Microsoft doing exactly the same thing they were, twenty plus years ago, with the IE vs Netscape browser wars. At least they're consistent about being hostile. And now, of course, their main competition is Chrome and Google.
I would encourage anyone who doesn't use Windows 10 on a regular basis to take a look at what the 'defaults' are that Microsoft steers people towards on a brand new Win10 Home installation. Including the creation of a Microsoft account, bing, edge, all the telemetry turned on, etc. Just... Yuck.
It's not just Windows 10 Home. I have Windows 10 Pro. The other day after rebooting my laptop, I was prompted yet again with that setup page that tries to enable useless shit like Office 365 and change my default browser to Edge. Honestly not sure how this can be legal after they got busted for something relatively mundane like setting the default to IE in the past.
Looking at past legislation/court rulings from the early days of the internet is pointless. They ruled that AOL had to allow other applications access to AOL IM, yet present day third party apps aren't given access to Apple's iMessages or Facebook Messenger.
I tried to find it, but I can't. Years back I recall a case, I think involving an app like Trillian, where they sued and won on the basis that they should be allowed to handle AIM messaging with native or near-native API access. Sorry, wish I had a source, as now I'm unsure whether this is true or just something I'm mis-remembering.
It's actually the main reason I despise Apple for how it locks down iOS : it's not that I care specifically about that, but it creates cover for this kind of thing. The bar has been raised across the board now for what is tolerated.
Here's the thing - there's an actual reason that is beneficial to 90% of their customers that they do this. Let's take my wife. She got her lenovo laptop because it was silver and really thin, and had a touchscreen. She doesn't know what specs are - the laptop is just a tool.
When she goes to do a google search, google's page keeps pushing chrome in her face. While she's trying to search for listings of gigs needing translation from Mandarin, Japanese, or Cantonese into English, the page she's on tells her she needs to click here and install chrome. She doesn't know what a browser or a Chrome are, so she thinks it's something she needs to do for the work search. Bam - she's now using Chrome. And he doesn't even notice the browser changed. Nor does she care. She never meant to install it or switch to it. Google is a bad player, and windows will check and once in a while ask if she wants to switch it back. Good. Me, a firefox user - I have literally zero issue clicking "no, leave my browser alone" twice a year.
She uses some office apps for spreadsheet type work, and msword. She uses some windows functions like copying files, and backing up her phone.
Telemetry lets microsoft know what she's doing, where she's getting confused or going into a loop pattern to do something, and when she tries something and gives up after it not making sense. They use that telemetry to improve their programs for people like her. Me - I turned that off. It's as easy as downloading winaero and clicking "disable telemetry" and "disable ads."
This is not illegal because it's literally what 90% of Windows users want. People who don't want that are technically apt, and it takes about 2 minutes for us to turn that off. It's just a default for 90% of the users - a correct one.
I hear this "Google is worse" talking point so much in defense of Windows 10 mucking around with people's settings that I'm starting to assume it's astroturfing.
You consider your wife a passive computer user who doesn't know what a browser is. Say you switched her browser to Firefox so she could more effectively block ads, and then MS switched it back to Edge with this mechanism. They are being malicious in the same way you say Google is, except it's worse because it's malicious behavior running on her own machine instead of malicious behavior running on someone else's servers.
I have spent so much time disabling all these ads on my Windows 10 Pro machine. And it did actually leave me alone through the end of 2018 I think, maybe early 2019. Then they started coming up with new bizarre ways to try to fuck with my system. I paid for this laptop, it should do what I say and otherwise leave me alone.
Google being a bad actor is not an excuse for Microsoft to be a bad actor.
This is a bit beside the point, but I have trouble understanding why someone who is willing to put some work into configuring their computer still uses Windows. Just use Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Kubuntu and stay away from those ads.
Compatibility with MS Office might be a plausible explanation, but even then you can throw it in a VM until you find a way to get rid of it.
Honestly I like the application selection of Windows better, although I don't use MS Office at all. The Adobe suite (particularly Photoshop, After Effects) is pretty unparalleled, despite Adobe's irritating behavior overall. I like Notepad++ better than other GUI text editors, I like Ditto better than other clipboard managers (although Klipper is pretty good). WSL allows me to do Linux style development reasonably well, handles about everything except systemd. I'm releasing a game (eventually, life got in the way!) for Windows and potentially some future games for Windows. They'll also support Linux of course, but Linux on Windows is an easier task than the other way around. Windows also has very good UI scaling and pen support in the form of their tablets.
That being said, after I no longer need to do video editing so my Adobe Suite usage will be back to just Photoshop, I'll investigate switching back to Linux as my primary OS again with my next laptop.
I won't switch her browser to firefox. I'm not her tech support although I am in tech. Welcome to 90% of users.
If I was her tech support, and I wanted to prevent the browser being changed by the user, I would.. Explain it to the user. And if they still changed it after that - guess what, that's their choice. But I could, just like you, prevent that with group policy. And when you do that, you won't get prompted to change it, just like my work laptop doesn't prompt me to change it. So what is the issue? The fact that if you do your customization and don't complete the full power user process, the OS can't tell if it was a random web page that did it? Maybe MS should collect some more telemetry on your laptop and run a compute-heavy AI to figure it out?
>I have spent so much time disabling all these ads on my Windows 10 Pro machine.
and why in the world would you do that? it literally takes two clicks in many different pieces of software that are available.
for the 90% of users - guess what, they wouldn't know about 1drive if windows didn't display an ad for it. What you call an ad, my wife calls helpful suggestions. When you're grocery shopping and you see a banner "apples 10% off today" that is also an "ad."
Microsoft is not a bad actor. The "google is worse" talking point is one I never stated, and a strawman you made up.
What you call "Ads" are simply defaults. And you can disable them in about a minute with one click in an app. You don't like edge at all? Guess what - there are fifty things you can do to completely disable or remove it - like change security on its folder or run a single powershell command to uninstall it.
Windows is an OS that is tailored to its users. That's not you - don't use it if you don't want. Here in the real world though, any power user simply changes the defaults in a couple of minutes, and at work there's a corporate image with all those turned off already.
You justify Microsoft's actions because of Google's similar actions, you say "Google is a bad player," the implication is clearly "Google is worse." There is no strawman here.
I have disabled all the promotion for one drive and the browser and similar garbage. Yet no matter what, they change the OS to come up with new ways to advertise at me, even if it's only a few times a year. It's an ad even if MS claims they think it well help users. I've heard non-technical users complain about this shit too. They just want their computers to work and not bother them.
Given that people are annoyed by Windows 10's promotions, I would say they are mostly taking advantage of their situation. Some of their actions are helpful to their users, some are not-so-helpful. People tolerate ads if they have to, they do not like them.
Regarding apples 10% off, when I am home with my apples, the grocery store does not break into my house to tell me about more apples.
I haven't made anything up. The point is simply that the OS should not try to use dark patterns to try to change people's settings. The assumption that this is good or that it is done to help the user, rather than something they can simply get away with, is ridiculous.
> Google is a bad player, and windows will check and once in a while ask if she wants to switch it back. Good. Me, a firefox user - I have literally zero issue clicking "no, leave my browser alone" twice a year.
You left out the part where you explain what bad thing would have happened if your wife had kept using Google-Chromium-wrapped-with-Google-proprietary-stuff instead of Google-Chromium-wrapped-Microsoft-proprietary-stuff.
After all, Google-Chromium-wrapped-with-Google-proprietary-stuff uses telemetry to do some similar set of happy things you wrote above about Microsoft apps.
The solution is obviously for MS and Google to stop. And your wife isn't an excuse for my system sending telemetry about me to MS. I am not that naive that it is about usability instead of marketing.
It is a plain lie that users want to be surveilled in such a way, even the non-technical ones, let alone 90%.
You absolutely can, via registry, group policy, or 3rd party apps. Have you ever gotten any of the browser change stuff or ads on your work laptop? I have not, ever, at any company. You can do that on your home computer too.
Monopolies don't see themselves like a normal business, one that has to compete for customers by serving them well. Instead, their thinking is more like a cattle rancher: the users are their property, to pen and milk as they see fit.
Between hostile defaults, dark patterns in opting-out and unsubscribing, and persistent surveillance, a lot of consumer-facing tech these days is taking on what an obsessive abusive partner would do. I can't help but wonder if these systems are a reflection of who those designers are as people.
The psychopathy is not due to the developers nor the designers, but rather, the perverse incentives that bring profits to shareholders. You're looking too close at the end-result. It's the fact that it's legal to profit from these kind of behavior that is the real cause of all of this. But consumer protection online is all but absent, and the "strongest" effort so far, GDPR, was implemented so annoyingly and in your face that most folks' experience with it is a net negative, so future motions will be shot down more easily with wide praise.
No. Many bad things are legal that most people don't do. People taking the actions and profiting from them deserve the blame. That includes developers and designers, plus plenty more people.
It's really sad how quickly we all forget. I know people who are a bit younger than I am, and came onto the internet in the 00s, after the height of MS's anti-competitive behavior in the 80s and 90s. I occasionally will talk about how I can never trust MS again, but they're a lot more forgiving, and believe that MS has changed, especially after Gates and Ballmer stepped down and Nadella took the reins.
I remember a couple years ago when I bought a new laptop (with Windows 10 on it). I just wanted to get into Windows far enough so I could download a Debian installer and write it to a USB stick, and I was appalled at Windows' first-run setup experience, and the personal information it wanted me to give them, as well as the sheer volume of telemetry, ads, and other spyware I had to explicitly opt out of. And even then, MS was still pushing Edge and Cortana in my face all over the place.
My last serious use of Windows was Windows 2000, and man, things have gone super downhill since then.
I'm bummed that I was right to continue to not trust MS, but... well, there we have it.
They're way better at PR. The Gates and Ballmer Microsoft sort of adopted the Slashdot evil Borg image, whereas Nadella has managed to somehow make Microsoft seem soft and fuzzy to the people that used to despise them. Even though their behavior hasn't really changed. It's quite incredible.
> Microsoft doing exactly the same thing they were, twenty plus years ago,
They never stopped, one big reason why Firefox restricts what plugins users can install was Windows installing plugins that could not be removed or disabled.
McAfee seems to have found a way around this. I picked up a new laptop for my parents a few weeks ago and found that the pre-installed crapware injects plugins to every browser you install.
Hmm, do you recall any details about those things? My impression was that the bad extensions mostly came from the antivirus vendors, but I may be missing something as I didn't daily drive Windows for a period, and I'm interested in the details. Thanks!
The case I recall was the integration of the .Net Framework Assistant. The initial version installed itself after a Windows update and couldn't be removed, later versions seem to have fixed that.
Edge is messed up, in that you cannot change the default search engine. It only changes the search engine for the URL bar, not for the new tab page (which is likely used just as much). I'm not aware of any other browser that does this. It's so cartoonish that I couldn't believe it when I found out.
You can configure the start page to use the address bar for search. That takes the cake for the most-obfuscated-default-search-setting, but at least the start page will send queries to DDG.
I really wish they'd focus on just making be best HW/SW that they can and respecting the user. For awhile I was rooting for them, they seemed the least bad of the tech giants. I was hoping they'd strategically differentiate themselves from the antitrust FAAG pack (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google).
To be pragmatic to an excess-- where is their incentive to? I agree this is an issue, and more than that a pattern-- but they seem to be any to continue unimpeded. I imagine when they push initiatives like this at meetings, they consider the risk- reward metric of such decisions. In this case, I don't think they'll see much real risk except for some grumbling as we are now
You mean rely and hope that whatever the user installed as the default browser will not mess-up help, documentation and other such links?
I'm quite certain that all those non-standard URLs are all for internal links to OS-related information hosted on the web. If they instead just popped a custom app that hosted an Edge webview nobody would rip their shirts. Doing that would be ridiculous given that Edge is just there and has been tested and vetted by QA.
Don't forget that these things need to work on all versions of the OS and in all locales. You're asking MS to trust that any 3rd party app will give proper user experience for any locale when presenting such links.
It's not as-if MS was hijacking normal URLs. But ripping shirts is soooo much fun.
> I'm quite certain that all those non-standard URLs are all for internal links to OS-related information hosted on the web.
You definitely shouldn't be certain of that. If I go open a folder and hit F1, I get an edge bing search for 「get help with file explorer in windows」. The special embed at the top is a blog post on a site I've never heard of explaining that the question mark in the top right is for help. If I click that icon, it opens another bing tab with the same search. Below that embed is completely normal search results for 「get help with file explorer in windows」. It's actively worse than ddg and google.
They're not all for internal links to OS-related information hosted on the web, though. The start menu search will always open a Bing search in Edge, for example - doesn't matter what your default search is set to.
Why are you writing with certainty about things you apparently have no firsthand experience with?
They are OS-generated links. Kinda funny that you claim I don't know what I'm writing about when the very example you give is an OS-generated link.
The start menu search is very much integrated with the OS and even gives you result right in the menu. Would be weird if the result shown in the menu would not be the same as the ones shown when it opens a web-browser?
But I guess you did not stop to think about such minor details.
So the claim is that if I make up a URL scheme, it should be untouchable by other developers and only my software should respond to it?
> Don't forget that these things need to work on all versions of the OS and in all locales.
You are confusing Microsoft with their users. Microsoft needs that. No user does, and very few need more than one version and one locale.
> But ripping shirts is soooo much fun.
Right, there is no competitive aspect at all to see here, just hardworking monks trying to ensure the absolute best Windows experience with no other motives whatsoever.
No, I claim that if you write an OS that you need to support, you need to ensure that some of its basic functionality have been tested and can be vouched to always work for all users.
And also, you have misunderstood my claims about locales. Not all alternative browser support all locals that Windows support. Would you like to have help page from the OS or search result from the OS open in a browser with a UI in another language. Don't forget: not every computer is your own, so people can get in a situation where a browser they have chosen is installed.
If you cannot fathom why this is necessary, it mostly shows you haven't work on large software, with a large install base and support personnel. And yes, search from the start menu and F1 from the explorer are exactly the type of things where you need to guarantee some baseline of functionality and testing and support. Do you want to be the guy in support on the phone trying to explain something about a web browser you know nothing about?
It's not like I'm too dumb to understand the line of reasoning people are using. But people are clearly unwilling to admit there are also good reasons why things are the way they are. Just adamantly repeating that Microsoft does thing for one single reason is just being close-minded for the sake of being right.
As for the competitive aspect: you'd have a leg to stand on if we were talking about how Microsoft makes it harder to switch browsers in Windows 11. But, unfortunately, that is not the subject at hand. It's about specific links that are generate right inside the OS. There is no competition around showing help and OS search result. The browser competition is not about the microsoft-edge: URL schemes. In what world do you live where it is the relevant competition?
It's a link to a web page. Microsoft is in no position to assert that it knows best about how to display a web page. It has never been, in fact. So, this argument, frankly, holds no water. Literally every one of the major players has implemented a better web browser than Microsoft. Microsoft's own browser was implemented by someone else.
If Microsoft cannot create a page that can be displayed properly in other browsers, then the problem lies not with the other browsers.
Apple is fine on macOS — changing your default browser is a simple setting. Their behavior on iOS, though (outright preventing installation of other browsers) should be illegal, IMO.
I think the OP was referring to the practice of "encouraging" users to sign up for iCloud, buy an Apple Watch, iPhone, iPad, Apple Music, Apple TV, Apple Arcade... and use Apple Sheets, Apple Mail, Apple News, Apple Maps, iMovie, Garage Band, etc.
I'm sure they would argue they're just providing a seamless experience for users, but I imagine there's a tiny bit of business interest in there as well.
Apple tries to sell you, but I feel like they are better on dark patterns. Whenever I use Windows, I feel like I have to be actively on-guard against the OS subverting my intentions. There are a lot of problems with the Apple ecosystem, but that isn't really one of them.
'Fine' is generous I would say, Big Sur likes to throw up notifications inviting me to 'try the new Safari' because FF is my default browser. That's not miles from the way MS is behaving with Edge.
Have you tried changing the default app for .docx files? It just does not work. Right click on a .docx file in Finder. Hold down the Option key and you'll see "Open With" change to "Always Open With". Select LibreOffice or whatever you want. OK, that file now opens with LireOffice. But no other. WTF?
This is no "simple setting" and is the same BS that MS does.
Select a file in Finder. Open the Inspector panel for that file ("Get Info" in the context menu, or Cmd-I). If necessary, expand the "Open With" section. Observe the presence of a "Change All..." button.
It's not particularly discoverable, but I think that's mainly because Apple's own UI designers have all but forgotten the NeXTSTEP UI heritage, so doing a Cmd-I on things is not as useful a habit as it once was.
If you right click and go to the open with menu and scroll to other, there's a checkbox with the finder window called "Always Open With". This way you don't need to remember which button to hold down.
Ultimately though regardless of who is doing it, it is user hostile and needs to stop. Apple restricting browser engines on iOS doesn't somehow make Microsoft's steering and suppression of other browsers on Windows acceptable.
Not really. In the Apple ecosystem, stuff either works or it doesn't. iOS doesn't let you install alternative browser engines. macOS does. Both of them let you use a browser shell of your choice.
None of this "you can install a browser, but we're going to lie cheat and steal to stop you" dark patterns nonsense. As a user, Apple just tells you No, and you get to decide if you want to live with that or not.
As a user, Apple allows you to change your default browser in both iOS and macOS quite easily.
As a developer you can build a browser on top of whatever rendering engine you want, as long as you want to use the built-in WebKit.
Crucially, they are plenty clear about what is, or isn't allowed (well, mostly — plenty of app review horror stories around here), and all of that happens in the interaction with developers. The user experience is always pretty decent, and you don't have to deal with this whole "do this in 10 locations" nonsense.
Third party browsers on iOS use the same web engine as Safari (WebKit) but critically, do not wrap Safari itself. In principle third party iOS browsers are no more wrappers of Safari than fully independent desktop Linux browsers built with WebKit like Epiphany/GNOME Web and Midori.
The various Chromium based browsers are much closer to being Chrome wrappers than, say, Firefox for iOS is a Safari wrapper because the latter has totally unique code for UI, interactions, password management, etc whereas the former is literally just Chromium with a few surface level changes.
Apple could stand to allow third party web engines either way (perhaps with strict performance requirements, to not destroy user batteries), but I think the distinction matters.
I may be mistaken but I recall reading several times that even though you can choose another app as the browser, all those apps are forced to use WebKit as the engine.
That’s correct, but the engine restriction doesn’t force people to use Safari and it’s possible to use either Chrome or Firefox front-ends. Apple wants to control the browser engine for a couple reasons:
- if you’re charitable: security.
- If you’re uncharitable: blocking the ability to undermine the App Store.
I know. I simply wanted to highlight the likely cause for parent's message downvotes, as none of the downvoters did it and things went quite sour in the sibling thread.
As curious as I am about what you think snitching to Paul Graham would accomplish here, the comment is likely downvoted because it undersells the importance and stickiness of defaults for most customers.
Well, seeing that Google and Apple do the same on their OS they might even get through with it. iOS doesn't even allow alternative browser backends, so the bar is not even reached for MS.
I find it hilarious that HN assumes that MS or any company should devote effort to supporting users who hate all their core products and only use Windows begrudgingly. Why even bother, if you could leave you already would have.
I booted up Windows this weekend, and immediately was forced to login to my MS account, and it attempted to change my default browser. The solution was to reboot, pick Ubuntu from the Grub menu and to then delete the Windows partition and give the space to Ubuntu. I'm tired of fighting with computers I own that don't work for me.
This has been my response as well. I now understand why it's so important to contribute to free culture--whether operating systems or hardware. (Related aside: I'm very excited to be installing Pop!_OS on a frame.work laptop in a couple of weeks. I know it won't be perfect, but as a software engineer I intend to contribute to making things closer to perfect).
I’ve been using PopOS for work and leisure and I’d say it’s closer to (my version of) perfect than mac or windows! Firstly, it’s super fast and snappy compared to windows on the same hardware (or the best Intel MBP available). And secondly, software support is really good these days, at least for my use case! (Web dev + gaming)
Have you tried LTSC? It's a feature-stripped version of windows 10, which is far more user-friendly simply because it doesn't try to do much at all, while still providing security updates. I'm no expert and licensing is a bit complicated, but if you want a workable windows 10 environment I couldn't recommend it more highly.
which states "The Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC) is designed for Windows 10 devices and use cases where the key requirement is that functionality and features don’t change over time. Examples include medical systems (such as those used for MRI and CAT scans), industrial process controllers, and air traffic control devices."
I know MS can behave like the bad guy at times, but "disabled hospital and air traffic control equipment" isn't the kind of bad any company intentionally aims for.
Depends on how valuable that grouo becomes. Regular users maybe dont influence as strongly? Maybe educated users are a bigger threat to other parts of their market?
Better to switch to something that respects your time.
No, I haven't. Sounds like an improvement. Regular Windows 10 is trying way too hard, and I think somewhere lots it's compass. The P in PC stands for something really important.
Leave it to Microsoft to be openly user-hostile in every way possible, knowing perfectly well that it won't hurt their market share one bit. I have no idea why people think this is a different Microsoft now than it was under Ballmer.
Yeah it seems like they just waited for a new generation of consumers to grow up without knowing it is a trap. That plus waiting for the regulatory environment to give up on anti-trust almost entirely.
Whatever advantages Apple has over Microsoft (build quality, UX, polish, customer service, etc.), Apple is definitely not gaining on Microsoft because of greater customization options. Most OSX users just use Safari.
It's not that merit is bad. It's that money is often used as a proxy for merit. If you have lots of money a common default assumption is that you earned that money through merit of some kind.
So you have phrases like: "If you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"
Sounds like a tension between what is and what should be.
As it stands now, it seems like there are ways other to make lots of money other than merit. Is that an argument against meritocracy? It sounds like it's the opposite to me.
The loudest proponents of meritocracy tend to be the ones that have none but simply wish to use their capital for their private lackey class unimpeded. It's a bit of a dog whistle.
So we slap Microsoft's hand for trying to make people use their (free) browser, and let Apple continue to print money by monopolizing software and content distribution on their hardware? I think we just need more stringent consumer protections in general, but there's a slim chance of that happening when you're as much of a CIA/FBI lapdog as Apple.
I used Windows 10 for the first time in years and was taken aback by the fact that despite Firefox being my default browser, a ton of Microsofty things open in Edge anyways. For example: search a term in the start menu and get the magnifying glass options for looking up related terms. They all just open in Edge for me anyway.
I don't get how a lot of the things in this thread are hostile or a problem, case in point this example. It's definitely an argument that Windows functions aren't very customizable, but at the end of the day it is a Microsoft product that integrates only with other Microsoft products.
> Brave Software is also considering taking things one step further. The company is planning to intercept Windows Search/Cortana links to Bing and redirect them to its users’ default search engine instead.
Yes! THANK YOU! OH MY GOD THANK YOU BRAVE!! FINALLY!
Devil's advocate: if the link is in a Windows component, then it would somewhat make sense that clicking the link would open it in a first-party application which the OS vendor can control. If the association with http: URLs somehow got messed up (e.g. the default web browser got broken due to something outside Microsoft's control), you'd be in a worse situation than if the Control Panel etc. used a simpler but fully supported first party web browser.
Core help links in Windows used to use an embedded version of the system browser (at the time IE) originally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help. If they wanted to do that today for the above reasons they could do the same with WebView2 which is the OS embedded version of Edge. Instead they are launching the external instance of Edge which can still be screwed up for reasons outside the OS's control (such as an experimental edge://flags option that causes a crash on launch).
Blink is Chrome's engine. Blink is not Chrome. The Brave browser also uses Blink, for instance. Microsoft has been in the browser business for a long time and takes security updates seriously, to the point of force-updating people's machines which people gripe about.
Firefox is great yes, viva la resistance. Unfortunately I'm seeing more sites with quirks on Firefox so I tend to use both Firefox and Edge.
What's frustrating is that Microsoft wins by default because most users will never alter the defaults or even understand they have that choice.
All this nonsense does is upset power users. Power users will be annoyed but not stopped by this stuff, and by annoying them you've created a negative atmosphere around your products that they will share with less technical users.
Same thing as not allowing an "opt out" over analytics. I get that the analytics are useful, but if only 0.1% of your users are willing to opt out, is the negativity/fight really worth influential users spending years shit-talking you?
Microsoft makes some really boneheaded decisions to be honest. Apple is way better at the subtle sleight of hand monopolistic stuff, Microsoft is like a bull in a china shop.
I’ve always said that you need to look after power users’ interests, because even though they’re a small percentage of your user base they’re the ones who influence everyone else. A single power user will likely influence their immediate family, their classmates, work colleagues, friends, relations.. easily a broad spread of people.
I mean, I like this sentiment, and _want_ it to be true (hey $BIGCO, I matter!). But MS has already weathered a storm of bad PR regarding Win10 telemetry, and hasn't changed anything. What are people going to do, stop using Windows?
Disabling telemetry isn't the kind of 'power user' feature I'm talking about though. Power user features are all about providing flexibility in the way you operate the tools, eg, customising layouts, options for workflow customisation, shortcut keys, command-line tools/options, etc. By repeatedly reverting the choice to use a different browser as the default, Microsoft is actively hostile toward power users.
Eventually MS figured out it actually those power users because they were developers. So they made visual studio code to lock them down like it's 1995.
Not sure about that. I find chrome way too annoying. To see history new tab needs to be opened, download bar below with no way to see all without new tab. Edge fixed these issues with toolbar buttons, some new flag options, web capture, read aloud, startup boost etc are quite helpful.
Block ntp.msn.com & assets.msn.com in hosts file to block start page completely if anyone don't like it, which I'm not sure if can be done with chrome without blocking google. This makes my experience better than chrome.
It's a weird choice, yeah. I have to do most of my university work on Windows anyway so I'm not too worried about the telemetry.
Edge is the closest to a cross-platform "it just works" experience I've had. All bookmarks sync between my android phone, windows and Debian. Plus I don't have to keep messing with the about:config after a clean install to disable whatever new UI features or services Mozilla has introduced in the latest Firefox update.
My only complaint is that Edge doesn't always respect my choice of search engine, for example the new tab search field at least used to redirect everything to Bing. But these can be worked around for now with relatively little effort.
It’s very uncool of Microsoft to avoid the users default browser and search engine choices, but I also don’t like Brave intercepting it, especially with their financial incentives with brave search.
Imagine if Google would do the same. The outcry would be a lot higher, because Google is a bigger company. But in this case Brave is very similar to Google, just a lot smaller.
But doesn't the interception just make it so when a URL fires for the first time you get a browser picker? Or do they force set it when you set your browser default?
If it's the former then I'm totally in favor because there's a choice at least.
It's something you need to manually configure. We would like to have an option for Windows folks that want to enable - but it would always be off by default (opt-in). It's understood that enabling this is going against the OS defined behavior
Worth noting that in order to offer a toggle, we'd need to get around the default protection (same as Firefox w/ setting default browser). People can only currently use this by going to the `Defaults` handler in Windows and replacing Edge themselves
Yeah, but most people are fine with (or at least resigned to) capitalism. What they object to is a lack of choice - especially when their choice is being actively subverted by a huge monopolistic entity
(that said, if/when this feature does land, opt-in is definitely the way to go for Brave to show themselves to be completely non-scummy)
Anyone who believes Microsoft has reformed and is in any way different now is the most foolish of fools. I'm not sorry to say it, because they have been taken to court for antitrust violations for this before but $100 says that won't happen again.
Microsoft has simply learned how to avoid getting busted for their tactics. That is all.
The only time i see this link is when visiting a customers team site and its mostly because i refuse to install native teams apps just to join a call.
I'm actually fine with having edge installed.. I have firefox and chrome too.
There isn't a day that goes by when i Use edge that Google is spamming with with popups to switch to chrome or open in chrome or to try and auto-login with a google address.
News and Interest (taskbar thingy in recent Win10), Widgets (samw thing in Win 11), the Settings app, help links scattered around the OS, Your Phone app, links sent from Android to your PC (Microsoft Phone Companion and Samsung Windows integration), etc.
When my Mac died I moved to Windows to escape the resource hungry OS updates. When my laptop with Win 10 dies that will be the end of Windows for me. Windows 11 is.. yuck!
Used to use Ninite but it's done some weird installs a few times. WinDirStat was nowhere to be found in my start menu once, and 7-Zip once had no start menu entry nor desktop icon, just the files in Program Files. Nowadays I just download each installer separately which also allows me to manage what options I check in each of them.
I'm still hoping winget[1] catches on so I can just utilize that for all the tools I typically use, but it seems like it's still a ways away from being fully ready. Still making progress, though.
I use chocolatey + boxstarter these days, got a Gist that I can point it to to download everything and it’s all set up in like 20 min with no input from me.
I've started using Account Surfer on Windows to avoid this issue, as well as the general workflow issue of "I want to open any link I click in one of many browsers." The developer has also been very responsive to emails, bug reports and feature requests.
I would assume because MS wants to have end-to-end quality control on links that are built-in to the OS.
This is the kind of edge case that would bother me to no end if I was an OS vendor because any ole program can install itself as a protocol handler. The last thing I want is to have happen is clicking something in the OS opens in a broken browser or doesn’t open in a browser at all. And the only browser I know for sure is there and works the way I want is Edge or IE. The alternative is what Windows used to do is bundle (and still does) is open up its own window in an IE webview.
Seems that way to me too. In this case too it seems to be a hack around Windows 10 still bundles IE11 to this day and there are some situations where users (for whatever wild reason such as wilting old Group Policies that should have been updated half a decade ago) still have IE11 as a default browser, and yet Microsoft knows from a QA perspective these pages no longer work on IE11 at all.
On the one hand, at least this "hack" is implemented as its own protocol handler ("microsoft-edge:") which is how Brave and Firefox can "intercept it" (it's not like they are hacking some "interceptor", they are registering for the protocol just as any other protocol might see multiple registrants). On the other hand it is sad that this protocol was seen as necessary hack to Microsoft to get around Windows 10 backwards compatibility needs and the mistake of bundling IE11 with Windows 10 as a "fully supported browser for the life cycle of Windows 10" rather than an optional enterprise feature with an end date on the box.
I think it would be this 2nd last paragraph from the article.
“ So, how did we get here? Until the release of iOS version 14 in September 2020, you couldn’t change the default web browser on iPhones and iPads. Google has many apps for iOS, including a shell for its Chrome browser. To tie all its apps together, Google introduced a googlechrome: URL scheme in February 2014. It could use these links to direct you from its Search or Mail app and over to Chrome instead of Apple’s Safari browser.”
Google did it first and Microsoft would like to link from its settings app to its browser.
I’m having a hard time deciding if these are the same thing or not?
> I’m having a hard time deciding if these are the same thing or not?
Well, obviously Microsoft would say they are.
But any common sense evaluation of the situation would recognize that Google introduced their feature to get AROUND a limitation and offer customers choice (If you install Chrome on iOS you're saying you want that to be your browser), and Microsoft introduced the same feature to INTRODUCE a limitation (In spite of any other browsers installed, Microsoft is ignoring all signals and already supported protocol handling capabilities to force you into their browser).
While a pedantic techie can read this and say it doesn't matter, the courts may see it differently.
I find it both amusing and worrying that MS has been able to get this narrative going that they got better and that we should forgive them for their past mistakes.
Also be prepared for random shit to break e.g. disable Cortana and discover it's what did Start Menu indexing.
OTOH if you already know what things are officially toggleable (e.g. tips and tricks in the Start Menu) and stick to those then the UI in this is much faster than going through Settings or gpedit manually.
Cortana never works in zh-TW but they still place the button there by default. Truly WTF. Why would ms put something not work at all to taskbar by default.
Great write-up! I did want to share a brief response to the following, however:
> The new implementations in Brave and Firefox follow the exact parsing logic I wrote for EdgeDeflector. It’s not the only way to parse them, it’s not the best way to parse them, but it’s the way every third-party implementation now parses them. Neither codebases attribute the code to EdgeDeflector, although both are clearly inspired by it. (Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with this.)
With all due respect to the author, I don't believe this is an accurate statement. While the problem being solved (parsing a microsoft-edge: protocol string) is quite simple, there are still noticeable differences in how EdgeDeflector, Brave, and Firefox have chosen to tackle this process.
EdgeDeflector and Brave both remove the "microsoft-edge:" prefix from the input, but Brave performs and additional check at this point. If the resulting string is empty, Brave stops attempting to extract a workable URL.
EdgeDeflector performs no such empty-string test, instead proceeding to check whether the resulting string starts with "https://" or "http://" (a case-insensitive match). Firefox also proceeds to check whether the string starts with "https:" or "http:", but in a case-sensitive manner. Brave, on the other hand, proceeds to check whether the resulting string starts with a ? character.
If the string doesn't start with a ? character, Brave attempts to parse the string as a URL and initiate navigation. If the string begins with a ? character, Brave removes that character and proceeds to split the string into chunks on occurrences of the & character.
With the string split into chunks, Brave cycles over each piece looking for one that starts with "url=". If a match is found, Brave attempts to parse everything after the = character as a URL. If it succeeds, that URL is visited.
Firefox and EdgeDeflector do take a similar approach in these later steps. While EdgeDeflector utilizes .NET's `HttpUtility.ParseQueryString` to parse and extract the URL value, Firefox passes the string to the URLSearchParams constructor, and retrieves the "url" parameter from the resulting object. Brave is the odd-man out on this step, opting instead to split the string, and cycle through to the nearest matching chunk.
While there are similarities here and there (given the simplicity of the task itself), there are stark differences as well. One thing is certain, however, Brave and Firefox both explicitly refer to EdgeDeflector as leading this effort to restore liberty to users impacted by Microsoft's heavy-handed approach to shoehorning users back into Microsoft Edge.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=netscap...
I would encourage anyone who doesn't use Windows 10 on a regular basis to take a look at what the 'defaults' are that Microsoft steers people towards on a brand new Win10 Home installation. Including the creation of a Microsoft account, bing, edge, all the telemetry turned on, etc. Just... Yuck.