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Microsoft is Interrupting Chrome and Firefox Installations To Promote Its Edge Browser in the Newest Windows 10 Build (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: If you open Edge and search for "Chrome" or "Firefox" using Bing, Edge's default search engine, you'll be presented with a massive banner informing you that "Microsoft Edge is the faster, safer browser on Windows 10 and is already installed on your PC." Four boxes below then show you how Edge lets you browse longer, and faster, offers built-in protection and built-in assistance. If that doesn't stop you, then Microsoft has a new, much nastier trick up its sleeve -- when you go to install Firefox or Chrome it intercepts the action and pops up a window promoting Edge with the same line about how its browser is faster and safer. It then gives you a blue button to click to open Edge, or a grey one you can click to install the browser you actually want to use. Oh, and this window will keep appearing, unless you go into Settings and stop Windows 10 from offering you app "recommendations."
UPDATE (9/15/18): "After massive backlash by users against this move, Microsoft has finally decided to eliminate the warning message," reports Neowin.
Further reading: Creator of Opera Says Google Deliberately Undermined His New Vivaldi Web Browser.
UPDATE (9/15/18): "After massive backlash by users against this move, Microsoft has finally decided to eliminate the warning message," reports Neowin.
Further reading: Creator of Opera Says Google Deliberately Undermined His New Vivaldi Web Browser.
Chrome does the same thing when you open IE/Edge and navigate to google.com.
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
The cockblocking of competing products.
Every time I think Windows 10 can't get more insufferable, Microsoft reaches a new low. I guess they solved the malware problem - by baking the malware into the OS.
While, unfortunately, I have to use one Windows 10 system in my office, fortunately it's the only one, and anything else is either Windows 7 or Linux. None of my personal machines have the misfortune of using 10, and as long as they keep doing things like this, none will.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
Almost as if MS was slapped down for ... anti-competitive behavior under this same topic: browser integration into the OS.
Nah. I must be having deja-vu again...
Commenting on reddit is so much faster and safer.
This is easy to fix once you understand the malware's vector. Almost all of Microsoft's malware (and it realy is true for this particular one) requires that you run Windows, or else the malware doesn't actually get executed. If you don't run Windows, none of these problems actually exist for you.
I made the switch to Linux completely because of the recent updates to Windows. I finally got frustrated enough with dealing with it that both work and home are now completely Linux based, even for my kids. I've in some way been using Linux for years but kept Windows on my work laptops since we entirely based on Active Directory, Exchange and Sharepoint. I always kept Windows at home because a majority of my time was spent either gaming or just watching Netflix so there was never really any motivation to change. Windows 10 gave me the push to change though. A majority of the games I get from Steam are on linux. I play Minecraft with my daughters without issue. Netflix runs fine. RDP works fine for any server work I need to accomplish at work. I know it's cliche and no one really cares that a few users switch, but I was somewhat of a "fan" of Microsoft for awhile. Windows 10 completely destroyed that. Microsoft will continue to hold the market share and there's no worry that they are pissing off their users because they don't have to care. I just wonder if they will ever piss enough people off that someone will step up with a truly viable alternative. For now I'll happily keep Manjaro running (yes, flame on Arch users!)
Sent from my TARDIS
The issue isn't What Microsoft did, but how they did it. Microsoft has the right to advertise their browser, however to intercept a on call to run a program and do a particular action because it is a competitors product is just bad form.
That would be like Linux putting an alert because you ran some non-gpl code in the OS. and you are getting a lecture on how Closed Source Software is so bad.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Is Edge really faster/better/cheaper? Or is that statement fake propaganda?
It's fake. Edge is faster at some things, but not at all things. It's provably not better. And they both cost $0 so it's not cheaper.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Problem solved.
2. Give up games and a whole host of creativity / specialist software that isn't available for Linux. I love Linux, but no, problem not fucking solved.
You have a choice of only 2 operating systems for generic PCs, and that is hardly a healthy place to exercise your power as a consumer.
I don't understand. I thought the purpose in edge was just to provide users a tool to download the web browser they actually wanted to use. Has something changed?
A company with competitive products in the target markets would not have any need to resort to this kind of advertising. The fact that these ads exist is Microsoft's tacit admission that Windows as a consumer product has failed to compete with Google Android and Chrome OS.
I needed a cheap Windows system recently, and I was pleasantly surprised that an old corporate desktop with a Win7 Pro license key still activates under Windows 10. This would never have been allowed when Windows was the primary consumer OS, but those days are long gone.
Microsoft has one choice, and only one, to achieve significant penetration with Edge: open the source. There is nothing else that will help - nothing.
Someone needs to open a shelter for battered Windows users where they can begin to heal and realize that they don't have to stay in an abusive relationship.
The consent decree shackling Microsoft after the IE bundling case expired in 2011. At the time it was made, a lot of us complained about it only lasting 9 years, when a similar consent decree against IBM was in place for 40 years.
Anyhow, bottom line is that stopping Microsoft's behavior this time around will require a new DoJ investigation, which if history is any guide will take more than a decade. Given the history, hopefully it'll be done quickly enough or the judges will be willing to grant restraining orders to prevent Edge's market share rising up to 90% as IE did.
I still maintain that the best solution back in the 1990s would've been to break apart Microsoft into two companies - an OS company and an applications company. Then there would've been no reason for the OS (Windows) to favor Edge or Office (ever notice a trial starter version comes with Win 10?) or any other Microsoft application.