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Microsoft Edge is apparently usurping Chrome on people’s PCs

  • Users of Google Chrome on Windows 10 and 11 are reporting that they have suddenly found themselves using Microsoft Edge, with their Chrome browsing sessions appearing in Edge.
  • This may be due to a bug or an accidentally clicked-through dialog box related to a feature in Edge that imports browsing data from Chrome.
  • The setting, called "Import browsing data from Chrome," continually imports data from Chrome every time Edge is launched, unlike the one-time import offered for Firefox.
  • There have been concerns about Microsoft's tactics for pushing its own browser, including notifications, pop-ups, and full-screen messages promoting Edge and Bing.
  • Microsoft has become more aggressive in pushing various subscriptions and features in recent years, making a "clean" Windows install feel less so.
  • It remains unclear whether the Edge data-import issue is intentional or a bug, highlighting concerns about Microsoft's methods for promoting its own software.
bstix ,

Adobe did something similar. It did an invisible update, but suddenly all downloaded PDFs open in acrobat, even if you have a different default app for that, and you have to dig into some obscure settings to make it fuck off.

"We hope you like the new reader layout"
Really? I don't remember asking you a goddamn thing.

gregorum ,
@gregorum@lemm.ee avatar

As someone who refuses to use windows and who also refuses to use either of these browsers, I find this extremely amusing. Very troubling, of course, but also extremely amazing. 

Dave ,
@Dave@lemmy.nz avatar

I love how Outlook opens your links in Edge and gives you a little message about how it knows it's not your default browser but it thought you'd like to open in Edge anyway.

k_rol ,

I can always count on Microsoft to help me fix my default browser settings which I keep changing by accident. Silly me.

ultranaut ,

This has been annoying the shit out of me recently. I use several different computers so I keep running into this dumb shit. I feel like I'm in an endless fight to not use Edge. Microsoft knows I don't want to use it but they keep shoving it in my face again and again regardless. I really wish regulators would step in and put a stop to this nonsense.

Bizarroland , (edited )

They're not going to step in to fix it. They have no justification for daring to stand up to a 3 trillion dollar company.

They might throw a 5 million fine at them or something, but nothing that's actually going to stop this horrible anti-consumer monolith of practices

Cypher ,

You don’t seem to be familiar with the history of browsers or the billion dollar fine Microsoft received in the 90s.

EU regulators can and will make Microsoft hurt if they want to.

Or this fine from 2013 which related to Microsoft breaching the settlement agreement from the first fine: https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-fined-731m-by-eu-in-browser-choice-screw-up/

Bizarroland ,

Bitch please. Those fines are barely parking tickets to a 3 trillion dollar company.

And you don't know me so stfu

Cypher ,

[Thread, post or comment was deleted by the moderator]

    •
    lvxferre , (edited )
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    On-topic: I agree with your claim that EU regulators can and will make Microsoft hurt if they want to, and that both fines are examples of that.

    Off-topic: frankly the other user unleashing at you was deserved. Your "You don’t seem to be familiar [...]" boils down to "I assume that you're an ignorant, so let me enlighten you little thing". Stick to the argument dammit, your assumptions on the others are irrelevant garbage.

    Also, you'd do a great favour for everyone if you didn't use "ad-hominem" [SIC] as a fancy reword for "waaah, he insulted me!". The argument is there, alongside the insult.

    In the meantime: @Bizarroland, stop bring guns to a sword fight. While the above was patronising (as I am being towards both of you here - except that I'm being explicit on it), your "waaah shut up! shut up!!!" (ipsis ungulis: "stfu") sounds like a redditor whining.

    You bunch of kids, go back to the kindergarten. Both of you are being dead weight hier.

    Cypher ,

    [Thread, post or comment was deleted by the moderator]

    •
    lvxferre , (edited )
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    My assumption

    I.e. you acknowledge that you were making shit up about the other poster.

    Seriously. We [people] don't know shite about each other on the internet. Let us not pretend that we do.

    Since you love ad-hominem [SIC] with a dash of unsupported claims: (+> "you were also using an argumentum ad hominem)

    That is not an ad hominem either. I didn't even argue against your on-topic claim, I outright agreed with it. I'm complaining about your tone and highlighting that you partially deserved the other user's aggressive reaction.

    But since it seems that you're some ignorant, unable to grasp the concept of ad hominem, let ⟨blink⟩me⟨/blink⟩ enlighten you, o poor little thing:*

    Argumentum ad hominem is when you claim that something is false because someone said it, and the person has cooties or whatever. For example:

    • "You're stupid, so of course it's false." <-- that's ad hominem
    • "You're from [whatever], so your argument is invalid." <-- that's an ad hominem (without insult!)
    • "This is false because [A B C D]. You're stupid." <-- that is not an ad hominem.

    or, in fancier words, when the validity of the claim is questioned not because of the claim itself, but because of who uttered it.

    *I'm doing this on purpose to highlight how obnoxious you sound. Now cover it with a Reddit style façade of politeness, and then you get your tone.

    It looks

    "As an assumer, I assoooome" territory? Again?

    like you’re suggesting we assume every commenter is speaking factually. What an absolute fucking muppet you are. It’s free speech absolutist moral panic driven morons like you eroding society as a whole.

    I did not say anything remotely interpretable as that. (It's kind of funny, as you're assuming that I'm assuming.)

    lvxferre ,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    The other muppet clearly mentioned those fines as an example, that fines can harm Microsoft if so desired. Of course they'd need to be scaled up given that MS is considerably more wealthy than back then.

    Bizarroland ,

    Aside from the fact that they were being condescending in their reply, that 900 some odd million dollar fine was only a small fraction of the profits they made from doing crimes and misdemeanors.

    If you can rob a house and the only penalty is that you have to give the cops some of your loot then there's not really a reason to not rob houses.

    Anybody with a lick of sense would say that if you do a crime you don't get to keep any of the profit.

    So while 900 million looks really good on paper and it really looks like you're sticking it to the big bad Microsoft, when they made tens of billions of dollars off of those crimes it's a giant nothing Burger.

    Now that Microsoft is a 3 trillion dollar company, any fine that isn't over a hundred billion dollars is something that they can easily ignore.

    lvxferre ,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    If you're talking about these fines: it was 1.35 billion euros in total, the "900 million" number only refers to the biggest one. And there were two complicating factors:

    1. It's for the EU only. I can't demand a thief to give me back what he stole from you.
    2. It's about the Windows Media Player only. If I prove that the thief stole my hammer, but not my sickle, I can only demand my hammer back.

    I do agree that it's a bit small, considering their size back then (they were already a 300B company), but the case still triggered some action from MS, forcing it to release a WMP-less version of Windows.

    And, if this happened today, with Edge, I predict that the fine would be considerably larger, since MS has today ten times the market share that it had in 07, and because browsers are seen as a bigger deal than media players. Perhaps not hundreds of billions, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was 50B.

    I also predict that it would be far more effective because their strategy with Edge is to push it down your throat until you don't spit it back, so an "Edge-less version" would be actually seen as desirable by the customers.

    planish ,

    Gasslight Gateskeep Girlboss

    JigglypuffSeenFromAbove ,
    @JigglypuffSeenFromAbove@lemmy.world avatar

    Same thing with MS Teams, except it didn't give me any messages. It just started opening all my links on Edge overnight. I was very confused when I double checked my OS settings and Edge wasn't my default browser. I had to manually set Teams to use the same as my OS default instead of Edge.

    This whole thing reeks of higher execs pushing stuff no one wants or needs, while a poor dev has to implement shit like this and cry in bed at night.

    lvxferre ,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    I think that governments should be tackling both Edge and Chrome at the same time. One of them for underhanded tactics, another for being a monopoly. Tackling only one of them is not enough.

    I also think that Microsoft's strategy is worse than just underhanded - it stinks stupidity from a distance. It's clearly backfiring - this is not the first Browser Wars any more, people nowadays have a good grasp on what a browser is supposed to be. And while some pressure might convert a few users, too much pressure is bound to create resistance, even on users that would be otherwise inclined to follow you like cattle.

    admiralteal ,

    Dark patterns.

    All the big tech firms do this shit all over the place because the regulators are sound asleep at the wheel.

    wikibot Bot ,

    Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

    A dark pattern (also known as a "deceptive design pattern") is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills". User experience designer Harry Brignull coined the neologism on 28 July 2010 with the registration of darkpatterns. org, a "pattern library with the specific goal of naming and shaming deceptive user interfaces". In 2021 the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Consumer Reports created a tip line to collect information about dark patterns from the public.

    ^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^
    ^article^ ^|^ ^about^

    lvxferre ,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    @Asudox

    Suggestion/request: please, consider making your bot opt-in, or to only act when explicitly requested to do so (e.g. by adding !wikibot to the post/comment).

    While this bot outputs good info, and it's trivial to opt out to a single bot, it's still adding a bit of unnecessary noise, and a nasty precedent. Eventually Lemmy will get more bots, and some won't be as useful as this one; the noise will quickly pile up, unless users are expected to opt out to every single one of them.

    This would probably also allow you to let the bot operate outside this comm.

    Asudox ,
    @Asudox@lemmy.world avatar

    Yeah well I did this so that the bot just doesn't sit idle waiting for someone to mention it because it's not very well known yet.
    I might do that as it indeed seems like it's annoying some users. Thanks for the suggestion.

    lvxferre ,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    Got it - for initial discoverability I guess that it's fine.

    I wish that we had some page or similar where people could actually look for bots, and how to trigger them.

    Asudox , (edited )
    @Asudox@lemmy.world avatar

    Alright, thanks for your suggestion. The main program is not only now smaller but also faster. Anyone can use it anytime by writing their comment with their wikipedia link and mentioning the bot anywhere in the comment.

    Test:

    Read this to learn about computers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer @wikibot

    wikibot Bot ,

    Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:

    A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs enable computers to perform a wide range of tasks. The term computer system may refer to a nominally complete computer that includes the hardware, operating system, software, and peripheral equipment needed and used for full operation; or to a group of computers that are linked and function together, such as a computer network or computer cluster.
    A broad range of industrial and consumer products use computers as control systems.

    ^article^ ^|^ ^about^

    lvxferre ,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    That's great! Thank you for taking feedback into account; I genuinely can see myself using your bot in the future, it's good stuff.

    agent_flounder ,
    @agent_flounder@lemmy.world avatar

    Maybe some are awake but corrupt.

    lvxferre ,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    Yup. In this case

    • roach motel - it's considerably easier to switch to Edge than from Edge
    • appeal to emotion + appeal to authority + appeal to false authority* - "we recommend Edge, chrust us"

    *those are technically fallacies. However, by trying to convince a user on irrational grounds to do something, they become a dark pattern.

    superduperenigma ,

    Had to set up a new laptop for someone over the weekend and Jesus they just won't stop begging you not to switch.

    Search for another browser in the URL/search bar, gigantic banner that pushes the actual search results off the page: "There's no need to switch browsers, Edge is safe, fast, etc etc etc"

    Click the download button for Chrome's installer, a pop-up notification shows up: "Edge is built on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust and security of Microsoft" (fucking lol)

    Go to switch the default browser in settings, another pop-up shows up again explaining that Edge is the greatest thing since sliced bread, I have to click either "Try Edge (recommended)" or "switch anyway".

    Then I spend 30 minutes navigating their maze of a settings app to change a bunch of ad preferences, etc.

    Then I spend another 30 minutes editing registry entries to disable Cortana, Bing search in the search bar, recommended apps.

    God damn I'm glad I switched to Linux.

    Bizarroland ,

    And the same for a domain joined PC. Fresh install of Windows 11, open edge, find that you are already signed into edge on a Microsoft account that Windows helpfully created for you that mirrors your domain account.

    You told edge that you do not want to transfer over your data. And it says okay but you'll notice a little blue hyperlink that says manage above that.

    And if you click that it tells you all the stuff it's going to copy over anyway.

    So you sign out of that and you untick all of the boxes and you close edge and you reopen it and you find that you are still signed in to your Microsoft account that was created for you with your domain credentials in Bing search and you have to sign out of that as well.

    Edge has created an account for you, signed you in in two separate locations, and automatically set itself to ingest all of your account credentials and it does not even tell you what it has done unless you click through multiple paths to find it.

    kautau ,

    The game industry is going hard on “GaaS” or “Games as a Service.” Microsoft is going hard on “OS as a service” because, in the same way, they want your data or your money as you use the product

    lvxferre ,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    That's awful.

    ...my mum's laptop being unable to run W10/W11 was a blessing in disguise then. I'm glad that I don't need to manage this sort of junk.

    Maven ,
    @Maven@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    And then once a quarter as part of their "feature update" they'll ask if you're suuuure you don't want to change your default browser to Edge instead of your normal browser.

    Nachorella ,

    And if you need to use Microsoft Teams for work it will ignore your preferences and open links in edge by default, so you'll have to find and disable that, too.

    frosty ,
    @frosty@pawb.social avatar

    Just found this setting earlier in the day, before seeing your comment. That was annoying and such an unnecessary grab on Microsoft's part.

    Kecessa ,

    Regional settings > English UK

    Bam, most of that shit is taken care of

    f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4 ,

    O&O ShutUp10 is free and handles all this automatically.

    Cethin ,

    Fallacies are called that because they are effective but not based in logic. They are the dark patterns of thought, rather than technology.

    lvxferre ,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    They are the dark patterns of thought, rather than technology.

    That's brilliant. Yes, it's exactly this.

    Bizarroland ,

    The regulators get more money the longer this goes on.

    rottingleaf ,

    I was against all regulation and IP at some point, and yes, in such a situation MS would have much less power, because nobody would buy, say, Windows, only pirate it. Similar with many other products.

    But the next best thing is to split and regulate the crap out of Apple, Google, MS etc.

    But then the question arises:

    When, say, regulators split AT&T, they did have some understanding of what they were doing.

    Today all these companies are dealing in things which most lawmakers are unable to comprehend and won't ever be able.

    So maybe the way to deal with this all still is in aggressive action against IP laws, and not in anti-monopoly regulations, simply because there's no way socially to make the majority of people - the pool from which lawmakers come - understand what exactly they are regulating.

    prole ,
    @prole@sh.itjust.works avatar

    This is exactly why regulatory agencies exist (as well as Chevron deference, something that the current Supreme Court might be about to do away with); so that the actual rules regarding specific industries are not created by politicians (or judges) who have no understanding of the subject.

    The people making and enforcing most regulations are regular people working 40 hours a week in their field.

    Gork ,

    Those eyeballs are disturbing 👁️👄👁️

    Arthur_Leywin ,

    🧿🫦🧿

    trucy ,

    L for using chrome honestly

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