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Well just tried it. Edge > opened Bing > "Firefox" > Click on first Firefox hit > Download. And nothing like that happened. No pop up or nothing. And I'm using

Well just tried it. Edge > opened Bing > "Firefox" > Click on first Firefox hit > Download. And nothing like that happened. No pop up or nothing. And I'm using a Windows 10 PC with an MS account logged in for Office365 + Gamepass This is what I don't like about social media sites like HN either where only the rage will reach the front page Edit: screen recording https://streamable.com/wpjv2h https://streamable.com/wpjv2h

pete_nic 5y ago
Agree, I just downloaded Firefox onto my windows PC this week, experienced none of these things, and the process was really easy. I am in the US, so that could be an explanation.
- haunter 5y ago
  I'm in Hungary, Europe so not even an EU thing
  - jauco 5y ago
    I got that message recently when I downloaded chrome on a windows machine. (Maybe two weeks ago) I’m within the eu
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    Hungary is in the EU. You're there, but you didn't know?
    - lucb1e 5y ago
      (I am not the downvoter; misreading things happens to me a lot as well...) I think u/haunter meant that it's, thus, not an EU-wide thing, not that Hungary is not EU
      - denton-scratch 5y ago
        Oh, OK. I did misread it. My bad.
- kyleamazza 5y ago
  That's so strange, I've experienced all of these things on multiple set ups over the past year+ (based in the US). I wonder what the difference is on why some users do/don't get this...
  - throwaways85989 5y ago
    I expect that pcs of developers are excluded from spam harassment to prevent the only group who is capable of backlash and user-defense to engage in user-defense. I conclude that you work with customer & privat person pcs while most of us here do not. Or are just most of the times on mac and nux.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
A/B testing strikes again. It should be illegal at this point. It renders googling and rtfm useless, frustrates people, wastes time, and makes having online conversations about a problem difficult. Plus we are not even sure it results in improvements in the long run.
- bathtub365 5y ago
  It’s also a form of psychological experimentation.
  - wombatpm 5y ago
    Interesting. If it is indeed experimentation on human subjects then then they are in violation of tons of laws and regulations around informed consent. Makes me wonder what’s in the click through agreement
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
      The self-imposed rules by universities with IRBs etc. often aren't backed by laws.
- Bajeezus 5y ago
  I think calling for banning of A/B testing is a bit of an overreaction, don’t you?
  - MerelyMortal 5y ago
    Not OP, but: No. Your comment feels like gaslighting, considering you already know the answer to the question since OP is the one who suggested banning it.
    - alar44 5y ago
xg15 5y ago
> This is what I don't like about social media sites like HN either where only the rage will reach the front page What is your point? That all those popups were photoshopped and don't actually exist? Or what kind of headline about this topic would you like to see on HN? "Windows sometimes does not show its nag screens when you install Firefox"?
sudosysgen 5y ago
The things in the article happened to me. There is nothing wrong with the article or the response to it. It's not fake, since that's what you're suggesting.
dariusj18 5y ago
What edition do you have, Home/Pro?
abnry 5y ago
I think this only occurs on Windows 11. I had a similar experience as described in the tweets.
dagw 5y ago
Had you ever installed Firefox/Chrome on that machine before? Based on my unscientific observations, it only happened the first time I tried to install a new browser after a clean install. After clicking through that popup once, it didn't come back when installing/updating any subsequent browsers.
Mordisquitos 5y ago
I must be missing something, because from what I can tell your screen recording does not in any way counter the claims being made in the tweet. Firstly, you do indeed see the "There's no need to download a new web browser" message on Bing. Secondly, the recording finishes just before we see the Firefox installer which is the point when, unless I'm mistaken, the "To protect your PC we recommend only running Microsoft verified apps" allegedly appears.
- haunter 5y ago
  I did install and nothing happend like OP explained but I can record that too
  - kemotep 5y ago
    If you are on the latest version of Windows 10 there is a section under Settings > Apps & Features > Installing Apps. You likely have “Allow Apps from Anywhere” selected whereas the person in the posted tweet has the “Warn Me…” option enabled.
gkbrk 5y ago
Your recording shows the first issue from the OP (Bing telling you that "you don't need to download Firefox"). You haven't experienced the rest of the issues because in your recording you haven't actually tried to install and use Firefox.
- haunter 5y ago
  I did install and nothing happend like OP explained but I can record that too
e2le 5y ago
Simply because you didn't experience it for yourself does not mean it's not real. It's proprietary software, it's not like you can easily take a look under the hood. A few days ago, for the first time in years, I tried installing Windows. Booting Windows for the first time was shocking, and I didn't realize how bad things had become. I experienced the same banner warning trying to dissuade me from installing Firefox among many other annoyances (focus stealing, missing drivers, Windows update taking far longer than it should, adverts, just to name a few). People give Linux a bad rap, but holy shit, using Windows for the first time in years was a truly miserable experience. Not once did I feel like it was a tool there to help me, it felt hostile.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  I think windows 10 is a very good system spoilt by a thin veneer of hostility masquerading as 'lifestyle' and 'recommendations', and liberal dollops of confused attempts at updating the UX while trying not to take too many risks.
  - cardamomo 5y ago
    What do you like about the underlying system, once you peel back that veneer?
    - yakubin 5y ago
      I like: 1. VirtualAlloc: 1.1: separation of reserving memory from committing it, thus making overcommit unnecessary, when you want to have memory arenas and reserve a large contiguous chunk of virtual address space, but commit it (so tell the system that you actually want this virtual memory mapped to some physical memory), when you need it. So you can grow your arenas as you need more memory, without worrying that you may not have enough virtual space due to fragmentation, and without relying on invisible things like lazily committing memory on page-faults as long as your program doesn't have any bugs which make it touch that memory in advance and thus make the bugs go unnoticed silently and increase memory use 1.2: ability to implement a circular buffer[1] with a contiguous view instead of head + tail parts; thus making it possible to pass your ring buffer to functions which expect a normal array, and also avoid branches and complexity in code operating on the buffer. Generally, VirtualAlloc > mmap IMO. 2. Behaviour in OOM conditions. Linux can become completely unresponsive for minutes. Windows is usually responsive enough to kill the offending applications. 3. GUI apps have reasonable baseline for performance of GUI. On Windows it's expected that watching YouTube/Netflix you won't see screen tearing. On Linux screen tearing with VOD in browsers is completely unsurprising. 4. Powershell is nice for a whole variety of reasons. 5. CreateProcess > fork [2] 6. MSVC, unlike GCC and Clang, doesn't come with guns for your children when you unknowingly dare trigger UB. [1]: <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/memoryapi/nf-memoryapi-virtualalloc2#examples https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/memoryapi...> [2]: <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2019/04/fork-hotos19.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2019/0...> (Posted from Linux btw.)
Santosh83 5y ago
I get the banner notification mentioned in OP's post too. It happens through bing on MS Edge, but does not happen through bing on Firefox. https://imgur.com/a/SOgqBW0 https://imgur.com/a/SOgqBW0
- bspammer 5y ago
  The screen recording they posted also includes that banner…
FR10 5y ago
It actually happened to me yesterday while I was installing Firefox on an old laptop I have lying around. I think it triggered the pop up when I ran the firefox installer or when I clicked on download not sure.
vondur 5y ago
What build of Windows are you running?
Galanwe 5y ago
Installed chrome on a new Windows 11 2 weeks ago and had the same pop-ups than the twit.
mekoka 5y ago
> Well just tried it. Edge > opened Bing > "Firefox" > Click on first Firefox hit > Download. And nothing like that happened. Perhaps you should give your recording another watch. It clearly shows the "There's no need to download a new web browser" message box above bing's results. I originally thought the word "download" in "firefox download" could be the contextual trigger for that behavior, regardless of browser. But your recording clearly shows that you searched only for "firefox", with no other context, and still had bing giving you the message, which confirms that they're singling out Firefox as a threat. Given the passive suggestion in their message that Firefox is slow, insecure, or costly in time or money, I'd say the outrage is justified.
ChoGGi 5y ago
Nobody said Microsoft rolled this out everywhere, could be you just didn't get "lucky". Unless you're saying that person that experienced this is lying or misunderstood what happened?
paxys 5y ago
Unless you are accusing the author of making up a fake story and screenshots, the fact that it isn't rolled out to 100% of users doesn't discount their experience.
hda2 5y ago
> Well just tried it. Edge > opened Bing > "Firefox" > Click on first Firefox hit > Download. And nothing like that happened. No pop up or nothing. And I'm using a Windows 10 PC with an MS account logged in for Office365 + Gamepass Mozilla was caught "studying" (read, spying) on a tiny portion of its user-base who have explicitly opted out of telemetry. The fact that most weren't spied upon doesn't mean that it didn't happen. This is what I don't like about people who make misinformed statements on HN.

pete_nic 5y ago

Agree, I just downloaded Firefox onto my windows PC this week, experienced none of these things, and the process was really easy. I am in the US, so that could be an explanation.

haunter 5y ago
I'm in Hungary, Europe so not even an EU thing
- jauco 5y ago
  I got that message recently when I downloaded chrome on a windows machine. (Maybe two weeks ago) I’m within the eu
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  Hungary is in the EU. You're there, but you didn't know?
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    (I am not the downvoter; misreading things happens to me a lot as well...) I think u/haunter meant that it's, thus, not an EU-wide thing, not that Hungary is not EU
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      Oh, OK. I did misread it. My bad.
kyleamazza 5y ago
That's so strange, I've experienced all of these things on multiple set ups over the past year+ (based in the US). I wonder what the difference is on why some users do/don't get this...
- throwaways85989 5y ago
  I expect that pcs of developers are excluded from spam harassment to prevent the only group who is capable of backlash and user-defense to engage in user-defense. I conclude that you work with customer & privat person pcs while most of us here do not. Or are just most of the times on mac and nux.

BiteCode_dev 5y ago

A/B testing strikes again. It should be illegal at this point. It renders googling and rtfm useless, frustrates people, wastes time, and makes having online conversations about a problem difficult. Plus we are not even sure it results in improvements in the long run.

bathtub365 5y ago
It’s also a form of psychological experimentation.
- wombatpm 5y ago
  Interesting. If it is indeed experimentation on human subjects then then they are in violation of tons of laws and regulations around informed consent. Makes me wonder what’s in the click through agreement
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    The self-imposed rules by universities with IRBs etc. often aren't backed by laws.
Bajeezus 5y ago
I think calling for banning of A/B testing is a bit of an overreaction, don’t you?
- MerelyMortal 5y ago
  Not OP, but: No. Your comment feels like gaslighting, considering you already know the answer to the question since OP is the one who suggested banning it.
  - alar44 5y ago

xg15 5y ago

> This is what I don't like about social media sites like HN either where only the rage will reach the front page What is your point? That all those popups were photoshopped and don't actually exist? Or what kind of headline about this topic would you like to see on HN? "Windows sometimes does not show its nag screens when you install Firefox"?

sudosysgen 5y ago

The things in the article happened to me. There is nothing wrong with the article or the response to it. It's not fake, since that's what you're suggesting.

dariusj18 5y ago

What edition do you have, Home/Pro?

abnry 5y ago

I think this only occurs on Windows 11. I had a similar experience as described in the tweets.

dagw 5y ago

Had you ever installed Firefox/Chrome on that machine before? Based on my unscientific observations, it only happened the first time I tried to install a new browser after a clean install. After clicking through that popup once, it didn't come back when installing/updating any subsequent browsers.

Mordisquitos 5y ago

I must be missing something, because from what I can tell your screen recording does not in any way counter the claims being made in the tweet. Firstly, you do indeed see the "There's no need to download a new web browser" message on Bing. Secondly, the recording finishes just before we see the Firefox installer which is the point when, unless I'm mistaken, the "To protect your PC we recommend only running Microsoft verified apps" allegedly appears.

haunter 5y ago
I did install and nothing happend like OP explained but I can record that too
- kemotep 5y ago
  If you are on the latest version of Windows 10 there is a section under Settings > Apps & Features > Installing Apps. You likely have “Allow Apps from Anywhere” selected whereas the person in the posted tweet has the “Warn Me…” option enabled.

gkbrk 5y ago

Your recording shows the first issue from the OP (Bing telling you that "you don't need to download Firefox"). You haven't experienced the rest of the issues because in your recording you haven't actually tried to install and use Firefox.

haunter 5y ago
I did install and nothing happend like OP explained but I can record that too

e2le 5y ago

Simply because you didn't experience it for yourself does not mean it's not real. It's proprietary software, it's not like you can easily take a look under the hood. A few days ago, for the first time in years, I tried installing Windows. Booting Windows for the first time was shocking, and I didn't realize how bad things had become. I experienced the same banner warning trying to dissuade me from installing Firefox among many other annoyances (focus stealing, missing drivers, Windows update taking far longer than it should, adverts, just to name a few). People give Linux a bad rap, but holy shit, using Windows for the first time in years was a truly miserable experience. Not once did I feel like it was a tool there to help me, it felt hostile.

FridayoLeary 5y ago
I think windows 10 is a very good system spoilt by a thin veneer of hostility masquerading as 'lifestyle' and 'recommendations', and liberal dollops of confused attempts at updating the UX while trying not to take too many risks.
- cardamomo 5y ago
  What do you like about the underlying system, once you peel back that veneer?
  - yakubin 5y ago
    I like: 1. VirtualAlloc: 1.1: separation of reserving memory from committing it, thus making overcommit unnecessary, when you want to have memory arenas and reserve a large contiguous chunk of virtual address space, but commit it (so tell the system that you actually want this virtual memory mapped to some physical memory), when you need it. So you can grow your arenas as you need more memory, without worrying that you may not have enough virtual space due to fragmentation, and without relying on invisible things like lazily committing memory on page-faults as long as your program doesn't have any bugs which make it touch that memory in advance and thus make the bugs go unnoticed silently and increase memory use 1.2: ability to implement a circular buffer[1] with a contiguous view instead of head + tail parts; thus making it possible to pass your ring buffer to functions which expect a normal array, and also avoid branches and complexity in code operating on the buffer. Generally, VirtualAlloc > mmap IMO. 2. Behaviour in OOM conditions. Linux can become completely unresponsive for minutes. Windows is usually responsive enough to kill the offending applications. 3. GUI apps have reasonable baseline for performance of GUI. On Windows it's expected that watching YouTube/Netflix you won't see screen tearing. On Linux screen tearing with VOD in browsers is completely unsurprising. 4. Powershell is nice for a whole variety of reasons. 5. CreateProcess > fork [2] 6. MSVC, unlike GCC and Clang, doesn't come with guns for your children when you unknowingly dare trigger UB. [1]: <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/memoryapi/nf-memoryapi-virtualalloc2#examples https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/memoryapi...> [2]: <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2019/04/fork-hotos19.pdf https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/uploads/prod/2019/0...> (Posted from Linux btw.)

Santosh83 5y ago

I get the banner notification mentioned in OP's post too. It happens through bing on MS Edge, but does not happen through bing on Firefox. https://imgur.com/a/SOgqBW0 https://imgur.com/a/SOgqBW0

bspammer 5y ago
The screen recording they posted also includes that banner…

FR10 5y ago

It actually happened to me yesterday while I was installing Firefox on an old laptop I have lying around. I think it triggered the pop up when I ran the firefox installer or when I clicked on download not sure.

vondur 5y ago

What build of Windows are you running?

Galanwe 5y ago

Installed chrome on a new Windows 11 2 weeks ago and had the same pop-ups than the twit.

mekoka 5y ago

> Well just tried it. Edge > opened Bing > "Firefox" > Click on first Firefox hit > Download. And nothing like that happened. Perhaps you should give your recording another watch. It clearly shows the "There's no need to download a new web browser" message box above bing's results. I originally thought the word "download" in "firefox download" could be the contextual trigger for that behavior, regardless of browser. But your recording clearly shows that you searched only for "firefox", with no other context, and still had bing giving you the message, which confirms that they're singling out Firefox as a threat. Given the passive suggestion in their message that Firefox is slow, insecure, or costly in time or money, I'd say the outrage is justified.

ChoGGi 5y ago

Nobody said Microsoft rolled this out everywhere, could be you just didn't get "lucky". Unless you're saying that person that experienced this is lying or misunderstood what happened?

paxys 5y ago

Unless you are accusing the author of making up a fake story and screenshots, the fact that it isn't rolled out to 100% of users doesn't discount their experience.

hda2 5y ago

> Well just tried it. Edge > opened Bing > "Firefox" > Click on first Firefox hit > Download. And nothing like that happened. No pop up or nothing. And I'm using a Windows 10 PC with an MS account logged in for Office365 + Gamepass Mozilla was caught "studying" (read, spying) on a tiny portion of its user-base who have explicitly opted out of telemetry. The fact that most weren't spied upon doesn't mean that it didn't happen. This is what I don't like about people who make misinformed statements on HN.