Microsoft Edge gets "unfair advantage", browser makers claim

Comments

• AbidanYre@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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• Stovetop@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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  • one_knight_scripting@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Take your upvote and gtfo. Lol

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    • FenrirIII@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      It was an edgy comment.

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• thfi@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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  • funkajunk@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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    • morrowind@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      I mean that already happened

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• vithigar@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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  • WhoIsRich@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      When was that?

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  • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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  • CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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  • Crashumbc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • JWBananas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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  • captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • Frodo@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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  • daddy32@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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• dgmib@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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  • Demdaru@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • yikerman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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  • lud@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • dgmib@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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• A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  why go after microsoft.

  Go after fucking google.

  Chromium is the plague, not Edge.

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  • Halosheep@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    Isn’t Edge also chromium?

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    • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Yes, and its a nasty story thats all unofficial cause no one is gonna go on the record.

      but the short of it is, Edge had its own browser engine, but google kept making changes to youtube and other sides that broke its 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.

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  • seaQueue@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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

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    • biggerbogboy@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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    • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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  • WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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• independantiste@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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

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  • Aedis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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  • pycorax@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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    • independantiste@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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

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• brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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  • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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  • scutiger@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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    • morrowind@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Suing? It’s just a letter

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• 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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  • myliltoehurts@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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).

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    • qevlarr@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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

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    • LordCrom@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Don’t give them any ideas

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  • tb_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • 2pt_perversion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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. Image

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• xia@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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• Novice_Idiot@lemmy.wtf ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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  • sandbox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      They should make second dominant subject to such laws too.

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  • T156@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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• celsiustimeline@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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  • whostosay@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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• llamatron@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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

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  • JordanZ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    [deleted]

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    • llamatron@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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  • UnpledgedCatnapTipper@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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).

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• Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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• StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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  • PhobosAnomaly@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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.

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    • StrongHorseWeakNeigh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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• finitebanjo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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?

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• ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  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.

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• billwashere@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  Image

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  • tb_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    ftfy Image

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    • billwashere@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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• PunchingWood@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  I thought we’ve already been through this before?

  I vaguely remember get 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 bvrowsers at all and we’ll have to store copies of installers on USBs and postmail Google if we want a copy of Chrome.exe?

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  • LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    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

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    • PunchingWood@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      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.

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• jaemo@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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• stoy@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  giphy.com/gifs/O9HeC49RBpLpUj0ein

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• Sam_Bass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

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

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• mvirts@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  neiiigh, its dead.

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