5 ms·

The lack of consumer protections in the US is problematic. When something is defined as a "monopoly" they can go in and do all kinds of pro-consumer stuff, but

The lack of consumer protections in the US is problematic. When something is defined as a "monopoly" they can go in and do all kinds of pro-consumer stuff, but legally very few things are monopolies in the US (duopolies are more common). I wish stuff like this and iOS's ban on browser push notifications (because it competes with apps) was reviewed by a Federal consumer rights agency. What is frustrating that Edge-Chrome is actually a pretty good browser, Microsoft don't need to be doing this petty stuff to make it popular, yet here we are. Feels like the engineers at Microsoft just want to make cool shit but the management are stuck in this 1990s toxic mindset that keeps the company's image in the toilet (see also the Hot Reload controversy with the Visual Studio VP).

nikau 5y ago
I mean they are just mirroring apple with their forced browser engine on IOS...
oneplane 5y ago
I would like to know what is happening inside MS and what is actually behind this move. From the outside looking in we can speculate all kinds of abusive behaviour, especially with Microsoft's past in mind. But there is so little information... Say there was some QA team that found that some serious protected fallback mechanism was required to reduce support costs, that might be somewhat valid. But even then you'd expect to at least see some information appear about that, and that hasn't happened either. Heck, even security-wise they could come up with a story on how browser hijacking and protocol handler hijacking in windows is super bad and this was their only move (not true of course, plenty of other moves available) to mitigate it. But we get nothing, except broken behaviour and no real publication as to why. They can't throw it all on UX either, because if that's what they wanted they wouldn't be able to support an incompatible variety of PCs.
- hmrr 5y ago
  If it's anything like when I've tried to get them to do anything about a support case, I suspect no one gives a fuck about the customers any more unless they're big spenders. Everyone else is seen as a revenue drain. To MSFT staff who I know hang around on here: prove me wrong by getting this turned around.
  - hhh 5y ago
    Not MSFT staff, but I work for one of the largest MSFT customers. Our questions get resolved pretty damn fast. Rarely about Windows though.
    - hmrr 5y ago
      We have 10,000 seats so I’m not sure how much biomass you need to generate enough action potential for them to fix windows…
  - ternaryoperator 5y ago
    My experience with MS support is nothing like you describe. I'm in a very small company that uses Office 365. One of the principal reasons we continue using it is the excellent support we receive from MS. The support folks know their tools and stay on the line until they're sure the problem is solved. In a couple of cases, we've even received a follow-up call 48 hours later to make sure that we're still in good shape.
  - thrower123 5y ago
    You can be an ISV partner and you just get the runaround constantly and shifted from one HCL contractor to another for months on end when you ask questions.
- aksss 5y ago
  I suspect at some level of deliberation in MS, it’s as simple as wanting a predictable and controllable view portal to their content and site resources, rather than worrying about Google or whomever else “accidentally” and temporarily breaking something. I know there’s a lot of room to push on this - that MS themselves have myriad broken links and useless endpoints on the web so a browser is least of their worries. Nonetheless, the thinking may be about predictable user interface between the OS and the manufacturer’s online resources.
- xg15 5y ago
  The only halfway valid technical reasons I could imagine for those microsoft-edge:// urls would be that they provide some special features that make only sense in a Windows installation - but none of the situations we have seen so far seem to use such a feature.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    I could imagine special features being a good reason for such a protocol, but the special features themselves might not be a good thing to have (i.e. IE's ActiveX controls, that was 'special' too). Say you have an OS with functionality that depends on a webpage, and you don't want a user to end up clicking on a thing and not getting anywhere because the custom browser they installed was broken, that would be a reason to have a built in or 'fallback' browser, even if you just end up using it to install another browser. But then you could also have some form of checking if the user didn't get what they wanted and have a 'try again in Edge'-button or something like that. Might not be the best UX, so that's another factor. Is the UX for the masses, the UX for administrators or the UX for power users more important. I'm glad I'm not the person responsible for making those choices, but I'm curious about the processes and people that are on that path. Doubt MS will ever really publish that.
pibechorro 5y ago
Regulations only help the current top stay that way by creating arbitrary barriers to enter competition and politicizes the whole thing, leading to lobby instead of research and development. Microsoft is not a monopoly. Neither is Google, Facebook etc. They are dominant in their niches. Use Linux, use firefox, use duckduckgo, use mastedon, use Rumble, odyssey, etc. The only reason they stay dominant is because instead of dropping their usage, people complain, point fingers and still use them. Because at the end of the day its a feeling of entitlement instead of being proactive supporting the better alternatives. The free market will solve the issue so long we protect freedom in the market.
- ziddoap 5y ago
  >Use Linux, use firefox, use duckduckgo, use mastedon, use Rumble, odyssey, etc. What about the rest of the owl? Many people/businesses can't just swap over to Linux on a whim. I can go through the rest of your examples one by one, and explain why many people/businesses don't have those as realistic options, if you'd like. But it seems excessive.
- deelowe 5y ago
  > Microsoft is not a monopoly. Neither is Google, Facebook etc. They are dominant in their niches. This is why the more appropriate term is anti trust. Businesses don't need to be monopolies what matters is whether their position is dominant.
- KoftaBob 5y ago
  Before I spend time writing a rebuttal to this, I’d like to ask, are you genuinely interested in seeking a better understanding of this topic, or are you already convinced in your view and not interested?
- FuckButtons 5y ago
  This is a pretty silly argument. It’s not the consumers fault that a monopoly exists.
- diob 5y ago
  This is a weird view, albeit a common one among die hard free market lovers (I've even heard the "dominant in their niches" thing verbatim, although I doubt folks could expand on what that means). The typical individual outside of our profession is not choosing a browser because of a feeling of entitlement. They have maybe 5 hours of free time in their day outside of work / commuting / kids / etc. I doubt they have any idea beyond "this browser works, is fast" or heck "it's installed" as a reason to choose their browser, especially if it's a mobile browser. Free markets do not solve the issues of monopolies. You don't even have to look to history or the current market to understand that. Monopolies are an unfortunate natural tendency that the market heads towards when uninhibited, because they afford the maximum amount of profit. It also, at least until the monopoly hits a certain point, affords the max amount of efficiency and quality to the consumer. Unfortunately, by the time the monopoly takes over, there remains no real "choice" left for the consumer to run to. At that point, the profit maximization takes over completely and quality begins to drop. After all, the incentive is just to be better than the "others" who remain, who likely have almost no resources (and moreover the monopoly probably introduces proprietary standards to make remaining alternatives worse). At that point, we get stagnation, which I would argue the world has seen a good chunk of in recent years. Price fixing, collusion, all too common among the top (see the recent controversy with Google and Facebook working together). Why fight for the "free market" as you call it, when we can work together to rest comfortably?
WhyNotHugo 5y ago
It's been very clear for many many years that Microsoft's interests are quite opposite the consumer's interests. I'd love to see consumer protections spring up on the topic, but it'd also be nice if people started considering something that's designed with them in mind, and stopped throwing money/data at such a user-hostile company.

nikau 5y ago

I mean they are just mirroring apple with their forced browser engine on IOS...

oneplane 5y ago

I would like to know what is happening inside MS and what is actually behind this move. From the outside looking in we can speculate all kinds of abusive behaviour, especially with Microsoft's past in mind. But there is so little information... Say there was some QA team that found that some serious protected fallback mechanism was required to reduce support costs, that might be somewhat valid. But even then you'd expect to at least see some information appear about that, and that hasn't happened either. Heck, even security-wise they could come up with a story on how browser hijacking and protocol handler hijacking in windows is super bad and this was their only move (not true of course, plenty of other moves available) to mitigate it. But we get nothing, except broken behaviour and no real publication as to why. They can't throw it all on UX either, because if that's what they wanted they wouldn't be able to support an incompatible variety of PCs.

hmrr 5y ago
If it's anything like when I've tried to get them to do anything about a support case, I suspect no one gives a fuck about the customers any more unless they're big spenders. Everyone else is seen as a revenue drain. To MSFT staff who I know hang around on here: prove me wrong by getting this turned around.
- hhh 5y ago
  Not MSFT staff, but I work for one of the largest MSFT customers. Our questions get resolved pretty damn fast. Rarely about Windows though.
  - hmrr 5y ago
    We have 10,000 seats so I’m not sure how much biomass you need to generate enough action potential for them to fix windows…
- ternaryoperator 5y ago
  My experience with MS support is nothing like you describe. I'm in a very small company that uses Office 365. One of the principal reasons we continue using it is the excellent support we receive from MS. The support folks know their tools and stay on the line until they're sure the problem is solved. In a couple of cases, we've even received a follow-up call 48 hours later to make sure that we're still in good shape.
- thrower123 5y ago
  You can be an ISV partner and you just get the runaround constantly and shifted from one HCL contractor to another for months on end when you ask questions.
aksss 5y ago
I suspect at some level of deliberation in MS, it’s as simple as wanting a predictable and controllable view portal to their content and site resources, rather than worrying about Google or whomever else “accidentally” and temporarily breaking something. I know there’s a lot of room to push on this - that MS themselves have myriad broken links and useless endpoints on the web so a browser is least of their worries. Nonetheless, the thinking may be about predictable user interface between the OS and the manufacturer’s online resources.
xg15 5y ago
The only halfway valid technical reasons I could imagine for those microsoft-edge:// urls would be that they provide some special features that make only sense in a Windows installation - but none of the situations we have seen so far seem to use such a feature.
- oneplane 5y ago
  I could imagine special features being a good reason for such a protocol, but the special features themselves might not be a good thing to have (i.e. IE's ActiveX controls, that was 'special' too). Say you have an OS with functionality that depends on a webpage, and you don't want a user to end up clicking on a thing and not getting anywhere because the custom browser they installed was broken, that would be a reason to have a built in or 'fallback' browser, even if you just end up using it to install another browser. But then you could also have some form of checking if the user didn't get what they wanted and have a 'try again in Edge'-button or something like that. Might not be the best UX, so that's another factor. Is the UX for the masses, the UX for administrators or the UX for power users more important. I'm glad I'm not the person responsible for making those choices, but I'm curious about the processes and people that are on that path. Doubt MS will ever really publish that.

pibechorro 5y ago

Regulations only help the current top stay that way by creating arbitrary barriers to enter competition and politicizes the whole thing, leading to lobby instead of research and development. Microsoft is not a monopoly. Neither is Google, Facebook etc. They are dominant in their niches. Use Linux, use firefox, use duckduckgo, use mastedon, use Rumble, odyssey, etc. The only reason they stay dominant is because instead of dropping their usage, people complain, point fingers and still use them. Because at the end of the day its a feeling of entitlement instead of being proactive supporting the better alternatives. The free market will solve the issue so long we protect freedom in the market.

ziddoap 5y ago
>Use Linux, use firefox, use duckduckgo, use mastedon, use Rumble, odyssey, etc. What about the rest of the owl? Many people/businesses can't just swap over to Linux on a whim. I can go through the rest of your examples one by one, and explain why many people/businesses don't have those as realistic options, if you'd like. But it seems excessive.
deelowe 5y ago
> Microsoft is not a monopoly. Neither is Google, Facebook etc. They are dominant in their niches. This is why the more appropriate term is anti trust. Businesses don't need to be monopolies what matters is whether their position is dominant.
KoftaBob 5y ago
Before I spend time writing a rebuttal to this, I’d like to ask, are you genuinely interested in seeking a better understanding of this topic, or are you already convinced in your view and not interested?
FuckButtons 5y ago
This is a pretty silly argument. It’s not the consumers fault that a monopoly exists.
diob 5y ago
This is a weird view, albeit a common one among die hard free market lovers (I've even heard the "dominant in their niches" thing verbatim, although I doubt folks could expand on what that means). The typical individual outside of our profession is not choosing a browser because of a feeling of entitlement. They have maybe 5 hours of free time in their day outside of work / commuting / kids / etc. I doubt they have any idea beyond "this browser works, is fast" or heck "it's installed" as a reason to choose their browser, especially if it's a mobile browser. Free markets do not solve the issues of monopolies. You don't even have to look to history or the current market to understand that. Monopolies are an unfortunate natural tendency that the market heads towards when uninhibited, because they afford the maximum amount of profit. It also, at least until the monopoly hits a certain point, affords the max amount of efficiency and quality to the consumer. Unfortunately, by the time the monopoly takes over, there remains no real "choice" left for the consumer to run to. At that point, the profit maximization takes over completely and quality begins to drop. After all, the incentive is just to be better than the "others" who remain, who likely have almost no resources (and moreover the monopoly probably introduces proprietary standards to make remaining alternatives worse). At that point, we get stagnation, which I would argue the world has seen a good chunk of in recent years. Price fixing, collusion, all too common among the top (see the recent controversy with Google and Facebook working together). Why fight for the "free market" as you call it, when we can work together to rest comfortably?

WhyNotHugo 5y ago

It's been very clear for many many years that Microsoft's interests are quite opposite the consumer's interests. I'd love to see consumer protections spring up on the topic, but it'd also be nice if people started considering something that's designed with them in mind, and stopped throwing money/data at such a user-hostile company.