3 ms·

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 behavi

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.

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.