Microsoft Edge gets "unfair advantage", browser makers claim (www.techradar.com)
from lemmee_in@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 16:46
https://lemm.ee/post/44032674

Some of the top browser makers around have issued a letter to the European Commission (EC) alleging that Microsoft gives the Edge browser an unfair advantage and should be subject to EU tech rules.

A letter seen by Reuters, sent by Vivaldi, Waterfox, and Wavebox, and supported by a group of web developers, also supports Opera’s move to take the EC to court over its decision to exclude Microsoft Edge from being subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

As Edge comes pre-installed by default on Windows machines, users must navigate the Microsoft offering in order to download their browser of choice. The letter states that, “No platform independent browser can aspire to match Edge’s unparalleled distribution advantage on Windows. Edge is, moreover, the most important gateway for consumers to download an independent browser on Windows PCs.”

#technology

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Stovetop@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 16:57 next collapse

I guess it could be said that Edge has an unfair…edge?

one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 17:00 collapse

Take your upvote and gtfo. Lol

FenrirIII@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 20:24 collapse

It was an edgy comment.

essteeyou@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 20:45 collapse

Yikes, all these browser-based puns are a bit much for this little internet explorer. I’m out.

SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee on 04 Oct 2024 22:15 collapse

I think youre just going to have to Brave through it.

rmuk@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 09:02 collapse

Netscape.

AbidanYre@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 16:57 next collapse

It’s like the mid 90s all over again. Let’s see if anything happens this time.

rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 15:06 collapse

I want that Web to die, die, die.

Gemini is a step in the right direction, but the new Web should be both non-extensible by design and transparently allow distributed storage, distributed untrusted computation, and separation of the concepts of a site and a machine that serves it. In other words, serverless, where websites and services and even web applications are identified cryptographically, and anybody can contribute their computing power (or storage) to a site\service\application, out of desire to help or for money. With smart contracts, ghost keys and other buzzwords I have no real idea about.

And fuck Microsoft.

thfi@discuss.tchncs.de on 04 Oct 2024 17:12 next collapse

Please submit a second copy of that letter, but replace Windows with Android, PC with Mobile, Microsoft with Google, and Edge with Chrome.

funkajunk@lemm.ee on 04 Oct 2024 17:20 collapse

Please submit a third copy of that letter, but replace Windows with iOS, PC with iPhone, Microsoft with Apple, and Edge with Safari.

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 04 Oct 2024 18:44 collapse

I mean that already happened

funkajunk@lemm.ee on 04 Oct 2024 20:30 collapse

Don’t you tell me what I am isn’t

rmuk@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 09:03 collapse

Can you raise both your arms above your head? Do you smell burnt toast?

funkajunk@lemm.ee on 06 Oct 2024 13:05 collapse

🔥🍞

PunchingWood@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 17:17 next collapse

I thought we’ve already been through this before?

I vaguely remember getting the option which browser to use during an install before.

Feels like they need to stop nitpicking about this stuff. I barely know anyone that even uses Edge, it’s almost like it just functions as a downloader for Chrome or anything else.

At what point are they gonna stop? Until Windows comes without any browsers at all? And we’ll have to store copies of installers on USBs And postmail Google if we want a copy of Chrome.exe because we accidentally deleted it?

LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org on 04 Oct 2024 18:13 collapse

That was a Windows 7 thing - it used to be hosted at browserchoice.eu but that’s long gone now.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

PunchingWood@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 18:25 collapse

I could’ve sworn I’ve seen something like this in a W10 or W11 installation not even that long ago though.

It’s not something I imagine EU would just forget about whenever a new OS dropped.

StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 17:19 next collapse

I mean I really don’t think it’s that big of deal. Edge only makes up 5% of market share, so it’s obviously not helping them that much.

PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk on 04 Oct 2024 17:29 collapse

That’s not the problematic metric though. It’s the 70-80% (link) install base of the Windows OS on desktop computers that Edge is installed with that’s the basis of the anti-competitive allegation.

The fact that it still only takes 5% of the browser usage is more of a happy accident.

StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 17:37 collapse

That makes sense but also they clearly need any edge they can get. Maybe they should even make it more difficult to install other browsers. Like artificially lowering the search results of other browsers. Maybe they could get 6% market share that way.

brucethemoose@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 17:20 next collapse

A letter seen by Reuters, sent by Vivaldi, Waterfox, and Wavebox, and supported by a group of web developers, also supports Opera’s move to take the EC to court over its decision to exclude Microsoft Edge from being subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

OK…

Shouldn’t they be fighting Chrome, more than anything? Surely there’s a legal avenue for that, though I guess there’s a risk of getting deprioritized by Google and basically disappearing.

NaibofTabr@infosec.pub on 04 Oct 2024 17:44 next collapse

Yeah they can’t fight Chrome, they are Chrome.

scutiger@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 18:14 collapse

They’re suing because Microsoft got an exclusion from the Digital Markets Act. Google did not.

morrowind@lemmy.ml on 04 Oct 2024 18:44 collapse

Suing? It’s just a letter

celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 04 Oct 2024 17:21 next collapse

Hasn’t it been shown that most people use Chrome despite Edge’s “unfair advantage”?

whostosay@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 19:48 collapse

Long last effect from us nerds telling everyone to stop using IE, because Google wasn’t a hotplate covered in wet shit at the time.

llamatron@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 17:26 next collapse

Yup. Teams ignores default browser and opens URLs in Edge. I have to right click copy and open in Firefox. I refuse to be forced to use Edge

[deleted] on 04 Oct 2024 19:09 next collapse

.

llamatron@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 19:46 collapse

Good to know. Thanks. Still a shady thing to do. Why have it ignore the global setting?

[deleted] on 04 Oct 2024 20:49 next collapse

.

JWBananas@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 08:25 collapse

Teams is built on Edge webview. It’s Microsoft’s lighter-weight version of Electron.

UnpledgedCatnapTipper@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 04 Oct 2024 20:42 collapse

There’s a setting Teams, under “Files and Links” where you can change it from Edge to Default Browser. Scummy that it works that way, but you can work around it at least (for now anyway).

independantiste@sh.itjust.works on 04 Oct 2024 17:31 next collapse

Not to forget than when using bing, if you look for words like Firefox or Chrome, you get a large banner saying to use Edge instead. Super shady stuff

bizarroland@fedia.io on 04 Oct 2024 17:40 next collapse

Not to mention that Microsoft forces you to use a Microsoft account when you create your account on your home computer which is then automatically logged in to edge and *bing so that they can track and quantize more of every single thing you do on the internet to monetize you

one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 17:56 collapse

No it doesn’t. I just reinstalled Windows 11 pro and I’m running without a Microsoft account.

Edit: I was unfamiliar with how different that is from the home experience. I’m still using Windows 7 keys to install Windows 11 so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ consider me out of the loop.

scutiger@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 18:18 next collapse

Home versions, which most home users have, force the use of MS accounts. They’ve patched the bypass tricks that people used before.

horrorslice@lemmy.zip on 04 Oct 2024 18:28 next collapse

I do a workaround when installing/setting up Windows on others PCs. Use my dummy MS account -> create local user -> change to admin -> delete out the MS account. Boom, then only the local account is on the PC.

bizarroland@fedia.io on 04 Oct 2024 19:09 collapse

I'm willing to bet you're still ending up in their database. Unless you are using some sort of VPN to first obfuscate your location and then a brand new account that has not been used before, then there's going to be some record of similarity.

When I'm installing Windows 10 or 11, I use the Rufus installer to create a pre-built admin account that I can sign in with.

horrorslice@lemmy.zip on 04 Oct 2024 19:18 collapse

That’s a good point, and a good idea about modifying the installer. I will give this a shot next time I have to do a reinstall. Thanks!

one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 19:24 next collapse

Ah. Did not realize this was an issue with home. I can not say I experienced that. Hell, I still use Windows 7 pro keys to activate Windows 11.

Do you know if you could use audit mode to bypass OOBE and get around it? Simply curious.

scutiger@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 23:09 collapse

Apparently they disabled that bypass recently.

I don’t know if installing Windows 10 and then upgrading can get around this though.

one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 19:30 collapse

Ah. I was unfamiliar with the home version.

kurcatovium@lemm.ee on 04 Oct 2024 18:22 next collapse

Well, it is impossible to install W11 Pro without MS account for normal person. Sure tech people can do it after couple seconds of web search, but your average PC user? Nope. No way.

bizarroland@fedia.io on 04 Oct 2024 19:07 collapse

Oh yeah?

Open edge and search for something. Check in the top right corner and tell me you're not signed into some sort of pseudo-created Microsoft account.

one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 19:35 collapse

You win.

Aedis@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 19:01 next collapse

This doesn’t make that behavior any less scummy, but have you tried using any Google website on a browser that isn’t chrome?

pycorax@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 01:37 collapse

Is this blocked by ublock origin coz I’ve never gotten that at all on Firefox.

independantiste@sh.itjust.works on 05 Oct 2024 02:06 collapse

It’s possible, I use Firefox and uBO as well on my main PC, but I remember seeing it when installing Firefox on my windows partition

Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz on 04 Oct 2024 17:36 next collapse

Windows is absolutely abusing their position as the dominant OS to push their other products. The number of “no don’t do that” messages and pop ups when trying to install chrome on a windows computer is clearly anti-competitive, and the only reason microsoft has been getting away with it is because Edge/etc hasn’t achieved enough market share.

A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 19:19 next collapse

why go after microsoft.

Go after fucking google.

Chromium is the plague, not Edge.

Halosheep@lemm.ee on 04 Oct 2024 19:42 next collapse

Isn’t Edge also chromium?

A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 19:52 collapse

Yes, and its a nasty story thats all unofficial cause no one is ever gonna go on the record, at least not for another 10-20 years when it comes out in someones book…

but the short of it is, Edge had its own browser engine, but google kept making changes to youtube and other google sites that broke Edges performance and made it run like dogshit, while leaving chromium based browsers alone.

after many instances of sabotage > microsoft workaround > google sabotage> microsoft workaround. Microsoft finally gave up and remade Edge as a chromium based browser.

Wrench@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 20:11 collapse

So Google establishing a now industry standard of evergreen versioning so that they could iterate relatively quickly on features, rather than have to maintain compatibility with years old versions, and iterating quickly on their own major websites - is a bad thing?

Right.

Yeah, let’s go back to having to maintain terrible legacy browsers that behaved completely differently for the rest of time.

Edit - rofl. Bunch of revisionists here on Lemmy.

gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2…

EdgeHtml released 2015.

But sure, Google has been doing shitty things lately so let’s retroactively change history and make Microsoft the browser hero? Right.

h4lf8yte@lemmy.ml on 04 Oct 2024 20:54 next collapse

On “features” they would like to see. Most of the time features that make it difficult to block tracking and keep their advertising business going. The web is all about communication standards between different programs and this includes the joint adoption of new standards and respect for the existing standards.

Wrench@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 00:33 collapse

And Google established a lot of the standards that were both open and long living.

Yeah, Google has strayed far from the “Do no evil” philosophy in the last decade. But this rewriting of history to praise IE and demonfy Chrome from that era is ridiculous.

h4lf8yte@lemmy.ml on 05 Oct 2024 00:48 collapse

This is about EdgeHTML not IE

Wrench@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 01:38 collapse

Because we should wipe away 2 decades of history and pretend the next thing is flawless on release?

Edge came in with a freight train of baggage, and didn’t make it. It’s absurd to frame this otherwise.

A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 22:01 collapse

ah yes, the google white knights. here to completely misconstrue the argument to make everyone but google the bad guy.

because thats what a trillion dollar company that threatens to seize control of the internet needs.

Wrench@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 00:30 collapse

Rofl. So let’s white wash the browser history before chrome, then. Back when IE reigned supreme. You must either be too young or not in the industry to champion that.

A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 03:32 collapse

Dude. Seriously. Genuinely.

Are you on drugs?

Or are you the victim of a mental derangement?

Because we need an explanation for this complete divorce from reality you seem to be suffering from.

seaQueue@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 21:48 next collapse

It’s possible to go after both. M$ has some fucked up practices that trick the user into using edge that shouldn’t be okay

biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works on 05 Oct 2024 00:44 next collapse

I went to the widgets pane on my w11 laptop once, clicked an article and to my horror, all of my data had been synced from chrome to edge, including passwords, history, open tabs, extensions, pretty much everything.

I even went as far as to report it to the ACCC (the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) since I’ve never seen it from other browsers, and that I found it pervy the fact they did it without consent, although I doubt the ACCC would be enough to change this shitty practice, and others like it.

They’re not even trying to trick the user anymore, they’re forcing them.

JWBananas@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 08:20 collapse

You have to opt into that behavior. It prompts you on first launch

biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works on 06 Oct 2024 05:46 collapse

I agree, that has happened with other windows devices I’ve used recently (both w10 and 11), although this was completely reset, no data other than a chrome sign-in and a few games, this had also been the first time I opened edge, so I’m pretty confused how an opt in feature just magically stops requiring consent from the user…

Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works on 05 Oct 2024 10:22 collapse

It’s possible to. Are they? Correct me if I’m wrong, but they’re not. They’re going after Microsoft and not Google.

Not that it makes any difference since Edge is just reskinned Chrome now anyway. If it was still it’s own thing I’d be rooting for Microsoft, at least up until they start to become bigger, then I’d turn on them.

WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 09:13 collapse

Makes you wonder if these companies bringing the complaint are getting kickbacks from Google. Free search rank boosting for their respective companies comes to mind.

vithigar@lemmy.ca on 04 Oct 2024 19:28 next collapse

As Edge comes pre-installed by default on Windows machines, users must navigate the Microsoft offering in order to download their browser of choice.

What’s the actual alternative they want here? That users look up download URLs on other devices and download their browser of choice via command line using cURL Invoke-WebRequest? That ISPs provide browser installers on USB sticks?

Also, it’s not like MS is cornering the market on browser share here. Even with this “unfair advantage” they’ve only scraped together a 5% slice of browser usage.

WhoIsRich@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 19:58 next collapse

For a while when you installed Windows, the first time user setup gave you a choice of popular browsers and it handled the download and install.

Now Microsoft is actively trying to sabotage other browsers with popups and office apps bypassing the default browser setting.

SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee on 04 Oct 2024 22:13 next collapse

When was that?

nutt_goblin@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 22:34 collapse

ec.europa.eu/commission/…/MEMO_09_558_EN.pdf

They were forced to as the result of an antitrust settlement in 2009, and then the “remedy” expired 5 years later and they ripped it out

pcworld.com/…/microsoft-kills-eu-browser-choice-s…

SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee on 05 Oct 2024 00:28 collapse

Oh man, I had no idea this was a thing!

Katana314@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 13:35 collapse

I agree with you completely on their over-pushiness. They could do without that.

But the first time choice thing doesn’t sound tenable long-term to me.

Welcome to SuperOS! What would you like to use as your web browser? E-mail reader? Calendar app? PDF viewer? Image viewer? File explorer? Porn viewer? Weather app? VPN?

I can think of distros/OSes that, depending on the use case, people really appreciate having something pre-installed for them. And yes, other times people would prefer their own. But imagine amateur users making a pick from that constant stream of questions, not to mention having weird incompatibilities if they make bad choices.

WolfLink@sh.itjust.works on 04 Oct 2024 20:12 next collapse

IMO edge coming pre-installed isn’t a big deal. But I’d like to be able to uninstall edge and not have Windows periodically try to trick me into setting edge as my default browser again.

CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 04 Oct 2024 22:14 next collapse

Basically either offer users a dialog box asking which browser they’d like to use or offer the browsers in the Microsoft Store.

And stop telling me that “The Internet is better using Edge”, Microsoft.

Crashumbc@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 23:31 next collapse

I’d settle for them being force to offer links to alternatives when you first install Windows.

AND being forced to stop the bullshit every few updates where they force you through choosing options. One of which is “update to recommended browser settings for security?”… Which just defaults the system to use edge.

JWBananas@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 08:18 collapse

AND being forced to stop the bullshit every few updates where they force you through choosing options

Just turn it off. Settings → Notifications → Windows Welcome Experience or some such.

captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works on 05 Oct 2024 00:04 next collapse

Require Microsoft to distribute competing browsers in the Microsoft store.

I can install Firefox, Chromium etc. from my distro’s package manager. I don’t open a web browser to install software. You still do that on Windows because Microsoft has a financial incentive to keep competitors out of their store, so their store sucks.

Frodo@startrek.website on 05 Oct 2024 00:40 collapse

You can install Firefox from Windows’s package manager Winget with the command:

winget install -e --id Mozilla.Firefox

You don’t have to use the Store or Edge.

captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works on 05 Oct 2024 02:25 collapse

And how many people in the world will use that? eight?

Excrubulent@slrpnk.net on 05 Oct 2024 09:51 collapse

Exactly this. The point is not that there is no way to do it, the point is that the alternatives are obscure to limit adoption. It’s a dark pattern.

This winget thing is worse than just using edge to download an alternative. The problem is not that people are forced to interact with a browser they dont like, it’s all the people who don’t know enough to understand that there are alternatives, and those people will never use winget.

daddy32@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 09:00 next collapse

This is an already solved problem - EU did it in the past.

Rentlar@lemmy.ca on 05 Oct 2024 16:22 next collapse

Invoke-WebRequest

To comply with the court decision, Microsoft have added a super easy to use PowerShell command to install your favourite browser!

ps> Get-Browser-That-Isnt-Microsoft-Edge -Q -Browser Firefox -NumberOfNags 0 -RevertAfterUpdate False -When Now -Why BecauseTheCourtsToldUsWeNeededTo

rmuk@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 09:04 collapse

winget install -e --id Mozilla.Firefox --accept-package-agreements already works prefectly.

Rentlar@lemmy.ca on 06 Oct 2024 12:30 collapse

Yes, i’m just making fun of the verbose nature of PowerShell commands.

Katana314@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 13:38 collapse

You can get Firefox and Opera on the Windows Store. Ostensibly, this is how every other OS works now, although on Linux it’s usually less of a storefront with Candy Crush pushed up front, and more like a commandline entry to get apps by known name.

I think people are just used to the Windows colloquialism of not having a central store, thus getting every app on the web through an installer file - and then, through meaningful distrust and horrific memories of Windows 8, choosing not to use that store when it was added.

2pt_perversion@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 22:53 next collapse

I agree with going after the Edge Lords and making things more fair…but I’m guessing Chrome is the most used we browser by a long shot even on windows so the “No platform independent browser can aspire to match Edge’s unparalleled distribution advantage on Windows." part feels like users are comfortable stepping over Edge’s corpse to download chrome anyway.

tb_@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 23:14 next collapse

If users had a pop-up which allowed them to select more than just Edge or Chrome, other browsers may see an increase in users. Chrome is as much a default as Edge is in that way.

2pt_perversion@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 23:39 collapse

Again I’m in favor of choosing browsers on install, but lots of Chrome installs on Windows is not the same as being the default.

So much so that you even get this annoying popup from Edge when you try to download Chrome with Edge - which should be against the rules imo. <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2660a716-842c-4c42-9068-e9fba2e95d5f.jpeg">

tb_@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 23:58 next collapse

Sorry, I phrased that poorly. It is the default alternative, most users don’t bother to look for anything else.

And Chrome also does pop-ups not unlike it when you visit Google websites on a non-Google browser.

seejur@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 02:10 collapse

And try to reset edge as the default every single time Windows updates

myliltoehurts@lemm.ee on 04 Oct 2024 23:38 collapse

It’s true, although chrome has gotten a significant boost from Google promoting it in search and every Google app (which I don’t know if they still do).

So chrome beats edge on users, but it’s also likely largely because of the unfair advantage it receives/received from that promotion. Those options are not really available to other browser developers (unless Amazon or meta also decided they want a browser for some reason).

qevlarr@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 02:43 next collapse

Chrome got popular at introduction because it was much faster at loading and displaying websites. Sure, there was a marketing push by Google, but it succeeded on the products merits and not some unfair business advantage. It still is a great browser.

We do need antitrust protections but not always because consumers are getting a bad product. It’s more about the balance of power. Maybe their products are good now, or their business practices are fair now to other market actors, but you never know when that will change and then it’s too late. It’s like you need safeguards against autocracy also when they’re genuinely doing good job of running the country, because it’s never worth it in the long run when they inevitably start doing nasty shit

myliltoehurts@lemm.ee on 05 Oct 2024 10:22 collapse

Yes, chrome certainly had other merits too. Neither of us can say with certainty why it succeeded. Personally, I don’t think a crap browser pushed by Google would have but also an amazing browser pushed by an unknown independent developer would have either.

Certainly agree with your 2nd point though.

LordCrom@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 03:34 collapse

Don’t give them any ideas

billwashere@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 22:56 next collapse

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/d71c59ae-70e7-4b5e-a5e1-b1e0415b84d6.jpeg">

tb_@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 23:12 collapse

ftfy

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5aac09d5-aeed-4f41-8c17-4806f921ef68.jpeg">

billwashere@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2024 23:13 collapse

Yeah I personally use Brave but that’s what I found.

Edit: wow. I get downvoted for the browser I use… ok I guess.

xia@lemmy.sdf.org on 04 Oct 2024 23:45 next collapse

…and we all know what that advantage can do! (Covertly looks in IE’s direction)

mvirts@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 01:06 next collapse

neiiigh, its dead.

finitebanjo@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 01:36 next collapse

Theres like 2 or 3 commonly supported browser engines and the people who run them are complaining about unfair monopoly by a browser whose main purpose is to find another browser?

dgmib@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 06:21 next collapse

I’m not defending Microsoft… but if we’re going to go after a tech company for leveraging their other assets to give themselves an unfair advantage can we also go after Google?

In the first releases of Edge, Microsoft tried to build a new web browser from scratch to compete with Google Chrome. By google kept changing YouTube’s code so that videos would playback janky on Edge. Microsoft eventually gave up trying to fix for YouTubes ongoing changes and now Edge is based on Chromium (the same open source web browser maintained by Google, that chrome os built on). Google leveraged YouTube to prevent completion from Edge.

And now Google is blocking ad blocking extensions so that users are forced to see more google ads in their browser.

Microsoft’s has leveraged their unfair advantage to get a little over 5% market share.

Google’s leveraged their unfair advantage to get 66% of the market.

Both companies need a hard smack down, but I want to see Google taken down too.

Demdaru@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 08:47 next collapse

Please, please do act on google too. Didn’t knew about YT thing, but god I loved Spartan Edge. It was soo…resource unintensive. It…simply did it job, was quick, low resource, looked good… :( I switched to it from chrome and then it became chrome.

yikerman@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 08:55 collapse

YT does a lot of sneaky sneaky stuff. My Firefox constantly lagged on YT pages until one day I installed UserAgent-Switcher and pretended I was a Chrome. The lag went away.

And no it doesn’t work now.

echodot@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 05:20 next collapse

I don’t know have any lag on YouTube using Firefox

Kallioapina@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Oct 2024 06:42 next collapse

Its working for me now, I tested it this morning. Even tried swithching the user agent back to Firefox and yep - Youtube gets magically some buffering problems with it.

Close youtube tab, switch user agent back to chrome, clear cache and restart the browser: no buffering problems. What a bunch of assholes.

I’ve reported this earlier to EU competition ombudsman, like a about a year ago, and they confirmed then that they were getting reports about the issue, Google of course denying the practice. Hopefully they are working on some punishment for Google in the background.

yikerman@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 15:48 collapse

Maybe I misconfiguted it. I’ll check it out another day

Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Oct 2024 07:58 collapse

Don’t have any of the switcher things ony my firefox deskrop and mobile.
The only modifications I use are uBlock origin.

lud@lemm.ee on 05 Oct 2024 14:01 next collapse

Any source that YouTube is the reason that Edge switched to chromium?

I’m betting it’s just cheaper and easier than making their own engine.

dgmib@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 14:28 collapse

They’re was never any evidence of google’s wrongdoing, the accusation came from former MS edge developers:

developer-tech.com/…/edge-developer-google-youtub…

Officially Google denied it:

theverge.com/…/google-youtube-microsoft-edge-inte…

You may be right, this could have been MS couldn’t make a better browser and pulled the plug, and the devs just blamed google.

ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca on 05 Oct 2024 14:36 collapse

Old Edge was a better browser

more responsive/lower overhead

echodot@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 05:19 collapse

The early versions of edge were absolutely terrible and didn’t support modern standards. I fully believe that YouTube didn’t work on Edge but I don’t believe it was anything to do with Google and everything to do with Microsoft not being able to build a web browser.

sunbeam60@lemmy.one on 06 Oct 2024 09:36 next collapse

History disagrees with you on this one.

echodot@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 10:11 collapse

What do you mean history disagrees with me? If you look at reviews of Microsoft edge when it released pretty much all of them talk about how it lacked compatibility with modern standards and was nowhere close to feature complete. Large parts of the HTML5 spec were missing, including any support for webm or ogg encoding.

sunbeam60@lemmy.one on 06 Oct 2024 12:00 collapse

I mean that there is several indicators that Google did indeed try to sabotage other browsers on YouTube.

echodot@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 12:22 collapse

That was a claim that was made yes, but never proven.

Meanwhile what I said is demonstrably verifiable. Early versions of Microsoft edge that they put out were an absolute travesty, and all of the criticism leveled at it was 100% earned, it had nothing to do with any machinations from Google. Microsoft made a terrible browser put it out to the general public and were rightfully criticized for it. They couldn’t fix it so they switched to chromium.

Katana314@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 13:31 collapse

I’m a web dev, fully disagree with you. I don’t even think this comment is based in any reality, just MS hatred (which, to be fair, I currently hate them for other reasons, but it’s a big company with many parts)

I warned my colleagues against doing all development and testing in Chrome, because they would inevitably code towards “Webkit features” unknowingly, and leave both Edge and Firefox in the dust. I set up Edge as my default because, in an effort to catch up in popularity, they were being very strict and communicative with standards. If I wrote a page to work in Edge, it would work in other browsers. Meanwhile, there were horrific features like linear gradients that needed a full 15 lines of CSS specifically because Webkit would implement it, realize their implementation had gaps, reimplement it, and end up with 14 used-in-release syntaxes that you needed to account for, instead of the Edge/Firefox “Build it right” philosophy.

I sincerely doubt the current YouTube situation is actually because YouTube is a complex site. 90% of the motivation for whatever feature they’re putting in is to push Chrome and fuck over other browsers.

echodot@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 18:32 collapse

I’m not saying that I like the fact that they’ve gone over to a new render engine, I don’t.

But frankly the alternative wasn’t working and either they couldn’t or were unwilling to put in the effort to develop their own system.

I fully believe Google might have been doing some messing around with YouTube. but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they did and no one was ever able to provide any evidence for the accusation.

With regards to things like linear gradients, kind of get your point but also at the same time who the hell still codes raw CSS? I’ve been out of the industry for probably about 8 years and even back then people were using SASS, so needing a bunch of vendor prefixes is kind of irrelevant really.

Katana314@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 19:24 collapse

Citing SASS feels like “Who codes HTML when we have Dreamweaver” type of comment.

SASS just translates your styles to CSS, so even if you write one simple line, it’s polyfilling 13 - and for various technical reasons it’s better if one line polyfills one line for consistency. Just to give one example, an app might bloat its page load by inadvertently having 1MB-large CSS files post SASS translation.

I’ve heard the comment about “not keeping up, wasn’t working” in regards to Edge several times, but I haven’t heard any concrete examples of that that didn’t relate to Chrome flexing its position or jumping the gun on standards. It’s even realistic a large percent of that was people, web devs included, having trailing feelings of “Ugh, IE - I mean Edge” long after that stopped making sense.

echodot@feddit.uk on 07 Oct 2024 02:25 collapse

Dreamweaver is an IDE (a bad and crappy one). SASS is a pre-processing language.

They don’t even remotely do the same thing

fuzzzerd@programming.dev on 07 Oct 2024 15:05 collapse

It seems that comment went right over your head.

ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 08:06 next collapse

running “winget install firefox” in an elevated powershell gets you a better browser without ever opening edge. but then you still cannot uninstall it and all the other shit about it still stays active.

Novice_Idiot@lemmy.wtf on 05 Oct 2024 08:27 next collapse

Ooo what about safari on mac? Isn’t it the same thing but just not as hated?

T156@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 08:31 next collapse

Yes, but they’ve got the advantage of having done it for longer, and not stirred the pot.

I honestly don’t think it would have been an issue for Microsoft if they just decided to sit on Internet Explorer instead of trying to push everyone into using Edge.

sandbox@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 08:32 next collapse

It would be if Mac’s held the dominant market position for computers, yes.

rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 14:34 collapse

They should make second dominant subject to such laws too.

echodot@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 05:22 collapse

Would not be Linux then? I’m pretty certain Mac OS isn’t even in the top three mostly because their os is tied to computers and their computers are stupidly expensive and only westerners can really afford them with any degree of regularity.

rottingleaf@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 09:32 collapse

Not by market share on desktops in particular Western countries, no.

In the world - yes, I’d expect there to be more Linux desktops really existing than MacOS desktops.

Apple is the West in a nutshell, though. When a real need or a problem is mentioned, it’s mentioned only rarely as some selling point - like Jobs saying MacOSX is “very Linux-like” (sic). When a solution reaches reality, it’s done in a neutered way - like Apple still regularly releasing sources. When a real need is fulfilled, you can expect twice the effort to have been covertly spent on negating its effect - like with Apple’s “just works” and sterility and even privacy selling points, which come with walled gardens, closed APIs, short and bad support, and them actually still spying on you. A declaration of effort to tackle any problem existing in the wild is always aimed at portrayal of said effort to be persuasive enough to sell the product and the more efficient, the better, where efficiency means that actually doing anything other than persuasion is against the goal.

See, the difference between market mechanisms and geopolitics is not in people deciding that there’ll be this set of rules here and that set of rules there. It’s due to structure. The bigger that structure makes companies, the more similar market dynamic and scientific&technical progress will be to geopolitics.

Which is why I genuinely don’t understand people who frown at “techno-luddites” like me dreaming of going back to decentralized, even if with worse compatibility, hardware production and simpler software and formats. I would even say that some degree of protectionism from less developed countries would help, where hardware can be imported only if there’s domestic alternative production to match.

I’m more on the libertarian side, but if in XIX century weapons ownership was widespread, and in XX century it stopped being such, because of one’s ability to kill much more people quickly, then the same with electronics would make sense by the same principle. Only the qualitative difference in power comes not with the device, but with the centralized production line it comes from.

Of course, that’s not my proposition. It wouldn’t work.

My proposition would be to try to design some “civilization minimized”, where sufficiently usable computers can be produced in an area of 100k people, with society, industry, communications and warfare approaches optimized for that limitation. That kind of limitation for a self-contained unit of civilization, so to say.

So - one can buy a reasonably good laptop for 500$ today.

What kind of laptop can one produce for that sum in a 100k people settlement? Is that even possible to make it close to 500$ in relative value?

I’d expect we’d need to solve all heavy problems with specialized boards. I think lithography is actually applicable here - we don’t need it very precise, it’s far above our possibilities in such a hypothetical unit, and it would improve resource usage efficiency. And I think a more compact machine of PDP-11 level is possible, with specialized boards in Amiga ideology. I also think we can even have some kind of machine learning, but with analog storage of coefficients to reach anything close to sufficient efficiency. It would be a Fallout-kind computer, nothing fancy, but - possibly usable. For dedicated boards (some of which can, again, solve problems with analog approaches) there is a possibility of optronic elements being more accessible and energy-efficient.

There’s a question of portability - one can expect lithium to just not be realistically available in any random area of the world populated by 100k people. I mean, trying to imagine some autarky …

So maybe not a laptop, LOL.

Nah. That’s bullshit. That won’t work. At least not every 100k people. Maybe every 10mln.

icedterminal@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 16:35 next collapse

An out of the box OS should include a browser. Microsoft takes a ham-fisted approach, however, Apple makes it entirely possible to uninstall Safari. You do have to jump through the hoop of disabling System Integrity Protection to remove it, but it’s simple as trashing the app and deleting the data. I speak from experience. Very easy to do.

njordomir@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 07:44 collapse

Seriously, showing a pop up confirmation if the user tries to uninstall the last browser on the device is all that is needed.

Walk_blesseD@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 05 Oct 2024 23:50 next collapse

Forget mac, it’s even worse on iOS/iPadOS, where all third-party browsers must use Safari’s rendering engine too.

echodot@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 05:21 collapse

Haven’t they been told they’ve got to stop doing that now?

I thought the European commission had forced them to allow other browsers to actually use their own render engines

Walk_blesseD@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 06 Oct 2024 07:14 next collapse

I’m not 100% but I do vaguely seem to recall reading something about that being the case.

kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de on 06 Oct 2024 10:49 collapse

I think it’s only for the EU, and the other browsers don’t have a solution ready - porting their engines for iOS is a lot of work, which takes time, and might not even be worth it when they still need to maintain the safari-based version for the rest of the world.

towerful@programming.dev on 06 Oct 2024 11:34 collapse

The issue is with how aggressive Microsoft is about it.

Trying to download chrome? “Hey, are you sure you don’t want to try Edge?”.
Changing default browser? “Hey, are you sure you don’t want to try Edge?”.
Windows update… “We’ve done you a solid, because we know you want to use Edge”.
I’m sure at one point, it was a warning in the security center that you aren’t using Edge.
Also Teams (in sure there are others) will open links in Edge, despite what default browser you have set.

stoy@lemmy.zip on 05 Oct 2024 08:28 next collapse

giphy.com/gifs/O9HeC49RBpLpUj0ein

Sam_Bass@lemmy.world on 05 Oct 2024 09:13 next collapse

never used it here. microsloth has enough claws in me as is

jaemo@sh.itjust.works on 05 Oct 2024 14:27 next collapse

As it’s based on chromium, I’d call what it has a handicap and just keep on using Firefox.

tiny@midwest.social on 06 Oct 2024 06:30 collapse

The issue isn’t how it’s built or based on its that Microsoft can use its control of the os to make it extremely difficult to avoid it.

jaemo@sh.itjust.works on 07 Oct 2024 02:20 collapse

Good point. That would suck for windows users, and it’s really user-hostile behavior by MS.

bitwolf@lemmy.one on 05 Oct 2024 16:10 next collapse

MS is literally back to square one its about damn time.

They’re even worse now and aggressively pressure you to use edge if it’s not the default.

Matriks404@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 08:02 next collapse

You could say the same about Android and iOS. They are preloaded with a web browser not many people change. In fact I’ve noticed that many users (mostly older) using Android don’t even know what browser they are using, since they just type shit into Google widget on their home screen.

Mwa@lemm.ee on 06 Oct 2024 11:28 next collapse

And some linux distros bcs somtimes it’s preloaded with firefox and chromium and also macos with safari

f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz on 06 Oct 2024 13:20 next collapse

IIRC Samsung devices default to a Samsung web browser labelled “Internet”. You wouldn’t want to disable the “Internet”, right?

iOS seems even more egregious, where it’s internally using Safari no matter what browser you install, giving the illusion of choice.

Goun@lemmy.ml on 06 Oct 2024 17:27 next collapse

Fuck, this. My gf doesn’t even know what a “web page” is, she just knows this Google widget.

VintageGenious@sh.itjust.works on 07 Oct 2024 05:53 collapse

The google widget search bar is the thing I hate the most on default Android ui, alongside stupid bixby. Like the windows search bar, it doesn’t look good, always stays there and isn’t actually useful since you can still search with sometimes one click sometimes two. And the results are horribles with filled MSN-like news

nek0d3r@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 08:24 next collapse

I completely understand where this is coming from, but I’m just a little confused about what the solution would be. For the average consumer and certainly the target users for Windows, shipping with a browser is the expected norm, and none are expected to open a terminal, much less run tools like winget. I guess you could have a setup dialog of major browsers to choose from?

squid_slime@lemm.ee on 06 Oct 2024 08:36 next collapse

Click ‘browse web’ Microsoft gives a list of popular and mixed browsers that the user can select. Microsoft then installs selected browser. At least this is the only tangible way I can see.

rmuk@feddit.uk on 06 Oct 2024 08:56 collapse

Anyone else remember this badboy?

<img alt="" src="https://feddit.uk/pictrs/image/4b8fde7d-b89a-4760-aae3-6dbdf6e3658a.webp">

For the uninitiated, BrowserChoice.eu was a popup and associated website that Microsoft was forced to create by the EU courts becasue of their monopoly in 2010.

Also, an opinion: Edge was a great browser even before they switched to Chromium. I wish they’d kept at it so there was a better variety of rendering engines out there.

noughtnaut@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 10:41 collapse

Yes, I’m really confused about this article - isn’t what you describe still in effect? Why on earth not? (I haven’t used Windows in ages so I personally have never seen that.)

sushibowl@feddit.nl on 06 Oct 2024 13:59 collapse

Microsoft and the European Commission agreed to an initial period of five years. That ended in 2014, and the measure was not extended mainly for two reasons:

  1. Data showed the selection screen had had essentially no effect on browser market share whatsoever.
  2. This period was basically the height of browser competition, with Chrome, Safari, IE, and Firefox all showing significant market share.

With competition in the browser market seemingly healthy, and the browser ballot not doing much to affect it, it was seen as pointless to keep requiring Microsoft to display it.

noughtnaut@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 14:54 collapse

Thank you for that information.

One might also say, with the dire current state of browser competition, it won’t make much of a difference.

I’m just privately hopping that Firefox won’t lose its last few percent market share and go the way of the dodo. 🤞🥹

linearchaos@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 12:51 next collapse

I can think of some options

Level 1: Allow uninstall of edge. They can have the engine still for store/background processes, but no user icon. You can use edge to install other browsers then remove it.

Level 2: same as level one, but it comes “uninstalled”. OOBE asks you to choose a browser.

Level 3: They rip out the deep integration they knew damn well they shouldn’t have done because their asses were handed to them in the IE days.

Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca on 06 Oct 2024 22:58 collapse

One solution could be during PC initial setup, a list of all browsers above a certain user count is given and the person chooses which to install and use as default with the ability to change at a later date.

airamit@feddit.rocks on 06 Oct 2024 13:18 next collapse

👍👍

nutsack@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2024 16:36 next collapse

so does Microsoft Windows

bamfic@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 2024 06:32 collapse

One might even say it has an… Edge