Without respect to the facts, it's funny as hell to see this called "a new low" when browser bundling is what got them sued by the United States 20 years ago.
I'm sitting over here in my rocking chair thinking, "You damned kids don't know how good you've got it."
There's a Simpson's episode where Homer has a business that Bill Gates wants to buy, and he refuses. So Bill tells his bodyguards to 'buy him out' and walks away. They proceed to smash all of his equipment to bits. You don't get done by Matt Groening like that by simply bundling software.
Also, the way Chrome got on most people's computers was originally some pretty dark patterns. Two wrongs don't make a right, but Microsoft isn't alone in this constantly escalating grab.
I'll be honest, I think most popups with user information are useless and annoying. The majority of people think "I didn't ask for a pop-up" and click the x without reading, not even knowing what cancel does.
Despite normally thinking "info" popups do more people bad than good, completely stopping all os interaction for a full screen "the blue e is changing to a wave" is absolutely necessary. How many people only know the internet as "the blue e" or "google"? After 25 years of a blue e, it's a staple of computer interaction, one you can't just quietly yank away.
With old edge going away, they obviously have to ship a replacement.
The fight between these companies to be set to default is ridiculous, and they are both abusing their positions because people can't be depended on to know how to undo a defaul protocol handler change. Microsoft's "are you sure" pop-up when trying to change your default PDF viewer, should be illegal. If you're in the menu changing it, is not the time for a weird passive aggressive manipulative popup.
But. But, it's also not good for Microsoft to just cede full control to Google.
It's also a bit ridiculous for people to be conflating pinning an icon to a taskbar with violating people's privacy. If you know what it is, un pin it. If you don't know what edge or new edge are, the pin is probably useful.
Not quite. Homer actually accepted the deal to be bought out by Bill, and then yes, Bill's goons smashed all of Homer's stuff. When Homer queries what's going on, Bill says "Well, I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks," and laughs.
This is worse in my opinion. In the '90s, you could argue that precedent hadn't truly been set yet. Now that case is almost common knowledge in tech. They can't even pretend to have an excuse this time around. Until today, I thought "Microsoft is doing pretty good." Now I want nothing more than to see them sued/fined heavily for this.
EDIT: I can see now that I wrote carelessly. By "This is worse" I meant "This is more blatantly illegal." Not "This is more detrimental to the world." The '90s browser bundling was probably much more detrimental, but not unexpected behavior. But the recent behavior was very unexpected to me. I had to use Task Manager to kill it. I can't believe Microsoft would be so bold as to not even give me some small, hard-to-read "no thanks" button somewhere.
Microsoft in the last few years managed to successfully sucker a lot of people into believing the new microsoft post-balmer is somehow reformed and better. Therefore I think its also worse because of the added deception and astroturfing campaign. I think Microsoft actually never changed a bit. They just swapped the figurehead.
We weren't mad at Microsoft for bundling software. We were mad at them for strangling out anyone whose shadow even looked like competition.
People with 10% market share are allowed to do a whole hell of a lot of things that become illegal when you have 90% market share. I suspect this is part of why monopolies are so uniformly recalcitrant. From their perspective, we didn't have problems with them doing this 10 years ago, why are we upset about it now when they have assets worth taking away as a punishment? It's just a money grab. They're just winning and we're just jealous.
If I own a grocery store, I'm selling formula for below cost to get people into my store. It's called a Loss Leader. If I'm the biggest formula maker in the world, and I sell formula below cost, that's called Dumping and I will be fined and punished if anyone can prove that I am 'too big' and that this is driving competition out of business.
If there are major economies of scale to a business, what if it's optimal to have a duopoly, regulated of course to prevent collusion? Maybe we need to have more of a system for directly dealing with that situation.
I think right now it's just optimal to have a duopoly because it protects the bigger guy from getting in trouble for being a monopoly, and secures the little guy all the leftovers. like Microsoft saving Apple from bankruptcy or Google paying firefoxs bills.
I don't understand why Microsoft gets such a hard time over this when in IOS you can't even install another browser engine aside from Safari. If you do install Firefox on IOS it's just a wrapper for the Safari engine with all the same limitations, you can't install adblock or other extensions. That seems far more anti-competitive that what MS is doing here and it's been happening as long as IOS has existed.
Apple has some 25% market share on mobile devices . Microsoft has 80% on desktop; they had some 98% in '90s.
That's the crucial difference. You can easily get native firefox on mobile if you want (even if it means giving up iOS). It was much more difficult for desktop users to give up Windows in 1998.
And when given the option, the wonderful Desktop Linux never goes beyond 1%, as per Valve stats, but everyone will migrate en mass just about now (since XP apparently).
That's entirely different issue, that doesn't have technical roots. The world didn't migrate en-masse to Windows Phone either, despite it being quite nice mobile OS at the time.
Sure it has, a fragmentation and continuous forking of major desktop stacks that don't allow ISVs to thrust the platform.
WP also doing slowly well, the whole technical stack was rebooted multiple times, and thus it lost the developer love that got fed up with so many reboots.
Also the reason why Win32 and WinRT are now being merged via Project Reunion, confirming the trend that started with MSIX and XAML Islands introduction.
> Sure it has, a fragmentation and continuous forking of major desktop stacks that don't allow ISVs to thrust the platform.
If you are halfway competent ISV, you don't have a problem. Sure, there is no polished SDK that contains the entire world, but everything needed is available in respective repos.
You also do not need to support every release of Kali and Slackware. If you focus on the most used distribution(s), you won't have a problem with support. Even Microsoft can do it today.
> Also the reason why Win32 and WinRT are now being merged via Project Reunion, confirming the trend that started with MSIX and XAML Islands introduction.
Causing collective yawn. But don't worry, other desktops have exactly the same problem, because again, it is not a tech problem.
>believe Microsoft would be so bold as to not even give me some small, hard-to-read "no thanks" button somewhere.
I will never ever forget the time they considered closing a nag popup (that they installed through security updates) by hitting the X in the top right as consent for an operating system upgrade. That was depraved.
To this day, I don't know how people could forgive them for that. Like... look at this incident in comparison. They installed a browser. That's nothing.
I don't care about the bundling. I care that I already chose Firefox as my default browser, but Microsoft tried to force me to choose Edge instead. There was no "no thanks" button. I had to use Task Manager to kill it.
Would browser bundling actually get them in trouble in today's world? macOS, iPadOS, and iOS all come with Safari bundled (and alternatives prohibited in the latter cases). Android comes with Chrome. Some Android devices (Samsung) come with other browser bundled. Chrome OS is itself a browser.
A browser is a basic necessary OS component (heck, you need one just to download another one).
What is objectionable is the in-your-face nature of this update.
Like really... How could you get the link to download a browser if not using another browser? It's not like Ubuntu/Debian where you can use apt-get to download a browser, but then if you need Chrome, you need the browser too to accept EULA and download the package.
Aaaand it seems to have registered itself at some point as default pdf viewer, overriding my previous setting. Not sure when that happened but isn’t it just lovely.
Am I alone in absolutely loving Edge? It has finally unseated Chromium for me. It has all the benefits of the latest Chromium build without having to rely on sketchy binaries uploaded to some website, or giving Google total ownership of my web browsing. Sure Microsoft now fills that role, but they already own my OS anyways, so I'd rather reduce my "privacy surface area" as much as possible. Plus it has great built in privacy features like automatically deleting all browsing history after every session, and built in adblocking. I agree that the behavior outlined in this post is annoying, but the reality is that heavily managed automatic updating is the future for consumer grade software, and for good reason. If you're not a fan, just use Linux or an LTS Windows release.
Your conclusion strikes me as a bit defeatist. Managed systems might be 'better' for users now, but in the long term, they leave users with almost no agency, and that becomes a great opportunity for companies to abuse their position of power.
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.
There's two parts, I believe. One is the outright blocking of certain websites. The other is the throttling of every foreign website because the exchange points coming in/out of china are always congested. If both netflix and comcast's streaming service are similar in price and catalog, but netflix is always buffering because comcast is throttling netflix (intentionally or otherwise), then you might be inclined to go with comcast just for less hassle.
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.
They install it even if you uninstalled the previous Edge (there's no uninstall for this one now), they pop up a full screen modal with no X or cancel then they add Edge to your desktop and system tray. Then when you use your normal browser, they ask if you're sure you want that as the default.
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.
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.
Big difference between open sourcing an Atom clone vs a browser engine and operating system. Microsoft only open sources the minimum to try to attract developers away from Linux and get them working in a Microsoft bubble.
>It's a system component that was never removable to begin with. And now they updated it.
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$.
IE has been inseparable from Windows for well over a decade prior to the launch of Edge, when they let you uninstall IE. But Microsoft has generally made one web browser mandatory.
On the other hand, I don't want any web browser on my phone. I want it for maps, messaging, calls, and alarms. Nothing else. And yet I literally cannot uninstall Chrome.
> I think the problem here is that they installed it without user consent.
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?
"shoving Edge down our throats" to me implies without consent. But as you say, it could be that the user consented long time ago but doesn't remember :)
It's rather complicated I guess, but I've heard rumors of a concept of consent where it's something that can be revoked. Sometimes people get quite vehement about it.
Let's presume for a moment that the new edge is like... Nirvana, it's the promise land, it's browsing utopia, let's assume that it really really is.
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?
Microsoft at least doesn't have a reputation for permanently removing access to all of your data because you did something horrible like dispute a false charge. Google, on the other hand...
No you're not alone. I also recently tried Edgium and I think it's a really nice browser. However, I'm going to keep using Firefox cause FOSS and whether I like the new Edge or not is besides the point. I don't like it when Microsoft changes things in an update that clearly only benefit them.
I was initially hesitant to try it out. But now that I gave it a shot, I am liking it since it is very similar to Chrome but without being tied to Google. I am currently using it as a secondary browser, but if I was forced to switch I wouldn't mind. Extension support is still lacking though.
IMHO the worst part of Edge is the UI and relative lack of configurability. I suppose you'd like it if you were already used to Chrome/ium, but I abhor the dumbed-down featureless "flat" trend that's infected everything "modern" these days, along with the lack of things like user stylesheets and zone-based security settings (both of which IE has had for a long time, and which I have used to much benefit.) I'd be far more welcoming of a new rendering engine in the normal IE UI, along with all the configurability it had.
(Disclaimer: long-time IE user --- as well as Firefox and (pre-webkit) Opera.)
I have switched to Edge, not because it is necessarily a better browser, but because Google has become abusive.
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.
I wanted to like it, but its new tab page has a bunch of MSN cookies associated with it. To Edge's credit, it blocks some Bing cookies (giggle) and cookies from a 'scorecardresearch.com', but I'm still unimpressed.
Putting my web-developer hat on, I _am_ happy that I'm not going to have to worry about Trident-in-Edge ever again.
You're not alone. I like it. I _really_ like that Windows ships with a Chromium based browser by default, and I am running the canary build as my day to day, and it performs great on Windows 10 ARM (I have a Galaxy Book S, which is also awesome!).
Firefox is also fantastic! It's good to have some options besides Google Chrome these days!
I'm on W10 with the latest Firefox, Chrome and Edge.
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.
I do not know about absolutely loving Edge, but I just setup a new work computer and am using edge exclusively. I cannot promise that this is forever, but it is working for me right now.
I wouldn't say I love it, but it's the best experience with multiple profiles. It's super simple to log into multiple MS accounts and have each one pinned to the taskbar.
There's also some integration with MS365 if you log in the an Azure AD domain.
They don't all have the same engines and some of what they do have is non-standard.
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.
If you think that, it's a testament to the skill of the web developers who have spent countless hours battling browser bugs and poorly or non-implemented standards to ensure that their site works and looks the same on every browser.
i like it ok. it's better than ie. i don't like bing as much as google but overall i found it redundant to have both edge and chrome installed, and i just use edge. if i used gsuite or was a youtube uploader it might be different. i really should use firefox again though. i think edge's novelty is wearing off. and chromium in general.
I'm using Chrome on OS X right now. I can highlight text and select "Speech -> Start Speaking" and it reads whatever I highlight. It also works fine on a random PDF file I found.
Probably some software VP got a directive from higher up to see to it that their browser/software penetration stats are increasing, and opportunities for tie-ins with other products too, so this is what you get.
I would guess it is not a customer-product integrity driven priority.
Consider Linux. I recommend the "Debian" flavor, with a "Mate" desktop.
It's a no-brainer to install. It works exactly like all the other desktops. And it's faster, more secure, more stable and doesn't try to sell you stuff. It's also free.
Manjaro is much better, or Ubuntu. With Debian you'll be lucky to get acceleration support and constantly be searching for unofficial repos to install modern software.
You don't have to use the default window manager for Ubuntu. I used to have Arch and Ubuntu LTS with i3 window manager. I found it easier to maintain Ubuntu LTS with i3 as my window manager.
If Windows 10's forced automatic updates were really being done just for security, Microsoft would offer the option to use LTSC. It's a painfully obvious solution—keep everyone secure, without changing their system out from under them. Microsoft is producing the code anyway.
I am pretty sure that you get the browser prompt to switch your default browser anytime you install a new browser (or any app the registers as a file or url handler). It has your current default on the top with the other choices below, I don't see what is so objectionable about it.
Now the full-screen splash page is obnoxious. There has to be a more tasteful way to inform the user of a large Edge update.
1. I didn't install it. You (Microsoft) installed (actually updated) it. And because you chose to update it, you think that gives you the right to nag me again about making Edge the default browser? Edge was already on my machine; I already answered that question. Stop nagging me about it.
2. If I just want it to shut up and get out of my face, it won't let me close it by right-clicking on the taskbar.
3. It's slow to load, so I have to wait for it before I can get rid of it (or else use the task manager, which also takes time).
Yeah, I'd call the combination of those things "objectionable". I might call it stronger terms, too.
I wouldn't have been bothered by this at all (including the splash), if Windows hadn't reassigned Edge as my default PDF handler. Delving into the dark guts of the default programs settings, and finding a way to convince Windows that it was alright for Firefox to open PDFs even though it hadn't been installed from the Windows Store, took a far longer context switch than it deserved.
I migrated away from Chrome -to Firefox- over a year ago and haven't looked back. I don't want a re-skinned Chrome browser. I don't want Chrome. I don't want Edge.
Please Microsoft, listen to your users and stop trying to shove your products in our faces. If we want to try your products we will. If we don't want to use your products, then your own guerrilla-style tactics are only hurting your marketing efforts.
When people feel they have a choice, they're more likely to be satisfied with the outcome. When people feel they're cornered, the experience is less than satisfying and is almost guaranteed to backfire on the one doing the cornering.
> When people feel they have a choice, they're more likely to be satisfied with the outcome.
Is this really the case? or is it more so that people want the illusion of choice? Let's not forget that the other major OS in the world has you locked into using one browser engine regardless of whatever browser you install i.e. you have the illusion of choice but not really. Would people be okay if Microsoft forced all browsers to use Chromium on Windows?
Since users don't own Windows, only license it, MS has the ultimate say in what software those users will run. So it is what it is and we can all pray to Microsoft gods in hope that they will show some mercy.
They hit that low for me when they did the exact same thing with Windows 10 upgrades. When people's PC eventually shut down to restart mid-work, because they just minimized the upgrade pop-up instead of telling it "later" - which were the only two options to begin with. When this involuntary upgrade bricked some laptop models. When they snuck a popup for either OneDrive or Win10 into an important security update.
The whole point of an operating system is to work and get out of peoples way. Every needless distraction is a design flaw. Microsoft has, time and again, proven that they either don't understand or care about that and as such are not qualified to be OS vendors.
The actual article title of "With Edge, Microsoft’s forced Windows updates just sank to a new low" is a better explanation of what the article is about, imho. The word "throat" appears nowhere on the page.
I don't have this problem. Firefox still my browser. No Edge in sight to do the shenanigans described in article. I even ran manually a "check for updates" and came back saying I am up to date.
But I have a local account, and I've disabled all of Win10 crap using WPD. Maybe that's why? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It's a dirty move, but it's an immensely lucrative move.
By switching users to Edge, they are switching them to Bing. The vast majority of users won't notice the switch since Edge and Bing both look a lot like Chrome and Google.
This will give MS billions of dollars of additional advertisement revenue.
I get that technically it is a new app and it is a browser... but edge has been bundled (outside of europe) since... ever. So has been the dark pattern of pushing for 'a better browser'. BTW, google does the same in their digital 'property' (they push for chrome - aggressively). Got no horse in the game but feels like '90s-hate-m$' nostalgia. How is this news?
In 2020, can you tell me of an OS that doesn't nag you for updates or do so 'during down times'? Ahhh yes... an 'eol' android device from obscure (or not so obscure) android vendor...
It's a good thing. Also please uninstall IE6-11, old Edge automatically. :)
Anyway, you can write the exactly same article about a random DLL/service you never asked for somewhere in C:\windows\* running in the background or hooking into apps doing whatever.
One could argue Microsoft has given years for these old systems to be migrated to use something that is more modern and future proof (if that even exists in technology)
....Microsoft pushed their new native browser out ....the horror!!!! I guess we should be mad at Google and Apple for forcing their browsers on us too.
I don't remember (desktop) Safari force installing a new version, opening full-screen undismissable popups, or setting itself as my default PDF viewer. But ok, sure, Apple bad too!
This isn't a 'new low'. Microsoft has always taken advantage of its monopoly position to take control.
This is no different from the Netscape/Internet Explorer shenanigans of the 1990s. Trouble is, the new generation of computer users don't know MSFT's previous history so they are "shocked!".
For the rest of us, it's just Microsoft being a dick as usual.
The thing for me is, so much of Microsoft has shown serious improvements over the past decade. You've got Azure's push in the cloud championing (at least some) truly open source community-driven projects like Kubernetes (rather than Amazon's ECS), you've got Office unveiling their new Fluid document format as open source day 1, you've got WSL2, Xbox under Phil Spencer making a huge push to find more equitable ways to satisfy both gamers' desire for more games and developers' need for revenue with Game Pass, the push to bridge console generations with Smart Delivery, the push to bridge console and PC with unified digital licensing...
And then they do things like this. The Windows core team feels to me like a clandestine shadow organization in Microsoft whose location is unknown even to Nadella. Of course, that's not what's happening, and its startling to me that no one has cracked down on them for this shitty behavior.
Its not representative of how Microsoft, by and large, operates today. It is representative of how they used to operate.
What makes me sad is it's not even necessary. I have complete confidence Microsoft can turn chromium into a better Chrome than Google can. It would be easy - integrate a real ad blocker. It's something Google would never do but makes no difference to Microsoft.
I think it's quite some difference between seeing an ad for a browser on a site (but still requiring that the user clicks on it, downloads, installs it and uses it) and getting it deployed automatically as part of the normal Windows update procedure without the user doing anything. This it's not comparable to the Chrome ads on Google properties but it is comparable to Android coming with Chrome if you want.
Yes, it's not quite the same. One time update vs everyday bombarding with ads and popups and making it so that large percentage of WWW sites doesn't work with anything but Chrome.
I don't remember Microsoft ever being this obnoxiously in-your-face. Force-feeding users full-screen adverts is a new low of the Win10 era.
The similar screens that get shown when installing updates are just as creepy, to the point that I've heard of others mistaking them for a ransomware infection:
Taking advantage of their monopoly is not the bad part IMO. The bad part is doing it in such an tasteless way, i.e. making the product suck.
It wouldn't bother me if they overpriced their stuff like Apple does or bought every competitor like Facebook does, etc. It only bothers me when they make their product unusable like they've done with Windows.
> Taking advantage of their monopoly is not the bad part IMO. The bad part is doing it in such an tasteless way, i.e. making the product suck.
They aren’t separate issues. Monopoly is the absence of effective competition (a place people go when you make things worse, whether in cost or UX or otherwise). That's what makes them free to do it “so tastelessly”.
It is very much still a monopoly for operating systems on personal computers (desktop and laptop). It's just that mobile phones have eaten a lot of the personal computer market so their overall power over people's lives has decreased because of that but it's still very significant.
Except it's not. It includes high barriers for entry into the market, a single seller, pricing without competition, and other things. Microsoft was considered a monopoly not because of its marketshare, but because of its underlying practices.
There's still little meaningful meaningful competition in the enterprise desktop/laptop OS market; the scope of the monopoly is smaller, but, yeah, they still have a space where they exercise pricing power without people migrating to alternatives.
Yeah, but those other monopolies in tech? Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Twitter, they get a pass. I would argue these 5 have more power over the tech sector than MS these days.
Chrome does use bundleware and dark patterns to trick users into installing it. It's done this for years in things like free Windows antivirus, the Flash installer, etc. I've had to uninstall Chrome from my mom's computer 3 times.
https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj
This reads more like a hit piece. Just close the browser and use chrome ff as default anyway. You are on windows platform, aren’t you ? This discussion was already over and Microsoft already lost.
That Microsoft is going this way now is pretty interesting, because the parallels to Internet Explorer seem pretty obvious - IIRC they really considered putting a FUD messsge in front of the Netscape website (uncertain about this, please correct if applicable). It looks like they have gotten too comfortable again.
They have probably calculated the backlash and decided it was worth it because most people actually just don't care.
It's going to get so much worse without proper regulation, the trend has been clear for years.
