Is this even legal?
Is this even legal?
I just got this popup while playing New vegas. I don't even use chrome, i've switched to firefox. How can this be allowed? Also, this is Win10
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Maybe I'm missing something, but why would this be illegal?
Anti consumer and anti competitive. Using their position as the OS to bug the living shit out of you to use their services
Anti consumer and anti competitive.
I'm not so sure how it's either of those things. I mean yeah, it's annoying (especially if it's popping up while you're playing a game), but I don't feel like it's crossing either of these lines. If you click "Don't switch", it goes away, and it's not changing anything without your permission. I've never seen it pop up again on my devices. I forget where in the settings it would be, but I seem to recall there being an option to disable suggestions like this, as well (although an argument could be made that this should be opt-in instead of opt-out).
I know this community has a (largely justified) hate-boner for big tech companies, but not every annoyance is a crime. If anything, I'm just glad to see that they're at least respecting the user's consent these days; in the before times, Microsoft would just revert all your shit to what they wanted, whether you liked it or not, permission be damned. I lost track of how many WinXP updates would reinstall that Bing Bar (or MSN or whatever they called it back then) without asking me.
Unless there's another angle that I'm not seeing, I don't see how this is that much of a problem. If anything, it's a good advertisement for Linux, though.
I'm not even remotely a legal expert and I don't know what type of popup that is but I think the anti-competitive piece is "could Google use the same technique to push the user to switch to google search on Edge or not?".
If this was an ad from a web page OP had opened or from the game and if clicking "Yes" only directed the user to a site with instructions on how to switch default search engine on Chrome, then yes, obnoxious but probably fair. Google could strike a deal with the game developers to push their search engine to Edge users or buy an ad. Someone writing a new browser or search engine will probably have considerably less money than Google but could reasonably do something similar to try and gain market share.
On the other hand, if that popup comes from Windows itself and especially if clicking "Yes" directly changes Chrome's settings, then this is Microsoft using their ubiquitous (on desktops) OS to nudge more users to switch a competitor's browser to their own search engine. Google, or even less a new competitor. would probably not have the same type of OS-level access to switch the settings of a different browser.
Google already does this - and has been for years - use Google Search or Gmail on a non-Google browser and it will "suggest" you use Chrome
Less on edge, but google goes father actually. Google pays Mozilla to make google search the default aearch engine. You could argue thats worse then creating a notification to switch (but doesnt actually do it yet till you allow it to)
Disagree. OS pop-ups are at a much more basic system level than going to a specific site and then it might prompt a pop-up.
In the case of firefox, its not going to a specific site, it would be that way when installed. Its like saying mocrosoft should just outright overwrite the default search engine on amy browser without asking you vs asking you via popup, unless youre saying that the former is better.
Not at all. The difference here is that Google agreed that with Mozilla themselves. They don't overwrite the browser settings when you open Google. I agree with the sentiment that Google should have less influence and alternative search engines should get more space, but Mozilla itself, Google's competitor, is who agreed to have their search engine as the default.
It also comes to mind that Microsoft, again, insists on asking you to change to Bing on Edge every update, even if you already picked a different search engine.
But thats the perspective on the business to business difference. To the end user, its the default regardless, as they didnt have a say in that transaction. It would be on the same bout on those who hate preinstalled codecs and applications, which law wise, led to the creation of Windows N editions.
Even in the linux space, people have differing opinions on preinstalled stuff, and goes deeper with hard line options like no propietary preinstalled stuff and only FOSS
Weren't we talking about companies being anti-competitive? So the competitor dynamics matter here. Also, I don't recall Firefox ever asking you to return to Google or returning to it unprompted if you change your search engine.
They matter between companies, but the pop up is an end user interaction, which also matters.
The topic is a anti conpany to company, and a milder consumer interaction event.
The situation between mozilla and google is pro conpany, but can be seen as more anti consumer as it has a default.
Treating the dealing between companies and consumers as one single entity is not a good way to look at it. By that logic, ISPs are good companies because they coordinate to not compete agaisnt each other when of course that is far from the case. Yes they do matter, but how the power ends up in the consumers end also matters.
I can see many many examples of how bad Microsoft and Google can be. However this one I honestly don't understand: how's Google supporting Mozilla's competing product anti- competitive? Are they forcing Mozilla to do things they don't want in return?
I am a Firefox uaer and on every install on a new machine (or phone) I switch the default search engine to duckduckgo. But for good or for bad Google is the search engine most people use (and would use on FF too even if it wasn't the default). I don't think Google needs to force Firefox 3%-ish market share to use their search engine.
By setting defaults, its the reason why Microsoft was accused for being anti conpetitive by having a default browser installed https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp
And why Windows N version exists
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_editions (look under N/KN in regional variations)
Its why google also for european devices offer a default search engine selection as setting a default is considered anti competiive in EU
https://www.reuters.com/article/eu-google-antitrust-idUSL4N24Y2GY
Using a dominant market position as leverage against competitors, is per definition Anti consumer and anti competitive.
Apart from that, they are basically hijacking a competitors product to show this, which I think if not already illegal, it absolutely should be.
Edge is their own product…
I think this sentiment come from the long history of Microsoft repeatedly breaking and then failing to address antitrust requests. At this point people just assume bas faith.
I remember maybe a decade ago how it seemed a big deal anytime they used their OS monopoly to fuck with 3rd parties alternatives. But yeah, I don't think every popup and annoyance is a crime. There's a fine line they walk to still push their first-party garbage.
It’s about it being annoying or not. Microsoft is in a market position where they can leverage their different departments to heavily upsell you on other services. They have an unfair advantage that shifts the entire market to their favor, thus making it hard for any competitor to keep up or even enter the market.
E.g. they use every service / product they have to integrate Bing, they artificially limit the use of their chat bot to Microsoft Edge, they show Bing advertisements when you visit their competitors sites, they allow you to use Teams for free under certain conditions (if you already bought other products), they use their foot in the door with Microsoft Office / Windows go upsell you on Azure, …, Game Pass, …
I can go on and on. Some of them aren’t necessarily bad on their own. Some are. It paints a pattern of what Microsoft used to be. They actively used their position to try and create market conditions that would break their competitors or make it at least hard for them to even compete. About 15 years ago a lot of folks believed Microsoft had changed and were playing fair (in certain bounds), they invested a lot into open source and were generally a more friendly company. What we are currently witnessing is them going back to their old ways of doing things. Slowly tying everything back together. Probably under the assumption that this time the governments are sleeping and not really regulating it anymore. A lot of that is happening in the somewhat non-regulated cloud market anyways.
This might sound like a nit, but it really reframes the scope of the problem:
If you click “Don’t switch”, it goes away
In essence it really doesn’t. They shove things like this at a user in dozens of little places throughout various Windows and app settings. Then whenever any of those things gets a major update, here comes another invasive ad to get in your way and decrease your performance for the sake of MS’s data gathering. It never really “goes away”
Anticompetitive is a matter of antitrust law. Microsoft doesn’t currently have a monopoly on operating systems in the way they did 25 years ago.
Looking online in January they had a 74% share of desktops.
Linux is certainly dominating in the cloud but that doesn't really make much difference here.
74% market share for desktop OS is actually a lot less than I thought. Guess macOS had a solid comeback
For desktop and laptop computers, Microsoft's Windows is the most used at 69%, followed by Apple's macOS at 17%, and Google's ChromeOS at 3.2% (in the US up to 8.0%), and desktop Linux at 2.9%. In addition, 5% is attributed to "unknown" operating systems - which are likely forms of BSD or obscure varieties of Linux.[4]
From Wikipedia. Not sure when the numbers are from exactly.
Apple has been slowly growing for years. Google took a little with their Chromebooks but they never really took off. Linux continues to grow steadily but is still pretty rare in desktop environments.
Permanently Deleted
Yeah if you follow the link to the source freebsd is 0.01%
Linux is 3.1 and unknown is 3.7 so in all likelyhood that's mostly Linux that they couldn't identify.
Not sure how the data is collected. Often from useragents on websites I think.
Those have to be old. Last I saw chromeOS had overtaken MacOS a few years ago due to Google’s huge push to give chromebooks to schools during the pandemic for remote learning. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56116573
Unless chromeOS just cratered.
It's hard to find numbers but I did find this:
According to current data from research firm Gartner, ChromeOS's market share dropped considerably from 2020 to 2022, with just 6.8% of the worldwide PC market in 2022
So seem like it has bombed since that article.
Your article suggest it was a boom due to lockdown. Maybe that's faded as kids go back to school.
Just way for the year of the Linux desktop baby!Any second now, any second
it's also notable that Microsoft has no realistic mobile OS of their own, and a huge amount of what used to be done on a desktop OS is now on mobile. Operating an ecommerce site for instance, 65% of the traffic is from mobile phones, even browser vs apps.
According to Rules of the Internet § 12 "if I find something to be annoying, objectionable, or wrong it surely must be illegal."
MS literally got in trouble for bundling IE with the OS 20 years ago... This is so much worse.
If you cannot understand why people are rightfully upset... LEARN YOUR FUCKING HISTORY.
Those days are long gone. Else we'd see Apple and Google getting in trouble for bundling their own apps for everything on their devices.
People can be pissed that multiple different companies are doing things wrong at the same time. The problem is our government has lost its teeth for regulating large businesses
Things were a little bit different in the late 90s though. Windows had a 97% market share and a massive deal with pretty much every computer maker to only put Windows on their pre-built machines. They had a true monopoly in a way that doesn’t exist today.
They also made IE free and bundled with the OS when every other browser at the time you had to buy. On top of that, they made it so that windows would slow down and malfunction if you uninstalled IE, and made installing any other browser a complicated process.
Today you can freely and easily install pretty much any browser you want. Chrome has the hugely dominant share in the the desktop browser market now, despite Edge being bundled with Windows.
On top of that, Microsoft doesn’t have the massive stranglehold on OS market share that they used to. In the desktop space, MacOS is about 1 in 6 computers with Windows holding 71%, mostly in the enterprise sector.
And this doesn’t even factor in that the majority of web traffic is mobile now, where Windows doesn’t even have a presence anymore.
Basically every point you're trying to make about how MS was in the 90's is truer today except for market share.
Why is market share such a critical point when we're suffering from WORSE problems?
Market share matters because Windows was a functional monopoly back then.
Market share matters a whole lot less than people pretend... Yes, "monopoly" requires it, but in reality, in the real world where real things happen, you do NOT NEED a literal monopoly to start suffering from the same problems!
Jeeze, it's like you people want to no-true-scotsman yourselves in to a future where corporations literally own you and your time...
upset
Upset != "Illegal"
They had to separate it you numpty. They literally DID get in trouble because it was illegal. How are you seriously missing this detail?
I've been a Linux warrior since '98. I've hated MS for decades now.
But not everything they do is illegal.
You're talking about the past. Notice you're not explaining how this thing in the present is illegal.
Having some something illegal doesn't mean everything you do is illegal afterwards.
Way to completely and utterly miss the entire point of ethics. Does it HAVE to be illegal for it to be bad when it is WORSE than what they've already gotten in trouble for in the past? Why must I have to point at a law in order to say it shouldn't be?
If you even begin to hate MS, why are you defending them with piss-poor logic?
yes officer, this comment right here.
Because OP is a crybaby.
It’s not, that’s why they’re doing it.
It is illegal - they've already been taken to court and lost over similar practices 20 years ago.
It's just not enforced anymore - and that's why they're doing it.
They were taken to court for bundling a previously paid product (a browser) into their OS for free.
Asking if you want to change your search engine is not the same thing.