4 ms·
> Now I increasingly see it as collaborating with a hostile and adversarial marketing giant. I'm genuinely stunned that they're still getting away with it: flo
by tentacleuno 3y ago
> Now I increasingly see it as collaborating with a hostile and adversarial marketing giant.
I'm genuinely stunned that they're still getting away with it: flooding the user with "switch to Edge!"[0] popups at every opportunity is begging for legal trouble; they are very clearly using the presence of their OS to boost Edge market share.
I'm sure you're aware, but that's just one of the ways they force Edge on the end-user. As of now, they've made it harder to change browsers[1] (which was then reverted), forced Search[2] and Settings (among others) links to open in Edge with Bing, deliberately broke software that undoes this[3] (EdgeDeflector was later abandoned[6]), added full-screen interstitial adverts for Edge[4] and plenty more.
Once the media gets wind of the new changes, the most common backpedal is that "this feature is just being tested for Insiders". If they weren't intent upon rolling it out, why would they write the code for the Insiders branch in the first place? A very poor excuse. This is not to mention that most nags are in stable now.
All this is monopolistic at best, and downright illegal at worst.
With a bit more time, I could probably find more of these. I definitely remember the occassional Edge popup nag when you were using Firefox or Chrome, wherein the nag would proudly proclaim that Edge is much lighter on resources. EDIT: Found it[5].
[0]: https://news.thewindowsclub.com/windows-10-warns-users-to-use-edge-instead-of-another-browsers-93174/ https://news.thewindowsclub.com/windows-10-warns-users-to-us...
[0.1]: https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-says-its-own-edge-browser-is-more-trustworthy-than-so-2008-google-chrome/ https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-says-its-own-edge-brow...
[0.2]: https://www.gadgets360.com/laptops/news/microsoft-windows-10-edge-browser-bing-search-engine-default-pop-ups-user-report-how-to-disable-2453089 https://www.gadgets360.com/laptops/news/microsoft-windows-10...
[0.3]: https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/chrome_bing_microsoft_pop_ups/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/chrome_bing_microsoft...
[0.4]: https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-windows-10-google-chrome-fight https://www.theverge.com/23935029/microsoft-edge-forced-wind... (List of just some nags.)
[0.5]: https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/f0psu6/this_must_be_the_most_cringing_suggestion_text_i/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Windows10/comments/f0psu6/this_must... (Inline advert for Edge in Search.)
[0.6]: https://imgur.com/vgrZaEp https://imgur.com/vgrZaEp (Image of a different popup in Windows Search encouraging a switch to Edge.)
[0.7]: https://www.windowslatest.com/2020/09/30/windows-search-notification-for-edge-default-browser/ https://www.windowslatest.com/2020/09/30/windows-search-noti...
[1]: https://www.howtogeek.com/744102/windows-11-makes-it-hard-to-change-your-default-web-browser/ https://www.howtogeek.com/744102/windows-11-makes-it-hard-to...
[1.1]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/3/22815209/microsoft-windows-11-default-browser-button-changes https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/3/22815209/microsoft-window...
[2]: https://superuser.com/questions/1338909/how-to-change-the-browser-used-for-web-results-in-windows-10-search https://superuser.com/questions/1338909/how-to-change-the-br...
[3]: https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/15/22782802/microsoft-block-edgedeflector-windows-11 https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/15/22782802/microsoft-block...
[3.1]: https://www.ghacks.net/2021/11/16/this-simple-script-will-make-windows-11-start-menu-web-searches-open-in-your-default-browser/ https://www.ghacks.net/2021/11/16/this-simple-script-will-ma...
[4]: https://www.techradar.com/news/think-youre-annoying-windows-10-users-are-being-subjected-to-full-screen-ads-for-microsoft-edge https://www.techradar.com/news/think-youre-annoying-windows-... (A full-screen advert to switch to Edge. I believe this was after an update restarted the machine.)
[5]: https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/windows-10-anti-chrome-alert https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/windows-10-anti-chrome-al... (Popup of Windows 10 claiming Edge saves battery-life; this is shown when Google Chrome is open.)
[6]: https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector (Abandoned on Mar 23, 2022.)
(Apologies for the link farm, but I believe it's important to remember what they've done so far.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zozbot234 3y ago> they are very clearly using the presence of their OS to boost Edge market share. They went through an antitrust trial for this in the 1990s, so they can't get in trouble again - it would be double jeopardy.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoThey didn't go through a trial in the 1990s for their anticompetitive conduct in the 2020s. They can be tried now for what they're doing now. The previous trial is not a "get out of jail free forevermore" card for the repeating the same conduct.
- PoignardAzur 3y agoThat's not how double jeopardy works. You don't get to rob a a store second time because you did jail time the first time you robbed it.