Google Chrome Warning Issued For All Windows Users

AnActOfCreation@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 570 points – Google Chrome Warning Issued For All Windows Users
forbes.com
  • Mozilla has issued a warning about Microsoft's design practices, claiming that the company uses harmful design tactics to influence users to switch to its Edge browser.
  • The report highlights how Microsoft interrupts the installation process of Google Chrome on Windows devices, promoting the security and privacy benefits of Edge.
  • Mozilla calls for regulatory action to restore browser choice and competition across major platforms.

Archive link: https://archive.ph/koBY6

Chrome

Windows

Well there's your problem!

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Microsoft really wants someone to remind it of these days:

I like that part of firefox's summary was that it's free. Uh, yeah, they all are. Thanks Mozilla!

Opera originally wasn't free.

Also, while it is chromium based, Vivaldi is excellent and is essentially a bunch of old Opera team members.

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I don't remember that. Where is it from?

Microsoft never liked competing browsers (not even in the pre-IE6 era when all they had was crap), so it's hard to believe it came from them.

EU fined the sh1t out of them, and somebody in the regulatory body at the time realized that was not enough. So they were ordered to present the user with a choice of a browser during the OS install.

What I really want to know is why and how it went away.

sh1t

You can say "shit" here, nobody is going to be a cunt about it.

No, but apparently people are going to be a cunt about it if one chooses not to say it.

Because it's looks stupid to use the word whilst censoring it, say it or don't say it. No point in trying to pretend you're not saying it.

I'd say I got a good habit. Too much of the internet randomly filters "obscenity". Whenever that happens it seems the devs are too fvkin damb to properly implement it.

Yeah god damn the censor shit, even on fucking picture, they censor the swear words to fucking hell by scribing over it

Its verry much a good habit. However, You are free to speak your mind here. The fact you use sh1t (falsely) implies the idea that your the community is not allowed to speak your their mind. So people got mad ๐Ÿซค.

EDIT: grammar / clarity

What I really want to know is why and how it went away.

The move was in place because of the fear that IE was becoming a monopoly. Now Edge is very very far from the most popular browser, and Google Chrome is looking like the overwhelmingly dominant player, there's no reason to make MS prompt people to download rival products anymore.

INAL but my understanding was a lot of the fines and penalties hung on IE being part of the OS. I think it was the update functionality but don't quote me.

So with some legal technicalities, later versions of windows made it "not" part of the OS just a bundled application. A legal distinction without meaning but it meant they didn't need to do these things anymore.

The great joke is they are making the same mistakes again with edge, unfortunately the American justice system is a shambles these days so it's probably down to the EU to take the moral high ground.

Microsoft appear to be exposed to monopolistic penalties in several markets currently: browsers, AI / search, teams and office come to mind (although competitors are lacking, here)

INAL

IANAL actually

Could be I'm Not A Lawyer. We call that an "IANAL Contraction"

I know what it means, but everytime I think it sounds like screaming a new Apple product.

I think it will be back this March with the new laws (Digital Markets Act).

Honestly surprised Opera and Mozilla don't strike again together

Opera gave up a long time ago when they abandoned Presto. Today it is owned by some Chinese company, and they are just chasing the latest buzzwords, crypto, AI, you name it.

There are talks in the EU with the DMA about bringing this back.

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Microsoft really trying to get away with what it did in the browser wars again, but it's probably gonna turn out on for them this time

So Microsoft just does the same shit they've done a hundred times before and have been penalized for a hundred times before.

Give them a few billion dollars fine.

Jail those managers that made this decision

THAT will make sure they will start behaving. If not, it's all just "please don't" and Microsoft being "suuuuurely we would never ever!"

Fuck Microsoft

have been penalized for a hundred times before

That's where you're wrong. The last time they shoveled their browser at us in clearly anti-competitive ways they were found guilty and then ... nothing. Essential software or some such, and nothing.

So no, they haven't been penalized; not on their Sherman offence, and here they go repeating it.

Hammer them.

The clickbait in this article is so bad, I thought it was a security vulnerability or something, but it's just something else related to Mozilla again.

I'm still genuinely curious if Mozilla is going to actually accept a renewal for the search deal with Google, or if they're actually going to start practicing with a praise and try implementing that search engine selection screen.

practicing with a praise

Not sure what you mean but maybe you were going for "practicing what they preach"?

or if they're actually going to start practicing with a praise and try implementing that search engine selection screen.

You already can change the default search engine?

You can, but that's not the point. The idea is to ask users to choose upon opening the app for the first time. It's an already common statistic that most people never actually change any settings beyond basic personalization. It's part of why Google spends so much money on setting Google Search as the default engine.

That's a weak argument. If Microsoft bundled Edge with Windows and stopped at that, nobody would be complaining about it. The problem is how annoying it is at nagging users to try Edge.

Same with Firefox. If a user changed the search engine, only for Firefox to "forget" that choice one hour later, or if it had popups saying "Hey you have DDG as your search engine. Do you want try Google instead?" [ Yes ] [ Ask me again in an hour ]," then I for sure would have a fucking problem with that.

I recently set up Firefox on my Windows PC and it asked me on the FTUE wizard what search engine I wanted to use as my default.

ยฏ\_(ใƒ„)_/ยฏ

Whenever I'm forced to use Edge for work it reminds me of old IE that your grandma installed the Ask toolbar in. Functions about the same too.

Is there any material difference between Edge and Chrome? I'm forced to use either of them for work and as far as I can tell they perform the same

With Edge, MS decided to re-implement some stuff through their own library. I don't have an exhaustive list, but one particular thing is that for a while, SubtleCrypto (used for various operations within JavaScript) was present, but some mandatory algorithms were not available in Edge while they worked fine everywhere else (and maybe even in the non-chromium based Edge, which I don't remember testing).

So, yes, there are differences beyond the integration of MS services. They are unlikely to matter to most people, but for dev it does reintroduce some weird quirks, as MS does.

Functionally they are the same. People that claim one is slower are just parroting what they've heard or experienced before

There are small annoying differences. The way it handles downloads is irritating. The settings menus are not well organized. There's a big stupid Bing button unless you remove it. It randomly fails to honor the option to open PDFs in an external program. It's nothing big, but if you're forced to use it for work, it's constantly annoying.

Legit malware shown in this article. Imagine an operating system/browser injecting what are essentially ads into your webpage. Whether or not chrome or edge are any good these are scummy tactics by microsoft

Yeah MS has never done anything like that before...

Looks at MS Word in early nineties...

Can the EU just Thanos snap Microsoft out of existence with a quadrillion euro fine?

That would be a sure fire way to get Microsoft to pull completely out of Europe leaving thousands of companies without support and a heafty unpaid fine setting on the table.

It would actually be beneficial for Microsoft to abandon the server farms and offices leaving workers with an email stating the situation and their new job status.

You think Microsoft has no assets in Europe? Asset seizure is a sure fire way to get paid when companies refuse to cooperate.

If it's a choice between abandoning assets or going bankrupt I think they'd choose abandoning assets. The only exception to that rule is if they have the majority of their company there and that's just not the case being an American company.

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You think they make no profits in Europe? Why would they be here if they didn't?

How could they pull out of Europe if they straight up didn't exist? I'm suggesting the European Union should fine them enough to go bankrupt.

They wouldn't pay the fine that would bankrupt them they'd just cut there losses and abandon anything that was seised. They're an American company and the Asian market is what there after nowadays anyway.

If you could cut a dead limb off to save the body, wouldn't you? At the end of the day it depends on how the US and Europe handles civil cases across borders and Microsoft has a lot of ties with the US government.

Just a shame the US government's been completely captured. It's all rot from the top down.

It's not all bad just the federal for the most part. We're working on that but are politicians are as old as the hills. I believe they spend more time listening to corporate lobby pitches than reading the damn news but that's our problem to deal with.

Most of the biggest tech giants have picked up jobs from homeland or the NSA at one point in time or another, Microsoft is just the most prevalent along with Facebook (meta).

I'm stuck with one of the most fucked state governments, too. Actually, it's so bad I've been aiming to leave for a while, and I'll likely be gone within the next six weeks ish.

I would love the mayhem that would ensue from Microsoft leaving Europe completely. Dumb fuckers in all those incompetent IT departments that have wasted countless hours of mine because they don't understand jack shit of what they're doing would be having strokes, and us geeks would be having a field day keeping essential stuff alive, like medical technology and power plants.

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Again, install Linux already and be done with this shit.

That's always so easy to say, isn't it?

Far easier to do too. I did one of each last month and there's no question that the Windows setup experience is terrible in comparison.

The software and hardware I'm using won't work on Linux.

And that's the part that everyone ignores. They'll say open a VM or use wine or there's an open source alternative. But if I'm going to run native Linux just to open a windows VM to run the primary software I use, what's the point? I'm not bashing on either side. I use Windows when I need and, and go back to Linux when I'm finished, but that's because that's the solution that works for me.

Same here, to a certain extent.

I was referring only to Linux's lack of bullshittery in comparison to Windows, nothing else.

File the required issues with those manufacturers then. Support for Linux is trivially easy to add compared to Microsoft: the kernel sources and stuff to create your modules are right there.

That works until they explicitly say they wonโ€™t support Linux, eg. Adobe, Bungie, GoXLR, etc

Plenty of companies know that itโ€™s trivial to implement. They just simply do not care, nor will they ever care.

Linux community arrogance is to deny the device driver issues and think Apple is fine, when the reason Apple thrives is because they don't have open hardware like Linux, BSD, Windows...

Hardware companies are rarely held account for their absent support of Linux - some campaigns have come and gone, but in the end Linux users tend to arrogantly say it's trivial to switch and embrace dishonesty. I guess they figure Microsoft is dishonest, so they normalize it.

100% same

I was needing to boot back to windows multiple times per day to accomplish simple tasks, and that made Linux no longer worth the hassle.

Linux users are what everyone says vegans are.

But they speak from a high a position of superiority and rightness.

I'd rather be vegan than a Windows user.

When Linux gets around to supporting all the games I like I will

It will never support 100% of games. Mainly due to extremly agresive anti cheats that are the same as root kits.

You mean, when your games get around to supporting Linux, right? File the required issues with those manufacturers.

Alright, continue to suffer on Windows. Or fix it yourself.

Edit: I should have taken a different approach. It is difficult for older games or games specifically made for the Windows System. However there are many efforts made by good people. Valve's Proton is doing good things and Lutris is also making it easier. I am not expecting that all the games will run however there a few options that others made such as filing issues with the manufacturers or supporting projects that try to port it / fix it in some other way.

Is this how you advocate for Linux?

Again, I am an idiot. So taken down the bad comment. Don't assume and react based on those assumptions, me.

I am hungry and probably should go out for a snack.

Quoting the conversation you replied to:

Again, install Linux already and be done with this shit.

When Linux gets around to supporting all the games I like I will

Yes, the wording of "when Linux gets around to supporting" was bad and can be interpreted as "Linux needs to do the work". We who are familiar with Linux know that game support depends on the game's developer, not on any certain OS or plarform. You need to keep in mind that not everyone is as proficient with operating systems as we are, and thus not everybody might be aware who is at fault for lack of support.

You belittled the person in your comment, first assuming that they "suffer" on Windows, and then telling them to fix it themselves. You can't have meant that genuinely; after recognizing that they misunderstood the support situation, it should have been obvious to you that they're not capable of fixing the support themselves. So it must have been a snarky remark of yours and little more.

Instead of being this condescending, your comment should have been educational, explaining whose fault the lack of support actually is. Not even necessarily for the person you replied to, but for the sake of everyone else who finds this thread at a later point in time.

Even if you don't need Linux to win, I ask you that you consider how your comments reflect on the Linux community at large. What will people think when they see how you reply to people voicing their concerns?

Would you be happy being part of a community that although representing a genuine effort towards freedom from big tech, is perceived as elitist and insular by outsiders? I use Linux too, and I wouldn't be.

You make a valid point, I shall address my comments made. My assumptions made are a bit crass and short-sighted.

Why bother trying to convince people like you who only complain about Windows, but are way too lazy to do anything about? It's just a waste of my time. I'd much rather gloat about how I don't have to deal with crap like this. Don't come on here and expect sympathy for something that is entirely within your power to change.

I'd much rather gloat about how I don't have to deal with crap like this.

Alright, go ahead and do that. Surely that'll help the mainstream perception of Linux and its community.

No, I donโ€™t want too.

What is this clickbait bullshit? Here I was expecting more arguments I could use to move people away from Chrome, but the warning is just typical Microsoft trying to promote their own garbage browser.

This is a super clickbait title.

Yes, what Microsoft does is pretty shitty but the article sounds like there's some massive zero day hack or something to watch out for when it's just standard business practice.

Agreed. I would've changed it except I had in the back of my mind that the post title needed to match the article title, but now I don't see that in the rules. Oh well. But yeah the article is not really about Chrome at all.

You know what else is different about Lemmy? Post titles are editable!

I think this will ultimately backfire on them I gave the bing app a chance on my phone and I got so tired of the try edge interruptions I unninstalled everything Microsoft.

The search was actually decent but the constant nagging was very annoying.

I updated my proton app recently and as I was updating it Microsoft edge updater tried installing updates as well for some reason.

I don't even have edge installed. I simply blocked it from having net access but still, they can go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut if they think I'm putting that on my system.

One time I uninstalled Edge and Cortana from Win10. Some time later Windows Updates started to fail and would rollback. This continued for 6 months and by that time I stopped giving a shit since Win10 is malware anyway.

Another few months went by and I was bored enough to follow the usually useless links to MS knowledge base articles that are given after a failed update.

After another week of trying everything I came across or could think of, I downloaded the install for Edge and reinstalled. Ran the Windows Update again and the god damned thing was successful. Apparently it contained an Edge-specific update but didn't check if it was installed or not and fail gracefully if it was the latter.

they can go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut if they think Iโ€™m putting that on my system.

The only way to be serious about that is to not use Windows.

I'd like to flip to Linux, but I have an older nvidia card that doesn't play well with it, so until I upgrade some hardware win 10 will have to do. At least I'm firewalled so I can block their shit when it tries shenanigans like that.

How old are we talking? Most distros have legacy driver packages that go back a fair bit.

Nearly 10 now. Finding drivers wasn't an issue, but just couldn't get much performance out of them.

I'm probably going to update some stuff this summer and possibly flip to Amd so I'll probably try again then.

The worst thing Microsoft has done with Edge, was how they tried telling everyone it wasn't Internet Explorer, while using very similar icons for the longest time. Edge functioned a lot like Internet Explorer in how unstable and shitty it was.

Still is.

Edge is just a modified Chrome, so it's not all that bad now, but Microsoft needs to stop micromanaging what people do with computers. The consumer bought it. It should be their PC, not Microsoft's.

Seriously, Microsoft needs to get out of their own way with the marketing and just make a good product instead of trying to force all these things on people. They'd get a lot less negative attention if they just focused on the browser. The times I've tried it, it wasn't bad but I now refuse to use it out of spite for their forcing it on you.

This is also a problem with them overall. They've improved so many things in modern Windows under the hood (e.g. we've gone from installing drivers for every component to needing practically nothing installed manually due to it doing it for you, it rarely bluescreens anymore in my experience, winget is nice) but then they ruin it with stuff like going backwards on the default apps screen (in 10 it was easy to set for common apps like browser/email/media/etc, in 11 its per protocol/file). Making it difficult to switch browsers or using Edge anyways for some things and ignoring the default just pisses people off for no good reason.

Microsoft are still better than Apple in this regard. But they're both far from acceptable.

I didn't think anyone on this platform would be dumb enough to use Google Chrome anyways.

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I remember, something like 8 years ago, if you searched "chrome" on internet explorer, before showing you a proper link, they would show a patrocined link from microsoft that would install a "browser configuration protector" that would prevent you from changing any configuration, including of course the default browser.

I love how Mozilla is warning you that you're gonna have trouble using Chrome? It's Forbes so I'm not bothering clicking but I can only assume that Mozilla is also warning that you're gonna have a bad time trying to use Firefox.

Now sure how popular this is, but tbh,. Microsoft Edge is way better than Chrome. Yes I get it's chromium underneath, and I also do agree. And no I don't use Firefox, it doesn't play well with our stack.

Use a better stack

I'm sure they'll get right on convincing their comment too ditch a bunch of suggested they're heavily invested again. Should be easy and not a career limiting move at all.

Firefox beats almost everything else at the moment. Edge managed to make itself worse than chrome. I don't need a browser that detects a credit card form and injects a predatory lending scheme to take advantage of me, no thanks. Not even Google has steeped that low yet.

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I have no idea what you mean by stack, but you definitely don't deserve downvotes for this. You can use whatever you want.

They are getting down voted because their choice of stack (the set of software that was chosen for use in developing an application) is being used as a means to absolve themselves of the responsibility of supporting the last available cross-platform alternative to anti-consumer, chromium based shit.

If they had just not mentioned it or said they just don't like Firefox, there wouldn't be down votes.

Anyone is free to use whatever they want, but the comment you're responding to is just a shit take.

My last job used a stack that was unfriendly to Firefox, but I still used Firefox as my main development browser so I could catch issues and work toward better interoperability.

It's all good mate. I knew what I was getting myself into. Saying anything pro-Microsoft is a heresy here, and not bowing to Firefox is a penal offense!!

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