successfully sucker a lot of people into believing the new microsoft post-balmer is somehow reformed and better. Therefore I think its also worse because of the added deception and astroturfing campaign. I think Microsoft actually never changed a bit. They just swapped the figurehead.
  - bathtub365 6y ago
    They changed. They fired their Windows QA and the quality of Windows went down even further as a result.
- hinkley 6y ago
  We weren't mad at Microsoft for bundling software. We were mad at them for strangling out anyone whose shadow even looked like competition. People with 10% market share are allowed to do a whole hell of a lot of things that become illegal when you have 90% market share. I suspect this is part of why monopolies are so uniformly recalcitrant. From their perspective, we didn't have problems with them doing this 10 years ago, why are we upset about it now when they have assets worth taking away as a punishment? It's just a money grab. They're just winning and we're just jealous. If I own a grocery store, I'm selling formula for below cost to get people into my store. It's called a Loss Leader. If I'm the biggest formula maker in the world, and I sell formula below cost, that's called Dumping and I will be fined and punished if anyone can prove that I am 'too big' and that this is driving competition out of business.
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    If there are major economies of scale to a business, what if it's optimal to have a duopoly, regulated of course to prevent collusion? Maybe we need to have more of a system for directly dealing with that situation.
    - thatguy0900 6y ago
      I think right now it's just optimal to have a duopoly because it protects the bigger guy from getting in trouble for being a monopoly, and secures the little guy all the leftovers. like Microsoft saving Apple from bankruptcy or Google paying firefoxs bills.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- mrlala 6y ago
  >Now I want nothing more than to see them sued/fined heavily for this. Do you also want Apple and Google to be sued for "bundling" their browsers on iphone/osx/android/chomebook etc?
  - default-kramer 6y ago
    I don't care about the bundling. I care that I already chose Firefox as my default browser, but Microsoft tried to force me to choose Edge instead. There was no "no thanks" button. I had to use Task Manager to kill it.
- esperent 6y ago
  I don't understand why Microsoft gets such a hard time over this when in IOS you can't even install another browser engine aside from Safari. If you do install Firefox on IOS it's just a wrapper for the Safari engine with all the same limitations, you can't install adblock or other extensions. That seems far more anti-competitive that what MS is doing here and it's been happening as long as IOS has existed.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    Apple has some 25% market share on mobile devices . Microsoft has 80% on desktop; they had some 98% in '90s. That's the crucial difference. You can easily get native firefox on mobile if you want (even if it means giving up iOS). It was much more difficult for desktop users to give up Windows in 1998.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      And when given the option, the wonderful Desktop Linux never goes beyond 1%, as per Valve stats, but everyone will migrate en mass just about now (since XP apparently).
      - vetinari 6y ago
        That's entirely different issue, that doesn't have technical roots. The world didn't migrate en-masse to Windows Phone either, despite it being quite nice mobile OS at the time.
        pjmlp 6y ago
        Sure it has, a fragmentation and continuous forking of major desktop stacks that don't allow ISVs to thrust the platform. WP also doing slowly well, the whole technical stack was rebooted multiple times, and thus it lost the developer love that got fed up with so many reboots. Also the reason why Win32 and WinRT are now being merged via Project Reunion, confirming the trend that started with MSIX and XAML Islands introduction.
- oehpr 6y ago
  >believe Microsoft would be so bold as to not even give me some small, hard-to-read "no thanks" button somewhere. I will never ever forget the time they considered closing a nag popup (that they installed through security updates) by hitting the X in the top right as consent for an operating system upgrade. That was depraved. To this day, I don't know how people could forgive them for that. Like... look at this incident in comparison. They installed a browser. That's nothing.
wvenable 6y ago
Would browser bundling actually get them in trouble in today's world? macOS, iPadOS, and iOS all come with Safari bundled (and alternatives prohibited in the latter cases). Android comes with Chrome. Some Android devices (Samsung) come with other browser bundled. Chrome OS is itself a browser. A browser is a basic necessary OS component (heck, you need one just to download another one). What is objectionable is the in-your-face nature of this update.
- zarathustreal 6y ago
  >heck you need one just to download another one Ever heard of wget?
  - modmans2nd 6y ago
    Grandma...why do you keep bothering me! Just use wget!!!!
  - whereistimbo 6y ago
    Like really... How could you get the link to download a browser if not using another browser? It's not like Ubuntu/Debian where you can use apt-get to download a browser, but then if you need Chrome, you need the browser too to accept EULA and download the package.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
hinkley 6y ago
I'm sitting over here in my rocking chair thinking, "You damned kids don't know how good you've got it." There's a Simpson's episode where Homer has a business that Bill Gates wants to buy, and he refuses. So Bill tells his bodyguards to 'buy him out' and walks away. They proceed to smash all of his equipment to bits. You don't get done by Matt Groening like that by simply bundling software.
- korethr 6y ago
  Not quite. Homer actually accepted the deal to be bought out by Bill, and then yes, Bill's goons smashed all of Homer's stuff. When Homer queries what's going on, Bill says "Well, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks," and laughs. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE
- basch 6y ago
  Also, the way Chrome got on most people's computers was originally some pretty dark patterns. Two wrongs don't make a right, but Microsoft isn't alone in this constantly escalating grab. I'll be honest, I think most popups with user information are useless and annoying. The majority of people think "I didn't ask for a pop-up" and click the x without reading, not even knowing what cancel does. Despite normally thinking "info" popups do more people bad than good, completely stopping all os interaction for a full screen "the blue e is changing to a wave" is absolutely necessary. How many people only know the internet as "the blue e" or "google"? After 25 years of a blue e, it's a staple of computer interaction, one you can't just quietly yank away. With old edge going away, they obviously have to ship a replacement. The fight between these companies to be set to default is ridiculous, and they are both abusing their positions because people can't be depended on to know how to undo a defaul protocol handler change. Microsoft's "are you sure" pop-up when trying to change your default PDF viewer, should be illegal. If you're in the menu changing it, is not the time for a weird passive aggressive manipulative popup. But. But, it's also not good for Microsoft to just cede full control to Google. It's also a bit ridiculous for people to be conflating pinning an icon to a taskbar with violating people's privacy. If you know what it is, un pin it. If you don't know what edge or new edge are, the pin is probably useful.
dehrmann 6y ago
Desktop computing is also in decline, so it's oddly not as big of a deal.

default-kramer 6y ago

This is worse in my opinion. In the '90s, you could argue that precedent hadn't truly been set yet. Now that case is almost common knowledge in tech. They can't even pretend to have an excuse this time around. Until today, I thought "Microsoft is doing pretty good." Now I want nothing more than to see them sued/fined heavily for this. EDIT: I can see now that I wrote carelessly. By "This is worse" I meant "This is more blatantly illegal." Not "This is more detrimental to the world." The '90s browser bundling was probably much more detrimental, but not unexpected behavior. But the recent behavior was very unexpected to me. I had to use Task Manager to kill it. I can't believe Microsoft would be so bold as to not even give me some small, hard-to-read "no thanks" button somewhere.

corty 6y ago
Microsoft in the last few years managed to successfully sucker a lot of people into believing the new microsoft post-balmer is somehow reformed and better. Therefore I think its also worse because of the added deception and astroturfing campaign. I think Microsoft actually never changed a bit. They just swapped the figurehead.
- bathtub365 6y ago
  They changed. They fired their Windows QA and the quality of Windows went down even further as a result.
hinkley 6y ago
We weren't mad at Microsoft for bundling software. We were mad at them for strangling out anyone whose shadow even looked like competition. People with 10% market share are allowed to do a whole hell of a lot of things that become illegal when you have 90% market share. I suspect this is part of why monopolies are so uniformly recalcitrant. From their perspective, we didn't have problems with them doing this 10 years ago, why are we upset about it now when they have assets worth taking away as a punishment? It's just a money grab. They're just winning and we're just jealous. If I own a grocery store, I'm selling formula for below cost to get people into my store. It's called a Loss Leader. If I'm the biggest formula maker in the world, and I sell formula below cost, that's called Dumping and I will be fined and punished if anyone can prove that I am 'too big' and that this is driving competition out of business.
- perl4ever 6y ago
  If there are major economies of scale to a business, what if it's optimal to have a duopoly, regulated of course to prevent collusion? Maybe we need to have more of a system for directly dealing with that situation.
  - thatguy0900 6y ago
    I think right now it's just optimal to have a duopoly because it protects the bigger guy from getting in trouble for being a monopoly, and secures the little guy all the leftovers. like Microsoft saving Apple from bankruptcy or Google paying firefoxs bills.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
mrlala 6y ago
>Now I want nothing more than to see them sued/fined heavily for this. Do you also want Apple and Google to be sued for "bundling" their browsers on iphone/osx/android/chomebook etc?
- default-kramer 6y ago
  I don't care about the bundling. I care that I already chose Firefox as my default browser, but Microsoft tried to force me to choose Edge instead. There was no "no thanks" button. I had to use Task Manager to kill it.
esperent 6y ago
I don't understand why Microsoft gets such a hard time over this when in IOS you can't even install another browser engine aside from Safari. If you do install Firefox on IOS it's just a wrapper for the Safari engine with all the same limitations, you can't install adblock or other extensions. That seems far more anti-competitive that what MS is doing here and it's been happening as long as IOS has existed.
- vetinari 6y ago
  Apple has some 25% market share on mobile devices . Microsoft has 80% on desktop; they had some 98% in '90s. That's the crucial difference. You can easily get native firefox on mobile if you want (even if it means giving up iOS). It was much more difficult for desktop users to give up Windows in 1998.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    And when given the option, the wonderful Desktop Linux never goes beyond 1%, as per Valve stats, but everyone will migrate en mass just about now (since XP apparently).
    - vetinari 6y ago
      That's entirely different issue, that doesn't have technical roots. The world didn't migrate en-masse to Windows Phone either, despite it being quite nice mobile OS at the time.
      - pjmlp 6y ago
        Sure it has, a fragmentation and continuous forking of major desktop stacks that don't allow ISVs to thrust the platform. WP also doing slowly well, the whole technical stack was rebooted multiple times, and thus it lost the developer love that got fed up with so many reboots. Also the reason why Win32 and WinRT are now being merged via Project Reunion, confirming the trend that started with MSIX and XAML Islands introduction.
oehpr 6y ago
>believe Microsoft would be so bold as to not even give me some small, hard-to-read "no thanks" button somewhere. I will never ever forget the time they considered closing a nag popup (that they installed through security updates) by hitting the X in the top right as consent for an operating system upgrade. That was depraved. To this day, I don't know how people could forgive them for that. Like... look at this incident in comparison. They installed a browser. That's nothing.

wvenable 6y ago

Would browser bundling actually get them in trouble in today's world? macOS, iPadOS, and iOS all come with Safari bundled (and alternatives prohibited in the latter cases). Android comes with Chrome. Some Android devices (Samsung) come with other browser bundled. Chrome OS is itself a browser. A browser is a basic necessary OS component (heck, you need one just to download another one). What is objectionable is the in-your-face nature of this update.

zarathustreal 6y ago
>heck you need one just to download another one Ever heard of wget?
- modmans2nd 6y ago
  Grandma...why do you keep bothering me! Just use wget!!!!
- whereistimbo 6y ago
  Like really... How could you get the link to download a browser if not using another browser? It's not like Ubuntu/Debian where you can use apt-get to download a browser, but then if you need Chrome, you need the browser too to accept EULA and download the package.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

hinkley 6y ago

I'm sitting over here in my rocking chair thinking, "You damned kids don't know how good you've got it." There's a Simpson's episode where Homer has a business that Bill Gates wants to buy, and he refuses. So Bill tells his bodyguards to 'buy him out' and walks away. They proceed to smash all of his equipment to bits. You don't get done by Matt Groening like that by simply bundling software.

korethr 6y ago
Not quite. Homer actually accepted the deal to be bought out by Bill, and then yes, Bill's goons smashed all of Homer's stuff. When Homer queries what's going on, Bill says "Well, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks," and laughs. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H27rfr59RiE
basch 6y ago
Also, the way Chrome got on most people's computers was originally some pretty dark patterns. Two wrongs don't make a right, but Microsoft isn't alone in this constantly escalating grab. I'll be honest, I think most popups with user information are useless and annoying. The majority of people think "I didn't ask for a pop-up" and click the x without reading, not even knowing what cancel does. Despite normally thinking "info" popups do more people bad than good, completely stopping all os interaction for a full screen "the blue e is changing to a wave" is absolutely necessary. How many people only know the internet as "the blue e" or "google"? After 25 years of a blue e, it's a staple of computer interaction, one you can't just quietly yank away. With old edge going away, they obviously have to ship a replacement. The fight between these companies to be set to default is ridiculous, and they are both abusing their positions because people can't be depended on to know how to undo a defaul protocol handler change. Microsoft's "are you sure" pop-up when trying to change your default PDF viewer, should be illegal. If you're in the menu changing it, is not the time for a weird passive aggressive manipulative popup. But. But, it's also not good for Microsoft to just cede full control to Google. It's also a bit ridiculous for people to be conflating pinning an icon to a taskbar with violating people's privacy. If you know what it is, un pin it. If you don't know what edge or new edge are, the pin is probably useful.

dehrmann 6y ago

Desktop computing is also in decline, so it's oddly not as big of a deal.