I also thing think that saying that something is annoying is dismissing what is actually a pretty dark pattern. What comes to mind is how modern day censorship works the internet. If you outright block someone's ability to visit a example.com, they will spot the censorship and try to find workarounds. If on the other hand, you simply introduce a 5% packet loss to example.com, people will blame the _website_ and not potential censorship.
What's to stop Microsoft for adding another 5 minutes of hassle to install chrome or firefox? You couldn't sue them for it, but it would be enough to destroy every other browser on the market.
It sounds like you're talking about something specific, are there examples of this happening that you can point to?
I'm not even giving it a shot.
It'd be one thing if word of mouth built up enough positive vibes for me to consider trying it for awhile. It's entirely another for my first experience with the latest Edge to be additional tech support requests from concerned and confused relatives in the middle of a goddamn pandemic. My mother has been a bit paranoid of Edge ever since scammers tried to get her to use it when Chrome blocked the malware she was being tricked into running - so Edge suddenly trying to take over her computer with no obvious way to close out of it made her understandably concerned! Fortunately we were able to muddle through it despite me not being able to see her screen over the phone, but this is another reminder that I should be strongly considering trying to switch her to a different platform, and poisons my perception of Edge to it's very core.
Isn't that besides the point that you love Edge ? I think the problem here is that they installed it without user consent.
I'm sad to see any Chromium based browser installed on my PC, but it's hardly harmful that they're upgrading a system component to the latest version.
They did this just after making it impossible to manually skip updates ("to prevent confusion"), and also shipped it to Windows 7, which is supposed to be EOL'd.
It’s the same kind of scummy behavior that dodgy websites use to set themselves as your homepage, or change your default search engine.
Does it? I don't even have Chrome on my phone. Even the webview component is now customizable, I think (or maybe it's the "embedded browser" component, but apps are definitely opening things in a popup Firefox window for me).
Preinstalled Google's proprietary apps on GMS Certified Android Hardware are Google Search, Google Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Google Play Store, and more. If your devices are not certified, you will not have access to any of Google’s proprietary apps.
It's all or nothing. So if the OEM has certification from google, Chrome is compulsory. Also, the manufacturer MUST release ALL their phone models with it. They cannot release some models with the open sourced android.
AFAIK, Google and Microsoft are using the same playbook. Google simply learned from MS's mistakes early and created illusion of choice with open source.
Microsoft in turn, has learned from Google and is gluing "must have" services to open source VScode.
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-oem-licensing-345806... https://socialmobile.com/gms-certified-devices/
that's only true in recent Windows history, and it's obviously just another way to follow suit and go for the 'walled-garden' approach that the other platforms seem to be reaping the benefits of.
"You can't remove the browser, it's a part of the system architecture." should be followed up with : "Is that a legacy feature, and if not -- what can be done to remediate it?"
If someone told me that file locking was a concept you're stuck with in Windows -- yeah, sure. I agree. That's something that requires nearly a bottom-up re-write; these browser dependencies are new in the case of M$.
That depends. The post doesn't clarify whether Edge was already installed in its legacy incarnation. If so, and they received an update, that's not ""installing without user consent".
I recently installed the Chromium version of Edge manually and didn't encounter any of this behaviour. It's a shame that Microsoft are doing something Windows Update-specific, although maybe people who are the most averse to this behaviour are the more technical crowd who will have already grabbed an installer for themselves anyway?
You are now that Microsoft has done this.
Seriously, forcing user preferences is terrible and completely unrelated to the virtues of Edge.
Do you earnestly believe it will stay that way if an actual sizable chunk of the market starts using it?
Or do you think Microsoft will do exactly what it did as described in this very article, which is use it's monopoly position to enforce its own interests to the detriment of society at large?
Possibly the best fit I’ve ever encountered for the adage “out of the frying pan into the fire”.
(Disclaimer: long-time IE user --- as well as Firefox and (pre-webkit) Opera.)
That's not even necessarily a bad thing (given there are ways around it) ... But that isn't what Microsoft did here.
Consider for example, this Chrome setting: Settings > Sync and Google Services > Allow Chrome sign-in. The description says "By turning this off, you can sign in to Google sites like Gmail without signing in to Chrome".
Turn this feature off and sign into Gmail. Chrome will sign you into the browser as well -- regardless of your setting -- so now the browser knows who you are.
This is pretty abusive. For this reason I have made Edge my default browser.
Putting my web-developer hat on, I _am_ happy that I'm not going to have to worry about Trident-in-Edge ever again.
Firefox is also fantastic! It's good to have some options besides Google Chrome these days!
Edge is the ONLY browser that doesnt consistently freeze my entire computer (and require a hard reset) when I watch Netflix. I have no idea why but its a common issue if you Google it.
For that alone I am glad Edge exists.
There's also some integration with MS365 if you log in the an Azure AD domain.
Meanwhile from a user perspective some browsers differ in extensions and configuration etc. So if you get a monoculture which causes sites to start relying on non-standard features of only specific browsers, it makes it harder for people to use or create other browsers that aren't bug-compatible with the only one anybody is targeting.
The "fast iteration" browser makers like is also damage, because it causes cruft to accumulate. Once you add a feature, sites start using it and you're stuck with it basically forever. See how long it took to get rid of Flash. But now they add features at such a pace that Chrome is now like 35 million lines of code, all of which is attack surface which causes all browsers to have disproportionately many security vulnerabilities.
Having multiple independent browsers requires new features to go through a standardization process that requires buy in from multiple implementations before sites can rely on them, which causes the changes to be fewer and more carefully considered -- a good thing for something you'll be stuck with ~forever.
Select any text, and speak it. Jump anywhere in the page. Works on both, regular web pages, and PDFs too.
It works even better than what’s on the iPad Safari. And Chrome doesn’t have any working feature like this.