This has been Microsoft forever. They have always made some good things, but from a business perspective, they've always been parasitoids. They infect you, then eventually consume you from the inside-out.

THAT is their DNA. And so far, I have seen zero indication they've changed.

But different corporations are selfish/ruthless/exploitative in different ways, and organizing our thinking about the ways in which a for-profit organization acts selfishly/ruthlessly/exploitatively helps us make our own decisions and craft our own strategies for getting what we want from them, or choosing with whom we do business.

I'm not a communist, but Microsoft is literally doing the (amoral) thing that is in their best interest. Hate the game not the player I guess?

Why not tell them why you think they're wrong (and leave it up to them to change), instead of making naked assertions and telling them to change?

Just auto-update edge and put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble... no need to disparage anything, it'd be more assertive and less annoying at the same time.

It smells of desperation on the product management side of things. They can't show growth anymore.

I'm not saying they should just give up, but folks, be a bit more dignified over there. Your company's doing great and Windows still does a pretty decent job in many places, cut the crap... At some point you have to accept that Windows is the mature partner, not the hot 20-year old :-D

I have to disagree here. Messing with people's pinned taskbar icons is much more intrusive than a suggestion (which anyone sane has already disabled)

> why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things

I'm sorry but that's pretty funny right before suggesting to literally change users settings without their consent.

-- edit

It's easier to unpin a taskbar icon, than disable suggestions.

Ah, but some users don’t even use the taskbar. They want this ad to be visible to their tablet market, too. And for screen-reader users, presumably. Microsoft seems like the kind of company to be concerned about the accessibility of their ads.

The comment, and sentiment are imho very ignorant and childish. Beyond this, rarely can someone make effective change to a community you are not a part of, let alone disdain.

It's a matter of corporate strategy and has nothing to do with each worker.

It doesn't have to suggest all actions, only re-occurring behavior. Microsoft had a well deserved reputation as a grim reaper in the tech industry.

http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepape...

I am using Firefox because it doesn't belong to anyone. I have zero faith on the privacy of Chrome. I believe (haven't tested and I won't bother) that everything one does on Chrome ends up in Google's data-hungry machine. Microsoft is mirroring that. I find it disgusting enough that they "telemetry"-ze the shit out of everything one does with their Win10. Now they want to get that extra on our browsing habits to complete the tracking.

I don't know if it's just Microsoft's greed or the (proven) relationship with the 3-letter-agencies (not wearing tinfoil hat), but still, they become more intrusive and it is NOT for our benefit.

Others mentioned are in a different league, but even firefox is mostly developed for an organization, that seems to be pushing to enter the service industry.

Have you looked how many connections firefox makes without even opening a page? I tried to silence it, and it was a PITA - ended up using a firewall.

I'd donate to firefox development, like 3, maybe 4 digit numbers, but AFAICT they only accept donations to Mozilla, and don't let you specify types of activities you would like to support.

I'm asking about Windows upgrade SKUs-- the kind that you'd buy in a box someplace like Best Buy or Circuit City or Office Max back in the day, completely separate from a computer. Were those ever a meaningful fraction of sales? Or, phrased differently, is Microsoft actually leaving any money on the table by making Windows 10 upgrades (both the Windows 7/8 to 10 and 10 feature releases) free for consumers rather than paid?

Disclosure: I worked for Microsoft during Windows 8 through early Windows 10 development on related teams.

Do you mean to say that Microsoft clearly communicated Win8 EOL dates and OEMs choose to move accordingly? If not, can you cite a source?

Edit: after some googling, I think you mean - Microsoft didn't think it was worth the expense to pay engineers to backport processor support to Win8. Bit of a difference from "strong-arming" the processor companies

They can both be bad. It isn't either/or.

All the tech giants participate in this behavior.

That doesn't make it OK.

Largely because it's Microsoft.

Everyone else does cross promotion of their products but some people hold a special place in their heart for hating on Microsoft. It usually manifests itself with frothing at the mouth, exposition about how they were sued as a monopoly, and they're the devil. It's as if Microsoft was breaking into homes in the 90s and swapping your Macs out for PCs.

Someone will respond to this post with a laundry list of complaints about them that they've had saved off in a .txt to counter posts like this.

Conversely, I don't use the start menu. At best I hit start and type the application I use. But on my Windows machine I mostly live inside my browser and Steam / game libraries, which are pinned to my start bar.

That isn't a fair comparison because each company primarily advertises from their monopoly position. Google does not have a monopoly position on platforms, only services. Microsoft is the opposite.

If you flip it around, Microsoft shows you one advert if you haven't turned them off entirely. Where as Google shows you an advert every time you visit every service they have and you can't turn it off.

Is your desktop environment Chrome OS?

Do you get Microsoft ads whenever you visit google.com from the Chrome Web Browser?

It's always been about control. You can apply this to damn-near everything too. "I paid for an operating system, let me use it as I see fit" "I paid for an internet connection, let me use it how I want" "I paid for a laptop, let me upgrade the RAM" "I paid for a phone, let me install whatever apps I choose / let me replace the battery" etc etc.

It's everything infuriating about modern computing in a nutshell. Every company wants absolute control over everything you do. And if they can't have that, they want _data_ on everything you do.

Microsoft could probably charge an extra $60 for an ad-free, privacy-aware consumer version of Windows 11 and make a considerable amount off that audience. But right now, there is no choice.

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/02/02/german-data-protection-age...

This notably does not disable telemetry phone homes on either edu or Enterprise SKUs. It reduces it, but there is still an awful lot sent back to MS.

Mind you, most Windows home users haven’t paid for an operating system. Either because they’re pirating Windows (e.g. most of the Asian market) or because they’re using an OEM license that Microsoft sold basically at cost (after CapEx:OpEx conversion of R&D expense, ala pharma companies.)

The only profit “Windows” as a product makes, at this point, is 1. Whatever tie-in channel partnerships they can sneak in (like the Candy Crush ad in the start menu), and 2. The cross-department budget Windows gets from Azure as lead-gen revenue (given that Windows is gradually becoming ever more tightly integrated with the Azure SDK, such that it’s only natural to use Azure to build a backend for a Windows app.)

With you so far...

> because they’re using an OEM license

... which they paid for. If MS is undercharging for those OEM licenses (that is, sum of R&D costs/ongoing maintenance costs is lower than sum of sale prices), that doesn't mean the OEM (by extension, the user) didn't pay for it.

Seems anything but shady? On the start menu in full sight and just explicitly suggesting their browser over Firefox. Doesn't even claim anything about either browser, just suggests theirs! Seems as honest and upfront as any advertising could be? 'Try our band of coffee' effectively.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-says-windows-10-is-n...

You better don't want your boss to know how much HN is stealing "hours of productivity" from you :)

I think an apt analogy would be the "Take a Penny, Leave a Penny" tray at convenience stores. Nobody cares if you take a penny from a gas station. But if someone figured out a way to take a penny from every tray in the world, that would raise some real questions about theft that would need to be answered.

I don't expect that I'll be able to get them to give me a top spot for an ad saying "Concerned about Microsoft's tracking policy? Mozilla Firefox is here", or "Still using Edge? Why not just get the original -- Google Chrome is here'.

Do you consider that shady too? If not, how do to you distinguish the Microsoft case?

But at least where I'm from, it's explicitly forbidden for radio stations (in fact it's illegal for any company) to run any kind of comparative advertising that denigrates a competitor's product. It's OK to show off your product, and it's OK to compare your own product to another company's, as long as you're transparent about what's compared and under what conditions. But an ad that mentions a competitor's product just to denigrate it would be illegal.

It would be okay for KBBL to advertise its news program. It would also be OK for KBBL to run an ad saying "Our program has the fewest fake news on the market", as long as they they tell you how to verify the claim (i.e. what numbers they used, who came up with them, how they came up with them, and how you can get them, too). But if they ran an ad saying "Still listening to WQHG-FM news? Tune to KBBL instead!" they'd risk having their license withdrawn.

It's definitely not pretty common precisely because it's illegal :).

The way your comment was phrased I thought that you were saying the shadiness comes from it being a Microsoft ad on a Microsoft medium which does not accept ads for competing products.

In wider terms, Windows is very much not like a radio station. A radio station doesn't broadcast advertising for their competitors' shows, but it doesn't broadcast competitors' shows, either. If we're to apply the same laws that apply for radio stations, then they should apply under the same conditions: Microsoft can advertise their programs all they want -- but then they shouldn't allow running their competitors' programs, either. Let's see how successful Windows is without Photoshop, AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max, Matlab...

Windows is marketed and sold as a general-purpose operating system. I think it's reasonable for users to expect that Windows will treat all legitimate programs the same, regardless of their origin. That should include access to the operating system's advertising channel.

Using your foothold in one industry (operating systems) to discourage competition in other spaces (browsers) certainly is a grey area. Microsoft has been through a pretty similar lawsuit before, on exactly this topic, and that didn't go very well.

So for example it's legal to show an ad saying that Edge is faster than its competitors, but you have to write a small note somewhere that says who measured that and how.

(Technically I think you can even call the competitors by name, but virtually no one does it because the public doesn't really appreciate that. Most companies will, at most, give a subtle hint).

It is, however, illegal to show an ad which simply says or implies that Firefox is somehow worse than Edge, or that no one uses it anymore, or that it's old, or whatever, without explaining how you got to that conclusion. It's fine to say that Edge is the most popular browser and link to a page about the study that showed it (or the study itself). But without the numbers, you're not allowed to do it. The studies in question are rarely truly objective, but they do offer useful data points.

That's intended to ensure that a company which is perceived as reliable or trustworthy cannot abuse that position and engage in false advertising.

This is a pretty good example -- among non-technical users, who make up the vast majority of computer users in the world, Microsoft is perceived as a solid and reliable company (and, the whole ads and data collection thing aside, it's perceived that way among technical users, too, yours truly included). Their word carries some weight, and non-technical users are likely to take their word at face value.

In fact Google did it worse by blocking browsers purely by user-agent to key google services like maps to block the entry or Fire devices or windows phone devices.

Both cases aren't acceptible and both should be punished imho.

I'm not sure what the adequate reaction here would have been. Should I have added a "P.S. oh yeah by the way Google is also doing this, don't forget to hate on them, too?" line in my original reply, for completeness?

Is something Google would totally do. They've been pushing Chrome with the search home page for years.

They can be shy to ask anyone if Firefox is viable in fear of being ridiculed and they might end up thinking that Firefox is bad for months or even years.

Perhaps they could have gone down a different road:

> Still installing browsers from internet ? Edgium is here, faster and pre-installed. Try it out!