- Mozilla has issued a warning about Microsoft’s design practices, claiming that the company uses harmful design tactics to influence users to switch to its Edge browser.
- The report highlights how Microsoft interrupts the installation process of Google Chrome on Windows devices, promoting the security and privacy benefits of Edge.
- Mozilla calls for regulatory action to restore browser choice and competition across major platforms.
Archive link: https://archive.ph/koBY6
Chrome
Windows
Well there’s your problem!
Can the EU just Thanos snap Microsoft out of existence with a quadrillion euro fine?
That would be a sure fire way to get Microsoft to pull completely out of Europe leaving thousands of companies without support and a heafty unpaid fine setting on the table.
It would actually be beneficial for Microsoft to abandon the server farms and offices leaving workers with an email stating the situation and their new job status.
You think Microsoft has no assets in Europe? Asset seizure is a sure fire way to get paid when companies refuse to cooperate.
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Oh no, it’s the consequences of my actions by putting all my eggs in one basket and giving a corporation incredible leverage.
Maybe they should derisk their infrastructure then…
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No, they do have assets in Europe.
Indeed - about every 2nd EU politician is a Microsoft asset. ^^
You think they make no profits in Europe? Why would they be here if they didn’t?
I think it’s fair to assume their profits are less than 1 quadrillion euros
Heh, didn’t take that number literally I guess
I would love the mayhem that would ensue from Microsoft leaving Europe completely. Dumb fuckers in all those incompetent IT departments that have wasted countless hours of mine because they don’t understand jack shit of what they’re doing would be having strokes, and us geeks would be having a field day keeping essential stuff alive, like medical technology and power plants.
google as well, while we’re at it.
Here!
So Microsoft just does the same shit they’ve done a hundred times before and have been penalized for a hundred times before.
Give them a few billion dollars fine.
Jail those managers that made this decision
THAT will make sure they will start behaving. If not, it’s all just “please don’t” and Microsoft being “suuuuurely we would never ever!”
Fuck Microsoft
have been penalized for a hundred times before
That’s where you’re wrong. The last time they shoveled their browser at us in clearly anti-competitive ways they were found guilty and then … nothing. Essential software or some such, and nothing.
So no, they haven’t been penalized; not on their Sherman offence, and here they go repeating it.
Hammer them.
Microsoft really wants someone to remind it of these days:
There are talks in the EU with the DMA about bringing this back.
Yup, they already forced Google to announce that they’ll add such a choice screen for the search engine and web browser on Android: https://www.neowin.net/news/google-will-add-new-search-and-browser-choice-screens-for-android-phones-in-europe/
It’s only a matter of time before Microsoft does so too.
I don’t remember that. Where is it from?
Microsoft never liked competing browsers (not even in the pre-IE6 era when all they had was crap), so it’s hard to believe it came from them.
EU fined the sh1t out of them, and somebody in the regulatory body at the time realized that was not enough. So they were ordered to present the user with a choice of a browser during the OS install.
What I really want to know is why and how it went away.
sh1t
You can say “shit” here, nobody is going to be a cunt about it.
No, but apparently people are going to be a cunt about it if one chooses not to say it.
Because it’s looks stupid to use the word whilst censoring it, say it or don’t say it. No point in trying to pretend you’re not saying it.
I’d say I got a good habit. Too much of the internet randomly filters “obscenity”. Whenever that happens it seems the devs are too fvkin damb to properly implement it.
Its verry much a good habit. However, You are free to speak your mind here. The fact you use
sh1t(falsely) implies the idea thatyourthe community is not allowed to speakyourtheir mind. So people got mad 🫤.EDIT: grammar / clarity
you’re* not allowed.
“Your under arrest for misuse of grammar” BANG! Oof! Ya got me! 🔫🤕💀
Yeah god damn the censor shit, even on fucking picture, they censor the swear words to fucking hell by scribing over it
What I really want to know is why and how it went away.
The move was in place because of the fear that IE was becoming a monopoly. Now Edge is very very far from the most popular browser, and Google Chrome is looking like the overwhelmingly dominant player, there’s no reason to make MS prompt people to download rival products anymore.
INAL but my understanding was a lot of the fines and penalties hung on IE being part of the OS. I think it was the update functionality but don’t quote me.
So with some legal technicalities, later versions of windows made it “not” part of the OS just a bundled application. A legal distinction without meaning but it meant they didn’t need to do these things anymore.
The great joke is they are making the same mistakes again with edge, unfortunately the American justice system is a shambles these days so it’s probably down to the EU to take the moral high ground.
Microsoft appear to be exposed to monopolistic penalties in several markets currently: browsers, AI / search, teams and office come to mind (although competitors are lacking, here)
INAL
IANAL actually
Could be I’m Not A Lawyer. We call that an “IANAL Contraction”
I know what it means, but everytime I think it sounds like screaming a new Apple product.
iAnal, now that’d get the Apple fanboys going.
Honestly surprised Opera and Mozilla don’t strike again together
Opera gave up a long time ago when they abandoned Presto. Today it is owned by some Chinese company, and they are just chasing the latest buzzwords, crypto, AI, you name it.
I like that part of firefox’s summary was that it’s free. Uh, yeah, they all are. Thanks Mozilla!
Well, its not proprietary
It is the only Free software in that dialog though.
No, they are all available at no cost. Only Firefox is free software.
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There’s a name for free software with proprietary bits added: Proprietary software
Opera originally wasn’t free.
Also, while it is chromium based, Vivaldi is excellent and is essentially a bunch of old Opera team members.
Again, install Linux already and be done with this shit.
That’s always so easy to say, isn’t it?
Far easier to do too. I did one of each last month and there’s no question that the Windows setup experience is terrible in comparison.
The software and hardware I’m using won’t work on Linux.
And that’s the part that everyone ignores. They’ll say open a VM or use wine or there’s an open source alternative. But if I’m going to run native Linux just to open a windows VM to run the primary software I use, what’s the point? I’m not bashing on either side. I use Windows when I need and, and go back to Linux when I’m finished, but that’s because that’s the solution that works for me.
File the required issues with those manufacturers then. Support for Linux is trivially easy to add compared to Microsoft: the kernel sources and stuff to create your modules are right there.
That works until they explicitly say they won’t support Linux, eg. Adobe, Bungie, GoXLR, etc
Plenty of companies know that it’s trivial to implement. They just simply do not care, nor will they ever care.
Linux community arrogance is to deny the device driver issues and think Apple is fine, when the reason Apple thrives is because they don’t have open hardware like Linux, BSD, Windows…
Hardware companies are rarely held account for their absent support of Linux - some campaigns have come and gone, but in the end Linux users tend to arrogantly say it’s trivial to switch and embrace dishonesty. I guess they figure Microsoft is dishonest, so they normalize it.
Same here, to a certain extent.
I was referring only to Linux’s lack of bullshittery in comparison to Windows, nothing else.
100% same
I was needing to boot back to windows multiple times per day to accomplish simple tasks, and that made Linux no longer worth the hassle.
When Linux gets around to supporting all the games I like I will
It will never support 100% of games. Mainly due to extremly agresive anti cheats that are the same as root kits.
You mean, when your games get around to supporting Linux, right? File the required issues with those manufacturers.
Alright, continue to suffer on Windows. Or fix it yourself
Is this how you advocate for Linux?
Why bother trying to convince people like you who only complain about Windows, but are way too lazy to do anything about? It’s just a waste of my time. I’d much rather gloat about how I don’t have to deal with crap like this. Don’t come on here and expect sympathy for something that is entirely within your power to change.
I’d much rather gloat about how I don’t have to deal with crap like this.
Alright, go ahead and do that. Surely that’ll help the mainstream perception of Linux and its community.
Linux users are what everyone says vegans are.
But they speak from a high a position of superiority and rightness.
I’d rather be vegan than a Windows user.
No, I don’t want too.
Microsoft:
Microsoft really trying to get away with what it did in the browser wars again, but it’s probably gonna turn out on for them this time
I didn’t think anyone on this platform would be dumb enough to use Google Chrome anyways.
Jump scare warning
Yeah MS has never done anything like that before…
Looks at MS Word in early nineties…
Look at what they did with Internet Explorer. Same shit.
The clickbait in this article is so bad, I thought it was a security vulnerability or something, but it’s just something else related to Mozilla again.
I’m still genuinely curious if Mozilla is going to actually accept a renewal for the search deal with Google, or if they’re actually going to start practicing with a praise and try implementing that search engine selection screen.
practicing with a praise
Not sure what you mean but maybe you were going for “practicing what they preach”?
or if they’re actually going to start practicing with a praise and try implementing that search engine selection screen.
You already can change the default search engine?
You can, but that’s not the point. The idea is to ask users to choose upon opening the app for the first time. It’s an already common statistic that most people never actually change any settings beyond basic personalization. It’s part of why Google spends so much money on setting Google Search as the default engine.
That’s a weak argument. If Microsoft bundled Edge with Windows and stopped at that, nobody would be complaining about it. The problem is how annoying it is at nagging users to try Edge.
Same with Firefox. If a user changed the search engine, only for Firefox to “forget” that choice one hour later, or if it had popups saying “Hey you have DDG as your search engine. Do you want try Google instead?” [ Yes ] [ Ask me again in an hour ]," then I for sure would have a fucking problem with that.
I recently set up Firefox on my Windows PC and it asked me on the FTUE wizard what search engine I wanted to use as my default.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Whenever I’m forced to use Edge for work it reminds me of old IE that your grandma installed the Ask toolbar in. Functions about the same too.
Is there any material difference between Edge and Chrome? I’m forced to use either of them for work and as far as I can tell they perform the same
There are small annoying differences. The way it handles downloads is irritating. The settings menus are not well organized. There’s a big stupid Bing button unless you remove it. It randomly fails to honor the option to open PDFs in an external program. It’s nothing big, but if you’re forced to use it for work, it’s constantly annoying.
This is a super clickbait title.
Yes, what Microsoft does is pretty shitty but the article sounds like there’s some massive zero day hack or something to watch out for when it’s just standard business practice.
Agreed. I would’ve changed it except I had in the back of my mind that the post title needed to match the article title, but now I don’t see that in the rules. Oh well. But yeah the article is not really about Chrome at all.
You know what else is different about Lemmy? Post titles are editable!
I think this will ultimately backfire on them I gave the bing app a chance on my phone and I got so tired of the try edge interruptions I unninstalled everything Microsoft.
The search was actually decent but the constant nagging was very annoying.
Use ecosia. It’s the same search engine except it respects your privacy and plants trees with you as revenue.
Legit malware shown in this article. Imagine an operating system/browser injecting what are essentially ads into your webpage. Whether or not chrome or edge are any good these are scummy tactics by microsoft
I remember, something like 8 years ago, if you searched “chrome” on internet explorer, before showing you a proper link, they would show a patrocined link from microsoft that would install a “browser configuration protector” that would prevent you from changing any configuration, including of course the default browser.
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