5 ms·

Here's the thing - there's an actual reason that is beneficial to 90% of their customers that they do this. Let's take my wife. She got her lenovo laptop beca

Here's the thing - there's an actual reason that is beneficial to 90% of their customers that they do this. Let's take my wife. She got her lenovo laptop because it was silver and really thin, and had a touchscreen. She doesn't know what specs are - the laptop is just a tool. When she goes to do a google search, google's page keeps pushing chrome in her face. While she's trying to search for listings of gigs needing translation from Mandarin, Japanese, or Cantonese into English, the page she's on tells her she needs to click here and install chrome. She doesn't know what a browser or a Chrome are, so she thinks it's something she needs to do for the work search. Bam - she's now using Chrome. And he doesn't even notice the browser changed. Nor does she care. She never meant to install it or switch to it. Google is a bad player, and windows will check and once in a while ask if she wants to switch it back. Good. Me, a firefox user - I have literally zero issue clicking "no, leave my browser alone" twice a year. She uses some office apps for spreadsheet type work, and msword. She uses some windows functions like copying files, and backing up her phone. Telemetry lets microsoft know what she's doing, where she's getting confused or going into a loop pattern to do something, and when she tries something and gives up after it not making sense. They use that telemetry to improve their programs for people like her. Me - I turned that off. It's as easy as downloading winaero and clicking "disable telemetry" and "disable ads." This is not illegal because it's literally what 90% of Windows users want. People who don't want that are technically apt, and it takes about 2 minutes for us to turn that off. It's just a default for 90% of the users - a correct one.

trutannus 5y ago
That's fine, I don't think anyone has an issue with that. I think what people object to is that you can't turn that off fully.
- soylentnewsorg 5y ago
  You absolutely can, via registry, group policy, or 3rd party apps. Have you ever gotten any of the browser change stuff or ads on your work laptop? I have not, ever, at any company. You can do that on your home computer too.
jancsika 5y ago
> Google is a bad player, and windows will check and once in a while ask if she wants to switch it back. Good. Me, a firefox user - I have literally zero issue clicking "no, leave my browser alone" twice a year. You left out the part where you explain what bad thing would have happened if your wife had kept using Google-Chromium-wrapped-with-Google-proprietary-stuff instead of Google-Chromium-wrapped-Microsoft-proprietary-stuff. After all, Google-Chromium-wrapped-with-Google-proprietary-stuff uses telemetry to do some similar set of happy things you wrote above about Microsoft apps.
MiddleEndian 5y ago
I hear this "Google is worse" talking point so much in defense of Windows 10 mucking around with people's settings that I'm starting to assume it's astroturfing. You consider your wife a passive computer user who doesn't know what a browser is. Say you switched her browser to Firefox so she could more effectively block ads, and then MS switched it back to Edge with this mechanism. They are being malicious in the same way you say Google is, except it's worse because it's malicious behavior running on her own machine instead of malicious behavior running on someone else's servers. I have spent so much time disabling all these ads on my Windows 10 Pro machine. And it did actually leave me alone through the end of 2018 I think, maybe early 2019. Then they started coming up with new bizarre ways to try to fuck with my system. I paid for this laptop, it should do what I say and otherwise leave me alone. Google being a bad actor is not an excuse for Microsoft to be a bad actor.
- soylentnewsorg 5y ago
  I won't switch her browser to firefox. I'm not her tech support although I am in tech. Welcome to 90% of users. If I was her tech support, and I wanted to prevent the browser being changed by the user, I would.. Explain it to the user. And if they still changed it after that - guess what, that's their choice. But I could, just like you, prevent that with group policy. And when you do that, you won't get prompted to change it, just like my work laptop doesn't prompt me to change it. So what is the issue? The fact that if you do your customization and don't complete the full power user process, the OS can't tell if it was a random web page that did it? Maybe MS should collect some more telemetry on your laptop and run a compute-heavy AI to figure it out? >I have spent so much time disabling all these ads on my Windows 10 Pro machine. and why in the world would you do that? it literally takes two clicks in many different pieces of software that are available. for the 90% of users - guess what, they wouldn't know about 1drive if windows didn't display an ad for it. What you call an ad, my wife calls helpful suggestions. When you're grocery shopping and you see a banner "apples 10% off today" that is also an "ad." Microsoft is not a bad actor. The "google is worse" talking point is one I never stated, and a strawman you made up. What you call "Ads" are simply defaults. And you can disable them in about a minute with one click in an app. You don't like edge at all? Guess what - there are fifty things you can do to completely disable or remove it - like change security on its folder or run a single powershell command to uninstall it. Windows is an OS that is tailored to its users. That's not you - don't use it if you don't want. Here in the real world though, any power user simply changes the defaults in a couple of minutes, and at work there's a corporate image with all those turned off already.
raxxorrax 5y ago
The solution is obviously for MS and Google to stop. And your wife isn't an excuse for my system sending telemetry about me to MS. I am not that naive that it is about usability instead of marketing. It is a plain lie that users want to be surveilled in such a way, even the non-technical ones, let alone 90%.

trutannus 5y ago

That's fine, I don't think anyone has an issue with that. I think what people object to is that you can't turn that off fully.

soylentnewsorg 5y ago
You absolutely can, via registry, group policy, or 3rd party apps. Have you ever gotten any of the browser change stuff or ads on your work laptop? I have not, ever, at any company. You can do that on your home computer too.

jancsika 5y ago

> Google is a bad player, and windows will check and once in a while ask if she wants to switch it back. Good. Me, a firefox user - I have literally zero issue clicking "no, leave my browser alone" twice a year. You left out the part where you explain what bad thing would have happened if your wife had kept using Google-Chromium-wrapped-with-Google-proprietary-stuff instead of Google-Chromium-wrapped-Microsoft-proprietary-stuff. After all, Google-Chromium-wrapped-with-Google-proprietary-stuff uses telemetry to do some similar set of happy things you wrote above about Microsoft apps.

MiddleEndian 5y ago

I hear this "Google is worse" talking point so much in defense of Windows 10 mucking around with people's settings that I'm starting to assume it's astroturfing. You consider your wife a passive computer user who doesn't know what a browser is. Say you switched her browser to Firefox so she could more effectively block ads, and then MS switched it back to Edge with this mechanism. They are being malicious in the same way you say Google is, except it's worse because it's malicious behavior running on her own machine instead of malicious behavior running on someone else's servers. I have spent so much time disabling all these ads on my Windows 10 Pro machine. And it did actually leave me alone through the end of 2018 I think, maybe early 2019. Then they started coming up with new bizarre ways to try to fuck with my system. I paid for this laptop, it should do what I say and otherwise leave me alone. Google being a bad actor is not an excuse for Microsoft to be a bad actor.

soylentnewsorg 5y ago
I won't switch her browser to firefox. I'm not her tech support although I am in tech. Welcome to 90% of users. If I was her tech support, and I wanted to prevent the browser being changed by the user, I would.. Explain it to the user. And if they still changed it after that - guess what, that's their choice. But I could, just like you, prevent that with group policy. And when you do that, you won't get prompted to change it, just like my work laptop doesn't prompt me to change it. So what is the issue? The fact that if you do your customization and don't complete the full power user process, the OS can't tell if it was a random web page that did it? Maybe MS should collect some more telemetry on your laptop and run a compute-heavy AI to figure it out? >I have spent so much time disabling all these ads on my Windows 10 Pro machine. and why in the world would you do that? it literally takes two clicks in many different pieces of software that are available. for the 90% of users - guess what, they wouldn't know about 1drive if windows didn't display an ad for it. What you call an ad, my wife calls helpful suggestions. When you're grocery shopping and you see a banner "apples 10% off today" that is also an "ad." Microsoft is not a bad actor. The "google is worse" talking point is one I never stated, and a strawman you made up. What you call "Ads" are simply defaults. And you can disable them in about a minute with one click in an app. You don't like edge at all? Guess what - there are fifty things you can do to completely disable or remove it - like change security on its folder or run a single powershell command to uninstall it. Windows is an OS that is tailored to its users. That's not you - don't use it if you don't want. Here in the real world though, any power user simply changes the defaults in a couple of minutes, and at work there's a corporate image with all those turned off already.

raxxorrax 5y ago

The solution is obviously for MS and Google to stop. And your wife isn't an excuse for my system sending telemetry about me to MS. I am not that naive that it is about usability instead of marketing. It is a plain lie that users want to be surveilled in such a way, even the non-technical ones, let alone 90%.