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If this is fair and legal, why not have Google do the same things? You're using Chrome and on the website to buy Office? How about an injected ad that says tha

• giobox 4y ago
  On the contrary, search ad revenue is but a relatively small part of Microsoft's overall business. If you want to place bets search is a critical battleground for AI (Microsoft/Satya clearly seem to), it makes sense to attack them here. For google, search revenue largely is the business. Every point Microsoft can take out of Google's search marketshare hurts Google far more than the reverse. Attacking Google's browser share will also reduce the number of people with Google search as the default. Forcing Google to adopt more LLM/AI features will also significantly increase their cost per search query in the near term, if Microsoft can meaningfully change consumer expectations of search. These LLM queries are much more expensive to service today than a traditional search. This is all the more interesting because for the first time ever Google have wobbled in their dominance of search, there might actually be an opportunity here for Microsoft. That was almost unthinkable a couple of years ago. I personally don't see how this is any better or worse really than the billions of dollars Google pay Apple every year to secure the iOS default search engine setting, eliminating vast amounts of rival marketshare in a single move.
  • c4nc3ld 4y ago
    “Search” is not the battleground. Staying in business is. MS lost phones, and desktop is on the way out. Gadget nerd flame wars of 00-10s are over. The next gen is tired of that and see “computing” as a mathematics not a x86; the future does not care about past memes. MS needs a novel long term solution to iterate profiting from. They have none. Until a laptops hardware is inevitably powerful enough to train whatever model needed, we’re still going to be living with these obnoxious FAANG size tech companies as a social daycare
  • loa_in_ 4y ago
    But it is fair and legal.
• poolopolopolo 4y ago
  Except that chrome and edge are the same thing for the most part, meanwhile ChromeOS desktop is a piece of crap not supported by any major enterprise software.
• airstrike 4y ago
  I don't think ChromeOS is losing any sales because customers don't know "how good" it is The analogy between people and Grizzly bears fails because Microsoft's market cap today is $1.8 trillion... Sure, I went on Google, not Bing, to check that $1.8T figure—Google may very well be the king of search, but Microsoft is the king of countless other products
• cm2187 4y ago
  I don't particularly like edge but I'm happy someone is poking the bear. Chrome dominance is bad and is too much power in the hand of one company. Competition and diversity of browsers is good. And yes, I am getting "login with google" modal on half of the websites I visit even though I don't even have a google account, don't use chrome, and don't want touch anything google.
  • flohofwoe 4y ago
    Edge is just Chrome(ium) with a Microsoft skin. A single dominating browser engine is bad, but switching to Edge doesn't change a thing.
    • berniedurfee 4y ago
      Microsoft being the key term there.
    • joshl32532 4y ago
      The problem with Chrome dominating is it makes Google ecosystem dominates. With Chrome, you can sync your history with your Google account, it pushes you to use Google services, sends analytics to Google etc. Edge, even with it's Chromium engine, fixes all that by offering Microsoft's ecosystem. So yes, changing to Edge does change a lot. And Google will fight to keep Chrome's lead, 100%.
      • hakfoo 4y ago
        The problem is that even Microsoft with their infinite resources has to play catch up. They have to devote developer hours to removing Google-advantaging features instead of adding their own custom goodies. And even if said goodies take off, they're going to have a hard time getting them merged back to "root Blink" and into the rest of the browser ecosystem.
      • emodendroket 4y ago
        > With Chrome, you can sync your history with your Google account, it pushes you to use Google services, sends analytics to Google etc. Yeah that's why I like using it
• danaris 4y ago
  If Microsoft and Google get into a war over who can be the most obnoxious to people using the other's stuff, that sounds like great advertisement for Apple to me... "Use Safari! It won't yell at you for daring to visit a competitor's website!"
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • gretch 4y ago
    There’s no reason why Apple can’t be pulled into a stupid war. Imagine going to the iPad product page on Edge and being met with “hey you should buy a surface tablet instead”. Apple then retaliates with similar tactics.
  • pcblues 4y ago
    And where will it show that ad? Whenever you use their devices to visit Google and MS sites, of course :)
  • goosedragons 4y ago
    Yeah, Apple isn't immune to this crap either: https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/TRYTHENEWSAFARI.html https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/TRYTHENEWSAFARI.html
  • tcheard 4y ago
    No Apple just don't even allow you to install a non Webkit browser from the app store on their phones. Why waste time advertising on competitor's websites when you can just stop them from using competitors altogether (or at least require them to use you at the same time)
    • someNameIG 4y ago
      That's only the rendering engine, Chrome and Edge would still have all their tracking, marketing, default search built into their browsers on iOS.
  • eertami 4y ago
• swarnie 4y ago
  > says that Google docs is free and just as good. Because it would be referred to the trade commission for false advertising is my guess.
• eli 4y ago
  They already push Chrome on you if you’re accessing a google property with Edge.
  • Wowfunhappy 4y ago
    Well, yes, because it's Google's website. It would be quite different if Google's browser started modifying Microsoft's websites, as Microsoft is Google's.
    • Yujf 4y ago
      It is not modifying the website. It is microsofts browser that shows you stuff above the website.... I think both are absolutely disgusting
      • wolpoli 4y ago
        What Microsoft has done here is certainly an escalation of what Google had been doing in recent years. Perhaps Google shouldn't have started being so aggressive with the popups to begin with. Yes, I think both are absolutely disgusting too.
      • Wowfunhappy 4y ago
        I take your point that it isn't literally modifying the html of the web page—but if it was, wouldn't the result look exactly like this? Visually, the banner does not look like a part of the browser chrome, Microsoft put it in the web page's space. That area belongs to the website, browsers aren't supposed to mess with it!
        • justinclift 4y ago
          Wonder where that banner shows up in the DOM, in the dev tools console... ?
          • Wowfunhappy 4y ago
            To be clear, I suspect it doesn't show up in dev tools, presumably it's rendered as part of the browser UI. But visually it doesn't look that way!
• knodi123 4y ago
  > Then again, I've read that 4% of Americans believe they could win a fight with a Grizzly bear. I bet I could. Maybe on a good day. Not, like, 9 times out of 10, but maybe 1 or 2. Sure, he outranks me in muscles and claws, but I can out-think him, and really, isn't our brain our most powerful muscle? Much like how the powerful and crafty coyote is more than capable of catching a roadrunner, even though the bird is ostensibly faster.
  • JenrHywy 4y ago
    There's an interview with John Danaher talking about if his student, and widely considered the best grappler of all time, Gordan Ryan, could compete with a grizzly or even a chimp. It's a fun listen.
    • ethbr0 4y ago
      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W58iM69waLo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=W58iM69waLo
  • kill_nate_kill 4y ago
    Wile E. Coyote's main strength was his DoD-like blank cheque spending ability at the defense contractor Acme Corp. His access to advanced technology was the super power that ultimately leads to his downfall.
    • ARandomerDude 4y ago
      > His access to advanced technology was the super power that ultimately leads to his downfall. That, and a crafty bird. So if the bear has a roadrunner the parent commenter's odds of winning are greatly reduced.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • gear54rus 4y ago
    Can't tell if you're serious haha
• kevingadd 4y ago
  Google has been doing this for years to Firefox and Edge users
  • proto-n 4y ago
    On their own websites, which is a huge difference
    • Spivak 4y ago
      On their own browser, on their own operating system. I’m not saying you’re wrong that what MS is doing is bad but this isn’t a very persuasive argument.
      • proto-n 4y ago
        I think it is a very good argument. I'm really taken aback by seemingly everyone playing dumb. Maybe I'm dumb. I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. Displaying whatever you want on your website is an established thing. It might not be a very friendly thing (unskippable ads, etc.), but it's ok. The user visits you for what you have to say, and you say it. Going to the candy store with your car and hearing the owner tell you about his new candy, or even his opinion about your car, is fine. But having your car tell you, unprompted, not to go to this candy store, but rather to the one owned by the car brand, is nuts. It's not okay. How on earth can people equate these two things?
        • Spivak 4y ago
          > But having your car tell you, unprompted, not to go to this candy store, but rather to the one owned by the car brand Because that's just an ad, literally the same as any other ad we've been conditioned to put up with for our entire lives. Drawing the line here but not "$company's thing advertising it's unrelated product with 1st party ad space" is silly. Every company shamelessly does this, you're just used to it. This the 1st party equivalent of your competitor buying an ad for your company's name on Google because they're an alternative, the whole industry spies everything I do online chasing this kind of ad targeting. Everyone in this thread is made really uncomfortable because of the stupid digital fiefdoms we've created and complete lack of user protection we have and are now realizing how little control we have over the previously somewhat neutral staple apps we've grown to rely on. But there's nothing different about this, or your car for that matter. This is the conclusion of "it's their platform blah blah."
• slim 4y ago
  I think you're not agressive enough. Why not hijack the whole page? How about you go to bing.com and find google search instead.
  • hajile 4y ago
    Interestingly, the Google download page is copyright by Google. Microsoft changing that page for their profit is 100% NOT fair use. Google should simply sue them for all those counts of willful copyright infringement at $180k each.
    • 1123581321 4y ago
      I don’t believe browser rendering is considered an act of publishing or distributing, is it? Either by the browser developer or by the computer user? I don’t see a mechanism of infringement. It would be different if Microsoft hosted a fake download page for Chrome on its server.
      • hajile 4y ago
        MS had to add content to the page then render that new content. That would count as a derivative work which would be covered by copyright. Normally, when a user does this themselves, it isn't for commercial purposes which puts it in a different category (plus, the most popular modification involves stuff from loading onto a device rather than modifying the stuff that was loaded). This is far different in intent.
        • ethbr0 4y ago
          By this logic, no one would be able to serve banner ads on top of copywritten content. Plenty of existing and historical malware browsers and plugins have injected ads. Furthermore, because it's a full page width banner, it's not entirely clear whether Edge is rending something next to Google's page (i.e. in MS' browser) or in Google's page (i.e. commingled with their content).
          • 4y ago
• zamadatix 4y ago
  The Lizardman's constant strikes again.
  • cpeterso 4y ago
    TIL: The Lizardman’s Constant is 4%, supposedly how many poll takers will purposely choose a joke or bogus answer. 4% is how many of Americans believe lizardmen are running the Earth. https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and-reptilian-muslim-climatologists-from-mars/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
  • throwaway14356 4y ago
    bears are fast but humans can run much longer, eventually I would catch up with him
    • TheCoelacanth 4y ago
      And that helps you how? It's a fight not a race.
• BizarreByte 4y ago
  > If this is fair and legal, why not have Google do the same things? Google has never injected an ad from what I know, but they’re bad actors too. - They push chrome when using Google via Edge - If you login from Edge or IE the security warning email includes a huge ad for Chrome, or at least it did. - On iOS they refuse to let you simply open links from YouTube in safari. They always prompt about what browser you want to use and ignore the default. The prompt is obnoxious, designed to make you misclick, and the app never remembers your choice.
  • lolinder 4y ago
    I can't believe I'm defending Google, but all of those things are on their own properties. Aggressive and user-hostile, yes, but they're not abusing their ownership of the browser to modify their competitor's site.
    • BizarreByte 4y ago
      I won’t defend user hostile actions regardless of where it’s done. Google is a bad actor when it comes to abusing their position, so is MS. I don’t however think there’s a strong argument to be made that MS is modifying the website unless they MITM it. It’s well within their right to make their browser display something they want it to in a specific situation.
    • World177 4y ago
      Google blocks ads from their competitors. [1] In the article, they state it’s because those companies are not following their standard, and are using too many resources. (Which they claim negatively impact device performance through metrics like battery performance) In comparison, Microsoft implied in their advertisement that their browser is safer than Google’s because it has the “trust of Microsoft.” [1] https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chrome.html https://blog.chromium.org/2020/05/resource-heavy-ads-in-chro...
• technothrasher 4y ago
  > Then again, I've read that 4% of Americans believe they could win a fight with a Grizzly bear. I assume you're talking about a bare-handed fight? If we can use tools and have time to prep, I'd say the odds shift pretty handily in the human's favor. Anyway, I dunno about a bear, but the guy who invented Gunite managed to strangle a leopard to death in a bare-handed fight. Although, if I recall, he had shot it before it jumped him, and it did take him a few months to recover from the wounds he suffered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Akeley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Akeley
• causality0 4y ago
  Microsoft has what Urban Dictionary would call "chronic Small Dick Energy". It's why they constantly erode user agency and do bizarrely counterproductive things like putting ads in the file explorer. It's not financial, it's the culture. They don't like you, and they want you to know they think the people who use their operating system are stupid.
• anothernewdude 4y ago
  Fuck, why have browsers display the pages at all? They should all redirect to Bing and Chrome, unless its a page their companies approve of.
• jmvoodoo 4y ago
  The place to hit them would be azure. Target each azure service url with an ad for the same service in GCP and the savings they would realize if they switched. Double down on diagnostics and error pages, and adjust the messaging during outages to highlight GCP uptimes.
  • waffleiron 4y ago
    The type of people on those pages would likely switch to Firefox if they did that.
• glandium 4y ago
  > I've read that 4% of Americans believe they could win a fight with a Grizzly bear. 14% believe they could win a fight with a Kangaroo. 8% with a Gorilla, an Elephant or a Lion, and for the Grizzly bear, it's actually 6%.
  • rootusrootus 4y ago
    To be honest, those sound like really great numbers. The bar is 20%. Generally you can find right about 1 in 5 people that believe X, where X is anything you can think of. Anything around 20% or under isn't newsworthy at all.
  • midoridensha 4y ago
    I'm sure I could easily win a fight with any of these animals. Assuming, of course, I have a large gun, and enough distance between myself and the animal that it can't hurt me before I shoot it.
  • mabbo 4y ago
    I thought it was 6% but my brain said "No, you're inflating that number. There can't be that many crazy people" but THERE ARE.
• deleted 4y ago
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• Sakos 4y ago
  You realize that Chrome only became the dominant browser because Google abused their search monopoly, right? 99% of average users don't know bupkiss about browsers, or what the difference is supposed to be. Unless antitrust laws are finally thrown at Google for what they did (and continue to do), I'm not going to criticize Microsoft for employing a similar strategy to break Google's unfair monopoly. People here are insanely hypocritical for complaining about Microsoft but treating Google like they're innocent.
  • joenathanone 4y ago
    No, Chrome was amazing when it was released, at the time Firefox was slow with an aging architecture and MS was still pushing Internet Explorer.
    • Sakos 4y ago
      That's the narrative tech guys tell themselves because they don't care about anticompetitive behavior unless it's a company they don't like. I worked with normal users for years. Half of them weren't aware of what browser they used, much less why.
      • Mayzie 4y ago
        Anecdotally, I clearly remember when Chrome came out and it was _vastly_ more performant than any other browser, owed to its one-tab-one-process model. I tried it, enjoyed it so I switched from Firefox, and switched all my family from Firefox.
      • robswc 4y ago
        The "average" user just knows "chrome is fast" because for the last 10 years, that's what they've heard. Even a lot of older people I talk to seem to use chrome. This is especially so for the younger generation. There were a few years there of mainstream "I posted this from internet explorer" with a delayed piece of news or reaction. I'm not a chrome fan either.
      • lolinder 4y ago
• disgruntledphd2 4y ago
  > If this is fair and legal, why not have Google do the same things? Chrome had an ad on the google homepage and in search results for years and years, so MS are copying Google here.
  • 11mariom 4y ago
    How can you compare ad on their website vs injecting ads on other websites? It's just adware. No one would make a big deal if MSEdge recommendation appeared on Bing or other MS related websites.
• notSupplied 4y ago
  Because with search, the competition is really just "one click away", but when it comes to changing your office suite, or operating system, not so much. What MS is doing is far more effective than if Google did the same thing in return.