Outlook suddenly started opening links in Edge, disregarding my default browser settings

MrTHXcertified@lemmy.sdf.org to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 1245 points – Microsoft is forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge, and IT admins are angry
theverge.com

Current-era Microsoft continuing to push the boundaries of consent.

Microsoft Edge is a good browser but for some reason Microsoft keeps trying to shove it down everyone’s throat and make it more difficult to use rivals like Chrome or Firefox. Microsoft has now started notifying IT admins that it will force Outlook and Teams to ignore the default web browser on Windows and open links in Microsoft Edge instead.

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Ran into this about two weeks ago. It can be turned off.

Here's the setting to change. It's under File -> Options -> Advanced

God I hate Windows and their dance with monopolistic behaviour. They’ll bring out a “feature” that changes how a program works so you have to change it back, in the hopes that most people don’t do it. They keep doing it with browsers because they siphon away enough users each time that it’s worth it for them.

Windows should have a default browser choice in settings, and any program you use should automatically use it no matter what, unless you physically change it yourself. It shouldn’t even be possible for them to do. I really need to learn how to use Linux. I’ve got a spare SSD. Fuck it

Linux is not even difficult to use and there is no telemetry slowing down the hardware you paid for and feeding some greedy org with your user data. Ubuntu desktop is perfectly fine as a daily driver as long as you don't use it for gaming or windows apps through Wine. Thats when it becomes more complicated and error prone.

When Windows 10 hits EOL we might actually arrive at the year of Linux. I've been daily driving Arch (obligatory, I use arch btw) for the past 7 months and aside from a few hiccups where I tried to tweak absolutely everything and NVIDIA shenanigans, neither of which was the fault of the underlying kernel or OS, it has been dreamy. Never going back.

Ah you must be from the IUseArchLinux.FYI instance. Lol

They have a point. After the Win10 EOL, the only secure option for hardware that doesn't meet Win11 requirements will be Linux.

Gaming works surprisingly well. The last few years have made it a one-click affair for thousands of games with the efforts of the Proton team.

Even then, with the effort Steam has put in, there is a lot more support for games on Linux, one way or the other, than there was before, and not necessarily as difficult, either. All of my admittedly small collection of frequently played games should work on Linux. I need to refresh my Windows, maybe it's time to try Linux out for my gaming machine.

The day I can play all my games on Linux and know the games i want to play will come to it, I will rejoice. I want so badly not to be stuck on Windows.

It's not that hard to use and it's worth the transition. Gaming on Linux is pretty reasonable at this point, most stuff is in the browser or has a Linux app now too.

Do it brother, try out a "just works" distro like ubuntu or mint. I switched to linux 1,5 years ago, im never looking back again.

That is a terrible dark pattern. "Let me just change the defaults away from the option that literally is the default setting (default browser) to the thing I want users to use instead".

Straight up maliciously ignoring "default browser".

Good to see. And if there's a setting, there's probably a registry key behind it storing the value...it's about 30 seconds in group policy to set it back to "Default Browser" for everyone at my company once I know which one it is.

Had to do the same thing to uncheck the "Also set up outlook on mobile device" box when Outlook initially adds the mail account last year...

MS's main goal nowadays seems to be to find new ways to annoy users by advertising their own crap instead of producing a useful product that gets our of your way and just works.

wow..... this is hot garbage, windows products should auto-register the default programs...... why??!?!?!

"continuing to push the boundaries of consent."

If by "push the boundaries" you meant "completely ignore them", then yes. This kind of behavior from MS, or any vendor, should always be considered strictly unacceptable.

This kind of behavior from MS, or any vendor, should always be considered strictly unacceptable.

Yep but especially from MS since their OS is just so incredibly widespread that they pretty much have a monopoly that they abuse.

It's fucking annoying, admittedly edge is good on its own merits, but you know what pushes me to not want to ever use your product? Anti-consumer practices.

I have been very happy in using FF for my main browsing. It has adblock, NoScript and SponsorBlock. Since I use NoScript I jump on Edge when I want to use a trusted website for payments but I really want to use it less when it does this shit.

I can't wait for the excuse "OoOooh wooooops, that's a bug! Sowwy EU we did not mean to do anti consumer pwactices" as a way to dodge blame

Using Firefox is the only real way to circumvent much of the bloat of the modern web. UBlock only works 100% functionally on Firefox, Chromium-based browsers just don't give add-ons the functionality that they need to block 100% of nasties. Until that changes (which it likely won't) I see no reason to switch off Firefox.

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you can use a secondary firefox profile. starting firefox with the --no-remote -p switches allows to load it alongside the main profile (-p loads the profile manager and --no-remote suppresses the "open new window in existing profile" behavior

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Outlook has a separate setting for opening links. It's very sneaky:

https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/outlook-hyperlinks-edge-default-browser/

Remember when Microsoft got raked over the coals for this kind of behavior, in the 90s?

Remember how bored everyone got of ignoring news about the massive issues in the 90s that still affect everyone? You still can't bring it up without people's eyes glazing over. Drives me nuts that people just don't give a shit.

I tried using outlook this year for the first time in 15 years, and immediately NOPED the fuck out when I noticed it displayed ads in-line with my inbox.

And then there are those rumors that they want to display ads in the settings panel. Fuck Microsoft, they have ZERO trustworthiness in my book

I unfortunatelly have to use outlook and teams at work. If this really becomes the case, I will both write to EU regulators and try to petition our IT to move away from microsoft teams and potentially outlook.

If you work for an EU company using Outlook might be illegal, as they now send all emails unencrypted via their own servers.

At our work place, which is mostly Linux, some people have been using outlook if they opt to use windows or Mac or android or iPhone. And when outlook started to send all emails via their own servers (not respecting your smtp settings and such), we instated a full ban on using all outlook clients on all platform.

It's really sad, as a Linux user I think outlook used to be the best email client period. Before this privacy hell and before adds in the program of course.

Hi. Do you have some documentation for the unencrypted mail part? Doesn't sound very GDPR compliant depending on the information sent, off course.

Same for me. My company talks a big game, but is bad at audits or detection for authorized devices / unauthorized access.

I wiped my work pc and ran linux daily for a year. Remina for remote management was far better than the native RDP client in Windows. Web based outlook got the job done. Teams app in Windows is just reskinned chrome anyhow. Works just as good in a browser. Had a remote box set up for any thing that absolutely required Windows.

Gmail does this too. I'm pretty sure my adblocker handles them on my PC but I see them on the mobile app all the time.

We use o365 for work so I'm seeped in that environment already. I tried using o365 for my personal email for about 3 months and finally gave up and went back to gmail.

But Gmail includes ads disguised as emails too?

Does it? Never had one.

Its usually in the separate tab, the "promotion" tab, where they send most subscriptions emails. It's not good, but it could be miles worse. Yahoo mail for example is a lot worse: you get Ads in the website taking away screen space unless you pay a premium

This is news to me, I don't see any in my gmail account. I use adblock though. I also do not see any in the gmail app.

email is an open protocol, there is absolutely no reason why an email client should get away with showing ads.

I see a couple of ad "emails" entries in my promotion side of the inbox, usually in the 3-4 rows, and I also use both adblock + uorigin. Again, not really disrupting, because its usually a section of the inbox I dont go into too much, but I can see it being annoying for others

I don't have a promotions tab either. Or any tab for that matter.

Edit: I turned the tabs on, no ads in the promotions tab either. Maybe it's not a thing in my country.

I have never experienced this with Gmail, though I use ublock as you mentioned. I haven't seen any through the gmail app on mobile either.

Email is an open protocol, there's no reason to continue using an email client (web or otherwise) that displays ads. I highly recommend you use something like thunderbird if this is your experience.

Ads are pernicious no matter where they appear, but them being associated with any kind of personal communication is fucking nuts, I wish we wouldn't normalize it.

Fuck Microsoft, they have ZERO trustworthiness in my book

me in the 90s, the last time I gave them a cent or a moment

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“This change is designed to create an easier way for Outlook and Microsoft Teams users to reduce task switching across windows and tabs to help stay focused,” says Katy Asher, senior director of communications at Microsoft, in a statement to The Verge. “By opening browser links in Microsoft Edge, the original message in Outlook or Teams can also be viewed alongside web content to easily access, read and respond to the message, using the matching authenticated profile. Customers have the option to disable this feature in settings.”

I don't know if this is a neurodivergent thing but I 500% could never see myself in a position I could say something I knew to be such BS and put my name to it.

Mmm yes, let the snake oil flow through you.

They'd do better finally fixing teams. We're talking years after release, and there's still no option to change my status behaviour. It forces DnD when I get called, it puts me afk after only 5min, ...

Their software does not fundamentally work very well. So even if this bs would be talking about an actual feature, that's some stone age project management right there.

At this point it's better to put it down, like the sick panda it is!

It's buggy, bloated, slow and with a horrible UI.

My job involves a fair amount of paperwork (I know, I know, what year is this?) and the fact that Teams marks me as inactive when my hands are off the mouse for a couple of minutes borderline offends me.

Technically, yes, lizard people diverge from ordinary human neurological make-up and marketers are all lizard people.

For real though, someone developed this feature. Like, how soul-crushing must that be, developing such blatant anti-features.

Eh, considering how MS wotks internally, the dev probably didn't even know what he was developing.

That sounds illegal, especially since they already lost an anti-trust lawsuit for Internet Explorer browser two decades ago. I guess they have enough power now that they don't have to worry about silly things like laws.

That whole antitrust thing was just the US gov't gaining leverage over MS. Once they got that, MS was forced to enable surveillance on their customers by the gov't. Now that they've "played ball" for all this time, they are being allowed to resume their previous activities.

Yeah what the hell is going on?

There was a lawsuit and in Windows 7 Microsoft was forced to offer a browser choice program that allowed users to pick different ones.

Nowadays everyone just forgot about that?
Browser lock in is worse than it ever has been since the 2000s and is approaching levels of monopolistic behavior we haven't seen since the internet explorer vs Netscape debacle, if not already worse than that.

Every ecosystem forces their own browser and the only way to circumvent it is with hacks.

To access certain one drive elements on android in the browser with Firefox, it tells you to open the page in chrome to proceed. If you do that, the Microsoft login page then asks specifically for using edge to sign in.

It's insane that nobody cares. I went back to Firefox as soon as manifest v3 was announced, but nobody cares.

It's alarming and once people realize what happened it's too late.

I stopped using Windows and converted to Linux. I'm not going to be "one of those people" and tell you that you should too, but I've been using Linux full-time for 3 years for gaming, work, and personal stuff and never felt the need to go on Windows except to use my VR headset, which I haven't used in months. I just built a new PC and haven't even bothered installing my Windows SSD into it in the last 4 weeks since I built it. I may never and just sell my VR headset.

I've been wanting to switch to Linux but it just looks like one of those things I'd dive head-first into and have no idea what I'm doing, not to mention I have years of random shit on hard drives formatted for Windows.

I'd love to do it, but it all just looks so overwhelming, maybe i'll think about it more seriously if/when I ever replace my current laptop. What flavor do you recommend? I mainly use my computer for gaming but sometimes school too, plus id like it to be as windows-like as possible just so I don't have to worry about a major shift in usability.

Is there a way to convert windows content to linux-compatible files? Can I just save the files I want to a USB drive and move them? Nothing I wanna save is specifically windows, mostly game files and/or photos

Just plug it in. Linux will read it. You don't need to do anything. Also I highly recommend Fedora with KDE Plasma.

was planning on switching to linux but then payday 2 dropped support for it. too bad I guess

What kind of files are you concerned by? Pretty much all pictures, videos, docs, etc. will all open on Linux without issue. The only real thing you have to think about is the applications you use and whether they can be run on Linux or have acceptable alternatives.

Most of the things I have could run on a Steam Deck, the only exception being a few games owned by Microsoft and only available on the Windows Store. Most of the files I would transfer would be save files from different games, though most of them could probably be uploaded to Steam Cloud

Not op, but I've been using various flavors of Linux off and on for a couple of years.

First I'll note that in pretty much any flavor you pick should be able to retrieve data off those Windows drives. You'll probably need NTFS support if you want to read from the drives directly, but I'm not 100% certain about the details so do a little searching before taking the plunge. Files generally should work fine. Images saved in any common format (.jpg, .png, etc) will be fine. Game files could be trickier. If you mean the actual files for running the game, you'll either need a dedicated Linux version or run them through a compatibility layer like WINE or Proton (this may take a bit of luck to get working). If you mean things like save files then that all depends on the particular game... you'll need to research moving data across operating systems for each game. For regular computer files, though, it is usually as simple as throwing them on a USB drive and dragging and dropping them.

Given that you want to do some gaming I would be remiss to not mention that, even in the best cases, Linux gaming can still be a little hit-or-miss. This is greatly exaggerated if you have uncommon hardware. For instance, Linux gaming on Intel ARC video cards is pretty rough right now. Sooner or later you will find a game that doesn't work right, and you may not be able to fix it. Such is life.

As for picking a flavor (colloquially called a "distro") that can get a bit complicated. If you just want a jumping-off point without the full breakdown, then Pop!-OS is probably a good starting point. They aim at being a more newbie-friendly distro, and they have a big enough community that you should be able to find help if you get stuck on something.

You should know that when you're installing Linux, you will usually first boot the computer using a USB drive with the distro of your choice. This is called a live environment, and it gives you a chance to test out a distro without making any permanent changes to your computer. Of course, once you actually do install the new OS it will wipe all data from the computer's drive so make sure you're ready.

If you want to get a bit out in the weeds of picking a distro then read on, otherwise you can ignore the rest of the comment. If you choose to take the plunge then good luck, and I hope you enjoy it!

There are two major families of Linux that I think you should consider: Debian-based and Arch-based. There are a lot more than that, but IMO these are the most appropriate for your use case. Of the Debian-based distros, I'd recommend the aforementioned Pop!_OS, Ubuntu, and Mint. Some good Arch-based options are Manjaro, Endeavour, or possibly Garuda.

When in doubt, a Debian-based distro is probably the right choice. Any of the distros above should do the trick, but all are a little different. I already described Pop!, so I won't rehash it. Ubuntu is one of the most popular Linux distros ever. Probably the most popular for home computers. As a result, there is a wealth of forums and other users you can ask for help. If you run into a problem in Ubuntu, someone else has had to deal with the exact same thing and probably made a forum post about it. Linux Mint, in particular with their "Cinnamon" desktop was made to feel a bit like old Windows 7. It's not exactly like Windows (no distro is) but if you're a long-time Windows user then Mint feels strangely comfortable. Like Pop! its userbase is smaller than Ubuntu, but still more than substantial enough to help out with the most common hangups.

Anyone who knows about Arch Linux would probably raise an eyebrow at recommending any form of it to someone new to Linux, but in my defense, most of the development in Linux Gaming is being pushed by Valve right now, and their new SteamOS 3 (which is what the Steam Deck runs by default) is Arch-based. AFAIK SteamOS 3 is not yet available for non-steam deck systems. Valve has stated they intend on releasing it as a fully-fledged distro, and if that ever happens then it will likely become the de facto standard gaming Linux distro. Until then, I suspect that running another Arch-based distro might result in fewer issues while gaming. That said, while the distros I've named are much more user-friendly than vanilla Arch Linux, the Arch family is generally less beginner-friendly than their Debian counterparts. Some quick notes: Manjaro is fairly popular but a bit weird as far as Arch distros go, Endeavour is clean but I'm not super confident in their noob-friendliness, and Garuda has a gorgeous desktop and is probably the most feature complete for gaming but it includes some power-user tools (chaotic-AUR) out of the box that I wouldn't recommend for new users.

On a final note, if you want to learn a lot about how to use a Linux system, and in particular the command line, you could try installing vanilla Arch. This is almost certainly a terrible idea; you'd have to be more than a little masochistic to try it. If you want your computer to just work then steer well clear of this option. Arch has a reputation for being non-user friendly and borderline hostile to newbies for a reason. If you decide to try this don't expect anyone to hold your hand. And don't ask for help on the Arch forums unless you've done everything by the book, to the letter, and you've actually tried everything else first. But making vanilla Arch your first distro would be a pretty chad move.

SteamOS being publically available would be the best. Until then, if I ever get around to building a new setup (if I ever round up the $$$) I might look into a Debian distro. As far as learning about Ubuntu goes- does it have a lot of requirements for running? Could I install Arch or something a little more friendly on an old laptop or something so I can train myself on the basics?

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I've been using Linux since the first Ubuntu release in 2004. I still use occasionally Windows 11 for work, but about 95% of the time I use Linux.

What distro? Mentioning you love Linux but not saying what distro you use is like when someone posts a still frame of a brick wall pulled from their favorite movie, saying “I love this movie, everyone should see it” but doesn’t say the name of the damn movie. :) I’m curious!

I run Pop_OS!

Sweet you came back to answer!!! I hadn’t heard of that distro—about every 10 years I mess with Linux and I’m getting close to the 10 year cycle beginning again. Would pop OS work well on an i7-4770 with a GTX 1060ti with 16 gb of ram or is it built for bleeding edge systems?

That hardware will be suited fine to run any Linux distro in general. None of them have an especially demanding desktop environment. I'm rocking an RX 550 at work on pop OS's cousin Ubuntu.

Is there a performance hit for windows gaming in Linux? I’ve read it’s come a long way but is it virtualization that will bog down on my CPU or is it something else?

I really should check my notifications more often.

I can't really say from experience, as the only game I've played on Linux that isn't Linux native is Starcraft, and that's not exactly a demanding game these days. Linux is on my main workstation, but I still have a Windows PC as my main gaming PC, so I haven't had a reason to check out how well the virtualization & compatibility stuff works.

My intuition says you've still got enough CPU oomph to muscle through any such virtualization overhead though.

I've been using both for a good while by now, Linux is good but damn I know that's a sacrilege but I still like Windows.

Granted, I heavily customized my Windows install, made all the adjustments I wanted and threw out most of the nagging garbage and my locked down work computer is definitely worse.

Windows just... works most of the time, and it's fluent and does what I want.

At the end of the day, most of the direct user interaction with an OS "directly" is task bar, start menu and file manager. And for all of these things, there's a lot that annoys me on Linux. In Windows, I'm very happy.

Just to give one example. I like the individual entries in the taskbar to fill the entire width dynamically. If there's one entry, it fills the entire taskbar, you get what I mean. On Windows, that's a registry tweak. On KDE, that's basically impossible. Like, I'm sure somewhere in the source code for the panel there's a way to rewrite that, but frankly, that's close enough to "basically impossible" for me.

I'm in this same boat. I enjoy gaming too much to be able to ditch Windows completely, but I have it very, very customized.

I enjoy gaming too and do it on Linux just fine. None of my normal games don't run on Linux thanks to Valve's work on Proton. Apex Legends, Mechwarrior Online, Halo MCC/Infinite, and much more all run on Linux without a hiccup.

Unless you firewall it... It is pinging bill gates every time you click start....

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That's how it works with Microsoft. Even search in Windows disregards completely your default browsers settings into opening them straight in Edge.

I mean, do people actually use the search feature for anything besides looking for files IN your system?

And Microsoft thinks that if they don't find the file we want them to search on a search engine we don't use on a browser we don't use.

Microsoft thinks that if you type the full word you must not actually be looking for the thing you typed

All aboard the anti-trust train 🚂💨

How many times must they be sued for this exact thing? It would be nice if they faced some real consequences this time.

It's like it's thier white whale. The sole reason the entire company exists. Every department. Every acquisition. Every decision they've ever made as a whole is to eventually get you to use thier web browser.

Bill gates makes the call every Tuesday that everyone at Microsoft fears: IS IT COMPLETED? GET IT DONE.

Reminds me of Google trying to force everyone with any kind of Google account to use Google+. If you had an account on YouTube, it'd convert that to a Google account, automatically create a Google+ account for it, and start posting your activities to it by itself. I know a ton of people who had active Google+ accounts they didn't even know about.

I hate it when someone starting edging on my PC without consent.

Ran into this yesterday, when my manager opened a link and had to call me to help because it didnt autofill his passwords.

This "productivity increase" cost my corporation 15 minutes the first time anyone ran into it.

Sort of related, but this reminds me of a really annoying thing that’s been happening on my work windows 11 machine.

Any time I launch chrome from VSCode to attach a debugger, edge launches along with it, and directs me to a page that says “try the new bing.”

Absolutely infuriating, makes me want to uninstall edge.

I mean, why not just uninstall edge then?

Good luck with that lmao

You can absolutely do it, the one that comes to mind is a small batch file you can download that disables it. I know there's plenty of other ways too though if you're not comfortable with that

Something something antitrust. Something something browser choice. Microsoft is just asking to be fined €1 billion. Really, someone needs to make a big stink about it in Europe because they'll act before the US does.

Microsoft is just asking to be fined €1 billion. Really, someone needs to make a big stink about it in Europe

Good luck. Apple restricting iOS to only use Safari's engine is even worse, yet they haven't gotten in trouble for it. Every browser on iOS is Safari under-the-hood. At least Microsoft always let you install other browsers.

I switched to thunderbird a little while back when they started adding advertisements that look like actual email into my paid for windows application. Nope.

I work for a break/fix shop supporting users in many different environments and I say I have never seen ads disguised as emails in Outlook. I see a lot of other very frustrating things from them but never that.

Here's an example.

This is the web owa version, but it looks similar in the windows client as well. I don't have an example from my own inbox because I uninstalled outlook, but this is the same thing.

This caused me to rage quit my emails this morning. I'm going to back to Thunderbird.

Edge is an OK browser that's rapidly being bogged down with bloatware, just like Chrome which it sought to destroy. I'll keep using Firefox and hope the same thing never happens to it. At least they finally killed off IE.

I use it on my gaming machine because it's there and it isn't chrome. But it keeps harassing me with browser shopping notifications, recommendations that are always about AI, and you have to visit a pasted-in flags page to disable them. It's shit

Not that I like the current Chrome, but with all this forcing down your throat Edge from Microsoft, I hate Edge 10 times more. I guess Firefox is the only good alternative even if its is not Chromium

Yeah I'll probably just switch to FF. But I use it so infrequently on there it's not a priority.

I've been using Vivaldi a lot more though. Especially on my phone

Especially because its not Chromium

I quite like Chromium. Maybe is my tinted glass when I just switched from Firefox/Explorer. The fact that your browser would pop up almost instantly instead of taking those 2-3 seconds to start was quite revolutionary (Firefox of course caught up quite soon on that regard, Microsoft had to adopt Chromium to do the same).

But yeah, the current bloatware and resouce gourging are quite bad when looking at it impartially.

I've been using edge since the first chromium beta. I'm considering moving to firefox just out of spite.

Firefox is great! I have never been to a website where it doesn't work, and the future of the internet relies on people ditching chrome based browsers (don't kid yourself, chromium = supporting chrome and monopolistic companies)

Sadly haven’t had the same experience. There are some websites that are broken and Canvas particularly didn’t play videos well on Firefox. Also, it has been really laggy for me lately and watching videos has been laggy. There are also no tab sorting options. I love Firefox and still use it, but it’s not all great.

For me the worst part is sites with crappy JavaScript not working in it. It's like they didn't even test it in Firefox. Our time tracking and accrual systems at work and my bank system don't operate particularly well in Firefox. Whenever people do refreshes on websites it's kind of hit or miss whether they actually work out of the box.

I've converted over to mainly running Brave because It's more aggressive about blocking tracking while still remaining almost completely chrome compatible.

I generally still keep a Firefox browser window open but it's mainly to play YouTube videos.

When Microsoft offered GPT to edge users I flipped over and started using that for a while. I loaded it down with all my normal Chrome plugins. For me it's faster unless ram heavy than Firefox, Chrome, or Brave, I just don't trust openly giving all of my browsing data to Microsoft.

For me the worst part is sites with crappy JavaScript not working in it. It's like they didn't even test it in Firefox.

A major issue now is that some sites actually unknowingly rely on bugs in Chrome, so they don't work properly in other browsers that don't have the same bugs. Mozilla do ship some workarounds with Firefox (where it detects sites that rely on bugs and patches them to work properly) but obviously they can't test everything.

I love Firefox, but had to go to Edge due to tab groupings. How Firefox doesn’t have this yet boggles my mind. The day I see they have groups, I’ll be all over it again.

What so you mean by "tab sorting options"?

Chromium has tab groups where you can easily add or remove tabs from a group. It makes it easy to drag it out to a different window, bring it into an existing window, and the groups are collapsible.

I usually have a lot of forums open, work tabs, and just other stuff. Right now, my solution is dealing with it/creating separate windows, but it gets messy really fast when you have 4-6 different windows. It becomes a game of which one has the tab I’m looking for.

For me what did my migration was the frequent crashes and the adding of bloat

I’ve always rotated between edge and Firefox. Some things I like better about each. Firefox usually wins out for me when stuff like this keeps happening haha

How arent Microsoft engineers annoyed by this themselves?Do they even use the products that they make?

I’m really interested in this info. Lots of senior staff at Google use iPhone. How many engineers do?

Also I remember lot of people at the Skype team quitting after Microsoft acquired them and forced them to use Windows

Oh crap, I thought it was just something I overlooked at work. It has been happening to me too

This happened to me this morning. And because the link was from a work email but I was logged in on my personal account, Edge wanted me to sign in to view it, requiring time-wasted on a 2FA process for no good reason whatsoever (obv I just closed Edge and copied the link over to Firefox).

The loss of productivity is large regardless of which method you choose to view the link. May this be the beginning of the end for Microsoft. I am fuming.

In no sense is Edge is a good browser. It is built for ads and tracking, and makes surfing the web inherently unpleasant.

Idk, performance wise is as good as chrome, and chrome is the standard. I use brave with extra privacy plugins, but saying that edge is a bad browser because of the tracking is weird when so is chrome and virtually everyone uses it.

You can install ublock origin and any other chromium based addons.

Performance wise, Chrome is dogshit anymore. A decade ago it was great. I returned to Firefox a couple years ago and haven't looked back.

Isn’t ublock origin getting blocked on chromium soon? I switched back to Firefox a few months back to avoid that.

I also switched from saving passwords in the browser to Bitwarden so that I wouldn’t be tied to any single browser (or OS) and that has been great.

The creator of uBlock origin has been releasing uBO Lite separately to prepare for Google's fuckery. You can read about it here: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/platform/mv3/description/en.md

That’s good to know. It seems like almost all browsers are chromium based right now so having an option of real ad blocking is great.

I am amazed that anyone can browse the web or watch YouTube without ad blocking.

I am amazed that anyone can browse the web or watch YouTube without ad blocking.

Right? It's so good to know there are still other reasonably people out there.

Whenever I see someone (nearly anyone) else's phone or pc being absolutely inundated with ads I can't help but wonder if they're allright in the head. There are so many mobile games that I never knew were ad-ridden until I saw them on someone else's screen ... eg. Wordfeud, there's apparently a video ad playing each time you submit a word. Wtaf...

The bitwarden thing I agree with, but I got fed up with Firefox not working correctly for some webpages I work with because let's be real, it has such a low user base that web devs don't optimizer for it anymore and some even deploy Firefox breaking changes because the is analytics show that it doesn't even matter.

If the adblocker stops working correctly though? It's FF time again baby.

Ah, you're probably right. I mostly hate Edge because I never chose it, downloaded it, or installed it, and of course it can't be deleted. It triggers all my "intruder alerts".

I have used it some at work, and hate it, but that's mostly because work wouldn't let me install adblockers.

Heh, I actually really like it for work. With a adblocker of course, I'm scared of your workplace.

Since its a Microsoft product, and any consulting firm wotlrth their salt works with Microsoft, it's actually really nice to open any link in teamdls and for everything to automatically log into the corporate account through the SSO. I'd about trackers at work, the while pc might be monitored for all I care.

At home that's a whole different thing though, brave with extra privacy stuff because I got tired of some pages not working in Firefox anymore.

I dislike almost every Microsoft product, and always prefer the alternatives, but que sera sera. :) I don't doubt that it works.

We're required to use Microsoft Teams at my office, and oy, what an endless annoyance. If you're in an MS environment all day, can you tell me how to make Teams understand that I've read something? All day every day, any time there's a message in Teams, I spend five seconds reading it, then ten seconds trying to get Teams to stop marking it "unread."

Agreed about Firefox, except I love it so much I haven't given up on it. I just can't. Been using Firefox since 1957. When a site doesn't work, I jump to Chrome and it's almost invariably OK. Only a slight hassle, plus that I hate Chrome too.

My trick with teams is to go to the notifications tab (the top one), and to click anything popping up there. Reactions are weird though, sometimes people's reactions don't show up there and I need to go to the chat, to the message they reacted, yeah these are annoying. Most of the time doing a swipe through the notifications tab is enough though.

The only good thing about Edge is that it can play x265/hevc natively… I use Firefox for everything, but when watching x265 I have to use edge, unless I want to transcode.

This kind of horseshit is CONSTANT with Windows updates. I see customer PCs where I know I've set the default browser to Firefox or Chrome, and lo and behold, suddenly everything is opening in fucking Edge.

Edge was decent when it was first released. It's slowly quickly becoming the 2023 version of Nero Burning ROM from back in the 2000s. A bloated mess.

Edge/IE doing what they do make me want to swap to Linux. Edge is a resource hog and also tries to run in the background during startup. I thought I paid for a computer. Why can't I uninstall this bloatwear easily?

Today is a good day to start dual booting or at least look at it via a live usb boot. I would recommend Linux Mint for starter, If you don't like how it looks, no problem you will be able to install another Desktop later, just start getting familiar with it. https://linuxmint.com/

If it wasn't for nVidias drivers still being shite I would've moved over permanently a long time ago. Either AMD catch up in performance / features or nVidia / nouveau drivers become comparable to Windows counterparts. The day I am forced off of W10 LTS IOT I will be leaving windows instantly, I am never going to use an OS that forces me to log in using their account system.

Out of curiosity, what problems are you having with the drivers? I have a GTX 1070ti graphics card and the drivers for it have been ok on Linux, the integration hasn't been as smooth as Windows but I haven't had any problems.

Loads of issues, majority of their features are completely missing and since nvidia are asshats that keep things proprietary a lot of it lacks equivalents that are of the same quality as their features.

The absolute biggest issue for me is Wayland support being complete crap on nvidia.

Edge is a resource hog

Is it a hog or an opportunist? My understanding is browsers will take all the resources they can to make you 40 tabs flow smoothly as possible, but they should also release those resources when other programs demand it. How those priorities are ranked, I don't know. You don't check your Task Manager until everything is already slow, right? That's when browsers look like the culprits with the biggest RAM usage. But are they really? If you start changing tabs and finding they're blank and need to releaod, that's an indicator the browser gave up some resources

How many people out there are shitting on Edge (in many ways rightfully so) while using Chrome, which does the exact same crap.

I think the issue here is not which browser is better, but companies not respecting your preferences and use scummy methods to make you switch. This might be a Microsoft issue now, but I can see it becoming a slippery slope and have more companies in the future do the same. Lets say that Microsoft succeed here: whats stopping Google to do the exact same with Android. Then you end up to keep in sync your favorites in 3 different browsers (Safari, Edge, Chrome. Firefox gets shafted since even if you use it as default each company will force its own browser) depending on the OS you are using.

Oh. I'm not arguing. They all have scummy methods to try and enforce their app over someone else's. Microsoft is kinda the worst about it tho.

I was just commenting on how cyclic it all is. Firefox was bloated and IE just overall sucked. Chrome came around touting how blazing fast it was with it's V8 javascript engine but once they had market share the bloat crept in. Then msft came out with Edge, which was lean and mean and actually a nice browser. But the bloat didn't even creep this time, it just poured in.

I'm hoping since Firefox isn't part of the FAANG that the bloat will be kept at bay.

You did pay for a computer. But not just with your money, you pay by being forced into using the services of the company that subsidized the price of your product. Be it Android bloatware that you can't get rid of, a free version that keeps reminding you about the premium features or simply ads.

Back in the day, the products you bought didn't keep trying to sell you other products. However, we tend to take for granted the amount and quality and value of services that companies just give for free. Back when free mailbox used to be limited to 6MB, encyclopedias and map services used to cost a lot of money. The sheer amount of things we can do today online without giving a payment method is astonishing. And it is not just because of the advancement in technology. Personally I prefer this model of giving a product for free and using it to promote the paid product as long as it "polite". Those who would like to get a premium experience will pay.

You could use Linux to avoid paying for software while avoiding the bloatware. Linux had massively improved over the recent years in being noob-friendly. However, you still pay for it with your time as still there are things that are not supported and you have to come up with workarounds. Personally I use Linux, but it took me a while to get comfortable with it. Unlike Windows, I can configure it nearly any way I like. But I can't recommend this to everyone.

The main problem of linux is that 90% of the downloadable software out there is written for Windows. And so are 90% of the games.

So it depends on what you use your PC for.

It is a lot better than it used to be. Emulation tools got much better over the last couple of years, and there are many things that required applications in the past and now just work from the browser. You can edit documents, send emails, play games and videos, configure devices, edit images. All from the browser - over windows or Linux.

Making the shift to Linux is easier now than it has ever been. Linux caught up, Windows got bloated, emulation and platform agnostic web services gave a lot more options for counteracting Windows main advantage - which is software compatibility. And as Linux gains popularity that is changing for the better as well.

I can't reproduce this issue from my Thunderbird on Fedora.

Joining in from my Postbox on Windows. No ads present (and it also doesn't slow down to a crawl after a few thousand messages).

Turns out that *competent * mail clients can handle the one thing they are designed to handle: emails.

hello, i tried changing from Outlook to Thunderbird some months ago, but i found the UI very confusing and complex. does any of you feel the same?

is there some way to simplify the UI to make it look more like Outlook with no ad crap? i tried looking for UI addons, but aside of dark mode, i didn't find one.

would you guys recomend a FOSS email client that you feel comfortable with?

thank you for reading!

Do you use any advanced features? Personally I just look at the client to see if I got any emails and sometimes I send some.

I might not be able to give advise for advance workflows as I only use a small fraction of Thunderbird's capabilities.

hello! thank you for replying!

um... no, i don't use advanced features at all.

but this part of your message: "i only use a smart fraction of Thunderbird's capabilities", made my mind click, as it's totally what i feel as an 'intended' Thunderbird user.

for me, it feels like there are too many options, too many menus, too many buttons. it's easy for me to feel overwhelmed or distracted by the UI.

i wonder if there's some "compact UI" mode i haven't checked out, as i am a very basic email user. for me, Outlook simpleness was perfect, aside from the ads and stupid things like not being able to write an "@" (on an email client!).

I don't like that part of Thunderbird either. Seems overengineered to me.

It looks even more ridiculous when they open a tab on my browser begging for donations. Sadly I tried a couple other mail clients and none of them looked good enough so I'm still on Thunderbird. If you find anything better, please drop me a message.

Microsoft: "you no want Microsoft? You want Microsoft. "

Weren’t they literally sued and almost broken up for doing something like this by antitrust prosecutors like 25 years ago?

"Suddenly"? This has been happening for a long time. If you click on outbound links from built-in Windows apps, they used to always open in Edge unless you used a tool named EdgeDeflector to redirect them to your preferred browser. In 2021, they killed EdgeDeflector by making it impossible to redirect links with the microsoft-edge:// protocol baked in, even if you go deep into the registry settings to change this. They will eventually do this to Outlook and Teams too and get away with it, just like they got away with restricting EdgeDeflector.

Yes suddenly. This basically started happening at work within the last week for no apparent reason.

Doesn't surprise me at all, the company I work for has gone all in with AzureAD SSO and that will only work on Edge (edge supplies info for the MS asset verification software that constantly eats my CPU) so now we can't use anything other than Edge for any internal service and need to develop for Edge if we are writing an internal tool.

It also works just fine with Chrome, there's an extension you need to install. It's a Chromium feature they're leveraging. I know this because we're in the same boat as you. Unfortunately it doesn't work with Firefox.

Not sure how the setup differs but ours does not work with chrome, only edge

I guess we are never regulating tech companies again even though this behavior was already blocked by the FTC Microsoft case twenty years ago.

I see it as a CYA maneuver after that terrible outlook vulnerability this year that allowed malicious payloads to infect users who didn't even interact with the email. They need to make best efforts to guide ignorant or careless users to a safe space on their platform since phishing is so economically destructive and the business world is addicted to aged Microsoft products and tech like it's a fine wine

Looks like Microsoft is due for another anti trust lawsuit. They should remember Bill’s fun adventures in capitol hill.

It won't go down the same way today. Government had a much bigger spine back then.

I think this is the main point: they saw how the latest anti trust lawsuits went (especially mergers), and decided it was the right time to push it again. If this goes to court, prepare to be anal blasted by Microsoft. The only hope is that this turns into a battle of companies, so that Google and others can finance the opposite side to get the anti trust resolution to pass.

I'll keep using Firefox until I'm dead or it's dead!

i'll stop using internet if firefox dies.

The internet needs an independent browser like Firefox.

The big issue with Firefox is that most of Mozilla's funding still comes from Google, via an agreement that makes Google the default search engine in Firefox. Google essentially have the power to shut down Mozilla if they want to.

I wouldn't mind if they started a subscription model that makes them enough to keep the thing running and be completely independent from Google.

Totally agreed. I would definitely pay to use FF, even a hateful subscription, if the alternative was to shut down. I think enough people are of the same opinion that its not going to be funding that kills it, but a buyout and kill off

@dan But they can’t because that would mean one less competitor and so FCC can use that to sue them.

I can definitely see the antitrust viewpoint. Would the FCC really force Google to keep funding one of their competitors though?

With their new upcoming UI that breaks existing Outlook addins (and sucks too btw) and this one. I can't wait for people to do away with Outlook. I'm the only one at work that even uses Thunderbird (with Owl for exchange addon). Was laughing my ass last time that Outlook had a zero day and our IT was telling us to not use the Outlook app until the zero day is fixed.

Btw this is what the new Outlook looks like

It looks like the web version, breaks addons and alot of features that the current one has are missing.

People may do away with Outlook, but companies are heavily invested in Microsoft Office and won't be dumping it any time soon.

My wife company went even further and blacklisted any email websites in order to force them into using the Outlook app at work. Heck, they cannot even access the Microsoft outlook webpage.

It IS the web version. It uses electron.

I tried it for a bit but couldn't open teams meetings from the notification.

On Mac, the new version can't even open Exchange mailboxes 🤯 the only reason for me to use outlook anyway

My computer did that for the first time today but it was accompanied by a popup which said something like "do you want me to keep opening links in Edge or use the default (Chrome)?" I clicked Chrome and that was the end of that.

Are the people who are being forced to use Edge the same people who don't or can't read popups and who choose the most obvious "get out of the way" button?

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I'd be all over Linux if all my games ran on it.

Valve's Proton software has made game compatibility on Linux pretty incredible. Games with kernel anti cheat don't work, but the vast majority of games do work.

Steam's Proton is an absolute game changer. Unless you cannot live without a few very specific competitive titles, chances are Proton has you covered. Does not require any technical know-how (for the most part). I cannot stress enough how much of a technical and UX achievement Proton is.

Give something like Pop_OS! a try.

Have you tried them recently? Except for competitive games with intrusive anti-cheat measures like Valorant, I have yet to find something that just won't run.

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Dual booting is a good idea. I'll have to give it another try. I'm not too keen on running from a USB as they are really slow compared to M.2 etc.

7 more...

Hit this 2 weeks ago at my job and it cheesed me off. Also at the same time? Microsoft began requiring you to label your teams comment with a Subject Line. Like.... what?

Microsoft, do you even understand what chat is for?? It's supposed to be quick and informal!

Google Chat desktop app does the same thing but opens all links in chrome. I need to use both teams and chat for my company and client's teams so I'm constantly getting one or the other browser opened on me. Infuriating

I'm personally a Firefox user since it has developed to be so much better imo. However I do have to give credit to Microsoft for having imo a better browser than Chrome despite the fact they are both Chromium based.

In the beginning it was a lot better, because ot was basically just Chromium reskinned to look nicer. Now it's much much worse than chrome. It's filled to the brim with popups you can't click away, tracking software, generally slower than firefox in my experienc, and is just all around ugly with microsoft icons everywhere.

I was it-supporter, so I had to click it all away every time I had set up a pc, so I've experienced it a lot.

This sound like a great way to die by thousands of lawsuits. We really need to squash this goddamed company.

People use outlook? Like at home on their personal computer?

There's a setting for this in Outlook now, basically a toggle to choose either edge or the system default.

Not nice to have an extra setting for it but at least it can be turned off

What's even the point of having a system default if apps are just going to ignore it?

Just find an alternative to it. There are a lot that are free or/and Open-source.

It's not that easy for corporate environments, but yes, IT departments need to push back, this is pretty fucked up

Use Thunderbird

As much as I love Thunderbird, I do not want to retrain Outlook users. I just want Microsoft to use my chosen browser.

I didn't expect it, but the thing I hate most about my latest job is being forced to use outlook mail/calendar. It's brutally untenable when you've already seen a better way of doing every involved task.

I am wondering what happens if you don't have Edge installed

I don't know if you can even remove it. Isn't it just the shortcut that you can remove?
I could be wrong.

It's possible to uninstall it (and many other things like Cortana) through the AppX package manager built into Windows 10, but most people wouldn't know how to do that. There's no option on the apps management panel to uninstall it.

I don't know if it's still the case with Windows 11, but I would assume it's still possible.

That was the case with IE so ime sure Edge is the same. Windows specifically uses only Edge for its OS browser needs "for updates"

I removed Edge and IE on my work computer and the only time I had trouble was when I tried to open the built-in manual in some non-Microsoft software and it failed.

I think it used some embedded browser component that Edge or IE provides

Why are they so unbelievably desperate to force people to use Edge?

Tracking, ads, money.

I was thinking since edge is just the new internet explorer the answer might be even dumber- forcing it continues justifying its existence and development.

Ugh noticed this earlier today and thought it was something on my end (setting messed up or reverted), but nah just Microsoft making it hard to love windows as usual

Microsoft has been so aggressive with forcing their services on you it’s ridiculous. Hope more people are jumping to Firefox/Linux and such

Microsoft always pushing things way too much, unnecessarily.

But I actually like the feature. I use Outlook for corporate email and Edge for work related stuff. Firefox is my default browser. It was always confusing to open a link on an email message on the "wrong" browser.

Now this doesn't happen. Links on emails open correctly on the work browser.

But we should definitely have an option to choose which browser we would like the links to open on.

It's annoying, for sure.

File > Options > Advanced > Link Handling > Open hyperlinks from Outlook in: Default Browser

It happened at my work the other day. There was a popup with a not so obvious option that sets it back to your default browser.

As long as people continue using MS products they'll be victims to this BS. Switching my family to Linux (Currently Fedora, will later try Debian again) has been a blessing for everyone here.

Gaming is keeping me off Linux. Most of the most popular Twitch games like Fortnite and CoD Warzone either don’t run at all or run poorly with difficult workarounds. I don’t have time to tinker anymore. I want to click one button and have my games run first time, flawlessly. Ironically, it’s why I like my Steam Deck. Valve figured out how to make handheld gaming on Linux work without effort. I know it’s the fault of developers but that doesn’t resolve the problem. I hope the Deck encourages more developers to make their games compatible with Proton.

Well I don’t have Edge installed / blocked edge from ever installing…

What keeps me from moving to Firefox is the Translation option. Edge and Chrome are so good at quickly making the page available to read in my language. Firefox is not so good at this and requires adding which don’t seem to deliver the same functionality. At least from what I have found. So if someone has tips there, please share.

So where's the group policy to turn this shit off?

Maybe some people will just give up on outlook finally and use a good email client or the webapp, neither of which will do this shit.

Good email client

Go on..

Emclient works better with Microsoft 365 than outlook does.

Search actually works and you can edit server rules for starters.

Emclient works better with Microsoft 365 than outlook does, while also working great with Gmail and others which outlook doesn't.

Search actually works and you can edit server rules for starters.

It's also technically cheaper though most paying users get outlook with their office subscription.

It happened to me last week and it pissed me off. If i wanted to use Edge I would, Microsoft needs to cut the pushy shit out.

Stuff like this is why I went to Mac in 2020 and I only begrudgingly look back the few times a year I absolutely need something windows exclusive. They really have a lovely way with software and UI that Microsoft does not.

Move to Ubuntu, you are not obligated to use Microsoft.

Not going to happen in any business environment

Ubuntu is a choice in business nowadays, alongside Windows and OS X. But it's a choice usually only offered to programmers or the IT department.

Yeah, I had a user who was in Sales. Issued a new PC to her after 8 years. She didn't even know how to organize her bookmark bar in Chrome. I don't think Linux would even be able to come out of my mouth in terms of "Things our users might be able to use"

Not necessarily, I'm using Pop!OS but my workplace AzureAD SSO mandates Edge on Linux so you're not safe.

If it's not your work PC then I can't understand why you keep letting them rape your privacy, personal choices,

OP was pretty clear that this was the opposite of their choice

I feel like this is common practice. Synergy between company's product is very common. There are alternatives you can use instead of outlook (ex. thunderbird, mailbird, etc). If you don't like Microsoft practices then you can opt out and find an alternative. But speaking on behalf of the less techy savvy consumer i would be pissed off about this.

Devil's advocate but Edge is just reskinned and revamped chrome so it's not the worst thing imaginable.

At this point, you will either try to mitigate the harm caused by proprieatry software by adding as many Open source programs to your MS system, or treat the underlying cause and install a FOSS OS.

Step 1: Stop using Outlook....

I’ll just tell my IT department to stop using Outlook. I’m sure they’ll get right on that ;)

Gates went too many times to china so he knows how to push boundaries all the way

I actually don't mind this. I use outlook and edge for work, my other browser is for personal use

The promlem is not Microsoft pushing Edge or setting it as default, which is already the case, the issue is that MS is forcing people to use Edge.

Thanks for giving me another reason not to use outlook.

You company doesn't give you a choice lol.

This is how they get you. Some bullshit agreement with a corporation that doesn't give a fuck besides the price tag, and they hope you'll eventually get used to the mediocrity and use it for personal stuff too.

Outlook is a thing? News to me.

Sarcasm asides, I use Thunderbird. I'm convinced it was the correct choice now.