Back when Edgeium was new and just Chrome but with a lot of Google cruft removed, I actually used Edge instead of Chrome when I was on Windows. It was the same browser with some additional tweaks that I quite liked.

Then Microsoft started this aggressive, disruptive push to bring it to iOS Safari's level as the only browser people should use.

I don't know any good operating systems for normal people anymore. Windows 10 and 11 are hostile, macOS only runs on very expensive hardware and doesn't run most programs people need (because the business world is still Windows oriented) and Linux has been making progress but still isn't a good alternative for the common user unless they have an expert to rely upon when something breaks down. ChromeOS doesn't run on most devices (it can, but the images aren't available) and I wouldn't recommend a Google-oriented OS to most people anyway, if they can avoid it; Android is bad enough already.

I miss the Windows 7 days. The Win10/11 kernel may have seen loads of improvements, the UI and basic behaviour has only been regressing for many years now. The Windows 11 window snapping is nice but it doesn't excuse the aggressive spyware that comes with the OS, and neither does it excuse this antitrust lawsuit in waiting.

I heard some people having a decent time with Edge in the past with some features implementations. Not that I would use it myself, but I'm firmly convinced these childish plays only ruin whatever good work was done on it. Who on Earth would continue using a browser that has such hostile behavior and dark patterns all over the place e.g., buy-now-pay-later at browser level?

It's so hard to trust Microsoft anyway, I'm glad 11 is such a tranwreck dead on arrival. Makes it easier to discourage people from using it, ever.

"Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft."

They named their user tracking, telemetry, and "Buy Now, Pay Later" add-ons "trust"? That's really Orwellian.

Microsoft has had a good few years of building up their reputation after their self inflicted blemishes from the IE integration fiasco as well as their EEE mode of operation.

Now they are throwing away their good will with smarmy tactics --why? for some short term gains?

They were passing Google reputation-wise, of late, but these moves undercut their work of the last few years.

It seems they see Google, FB, even Apple, etc., eating this cake (using market to undercut competition) and can't stand the temptation. I can only hope the DOJ will find some will to take on tech and do something about their behavior, but I am not holding my breath.

If only companies would have principles they could stand on and we could count on.

> “‘I hate saving money,’ said no one ever. Microsoft Edge is the best browser for online shopping.”

This is really cringe

That browser is so 2008! Do you know what’s new? Microsoft Edge.

Newer is not always better... if only Microsoft (and the rest of Big Tech) would go back to 2008 or even earlier, when they were far less controlling.

Browsers detecting specific sites and acting differently on them, unless specifically requested to do so by the user, should be prohibited. Ditto for operating systems detecting specific applications. There needs to be a word for the equivalent of net neutrality, but applied to software and environments in general.

Humorously, using tools built into Windows 10 and 11 now, you can open a PowerShell window, type winget install Google.Chrome, and never open Edge once if you don't want to.

Additional ideas for Edge's PMs: silently corrupt Chrome's binary at download time, and mark the website and the binary as dangerous.

Debian 11 with Firefox for me. Firefox does need some tuning like opting out of any studies and telemetry. Verified with tshark until it really doesn't prefetch all previously visited sites and bookmarks. Some sites are able to request infinite invisible visits somehow but it's stoppable and Firefox at least gives the user the freedom to do something about it.

I hope Margrethe Vestager is paying attention, this bullshit is getting egregious. Microsoft not only deserve a fine, but a thorough breaking up into multiple separate entities.

I'm sure it's in direct response to the popups you get from Google telling you the site works best with chrome when you visit any of their properties with edge or Firefox.

I distinctly remember Microsoft getting into an anti-trust case[0] over things much more benign than what they're doing right now.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

It's a shame the Linux is still "not there" to be a good replacement for Windows. I keep trying but having stupid issues all time, like my laptop is identified as a mobile device when connected to a Bluetooth multipoint headset so I can't connect to my phone and laptop in the same time :( Scaling is awful and unfortunately simply there are no good drivers for certain hardware.

Windows 11 is awful, I went back to 10 within a week - screen flickering, stupid scrolling issues etc.

Ok, so I don’t condone this behavior by Microsoft or Google, but I do use edge at work since we are a Microsoft heavy company with Sharepoint, teams, outlook, and all that. If we were using Google I’d surely use Chrome, but edge bakes in your Microsoft work profile to the browser and when searching on Bing you can find documents on your internal network easily. I also like the fact that edge supports vertical tabs out of the box.

So here’s my defense of Microsoft taking these steps:

* Google promotes Chrome on YouTube, search, and gmail. Strategically Microsoft needs a message to counter the pop ups on Google sites that are leading to the Chrome download page. It would be much more annoying if you saw this message every time you visited YouTube or Google. The author presents it as the case of someone actively seeking to download Chrome but they could have been lead to the download page from another Google property.

* Many people don’t know that both edge and Chrome use the same engine. When my company mandated edge, people reflexively complained even though they don’t lose anything in terms of speed, extensions or compatibility. For many people knowing that edge has the same browser engine is informative - most non geeks won’t keep up with that.

* if you are working at a Microsoft company, your data is already in the hands of Microsoft and your employer so there’s little privacy to be lost by continuing with edge, but by switching to chrome you bring a 3rd party into the mix.

  * you could argue a lesser version of this for all windows users with the integrations that Microsoft has been pushing.

This is an excellent example of violating implied trust. What is implied trust? I expect my software to do what I tell it to do, without any additional, unexpected behaviors, especially those that do not serve my interests.

Microsoft violated that trust. This means that they value their interests above my own. They are demonstrably untrustworthy. Again, btw.

I just bought my ~55 year old mother an HP laptop. It was completely strange how difficult it was to install Chrome on Windows 11. I couldn't run the MSI installer for Chrome and found out that by default the OS was in something called "S mode" which I had to disable by doing an odd series of steps via the Microsoft store. After finally installing, I got all the weird pop-ups that the articles mentions suggesting in various ploys that Edge was the superior browser. It was also made difficult to convenience the OS that I wanted Chrome as the default browser, it required changing several preference options. I then found that there was no way to disable Edge, as you can some other Windows applications. By using the SysInternals tool Autoruns I found that Edge had at least half a dozen means of persistence / continued execution by launching updaters and background processes doing unknown tasks.

Gotta keep the kids off of windows don't want them to be trapped by Microsoft ecosystem one day

Google used same tactics to grow Chrome market share. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

I’ve watched this kind of stuff unfold for several years and this is where I think we went wrong: we allowed software to become “free” or “cheap” when it used to be $300, without acknowledging that this stuff still basically costs $300 to make!!

So now, every stupid thing has to be completely free just to be considered by any consumer, and every software maker has to beg, badger and berate users over and over to get them to try things and download things and sign up for things, all because we collectively forgot that we could have just paid them 40 bucks and moved on.

You used to have to pay for operating systems, and for a while it actually became more expensive (e.g. macOS was $99 but went up to $129 to everyone’s surprise before becoming “free”). You definitely used to pay through the nose for apps but you got a lot for that money. Mobile devices are largely responsible for the 99-cent-ification of software, most of which is now “free” with “in-app purchases” which is ironic since these “cheap” replacements sometimes cost hundreds of dollars more if you actually add up all the recurring in-app purchases they contain. And, of course, subscriptions.

So great, Windows is “free” now and web browsers no longer cost money like Netscape did but instead we get all this crap in our faces. Personally, I think we have lost a lot and we desperately need to re-learn how to pay, once, for software, again.

As pointed out by the original Neowin article [0], Google has been abusing its power for years in basically the same way. Two wrongs don't make a right, but Google is far from the "good guy" here.

[0] https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-says-its-own-edge-brow...

> with the added trust of Microsoft

lolololol

Does someone on their marketing team actually believe that?

Operating systems are getting ever more user hostile, even though their main reason to exist is moving more and more in the direction of being there to run a single application: the browser, with ChromeOs being the current representative of that trend.

I'll shed a small tear for the people that are still forced to use Windows, but Google is at least as bad with this in pushing Chrome at the expense of other browsers.

And users are caught in the middle. OS vendors should STFU, stop pushing their services, ban telemetry and other invasive stuff and put the user centric. Fat chance of that happening any day soon though, after all, the only reason that users exist in the first place is to be ripped of or squeezed like so many lemons until the last penny has been forced out of their pockets.

I'm really having issues with Microsoft now. It just seems to be one dark pattern after another in Windows 11.

They're not wrong about it being based on on the same renderer as Chrome, but that's about as far as it goes.

The worst thing is that Apple and Google do the same dark patterns and no one seems to care about them. For some reason, Microsoft didn't learn from the early 00s any lessons on how to do this kind of thing with any subtlety.

I have a Mac laptop and iPad, an Android phone, and I now run Linux on my PC and haven't booted into Windows 10 since May (checks uptime...). I don't think I have any reason to use Windows at home any more. The changes in Windows 11 are even more unappetizing. It feels like Windows Me, or Vista. The version no one asked for.

It's interesting how many people here rationalise the trash that Windows 11 is by thinking that Microsoft is purposefully trying things out for Windows 12 which will be much better again. As if Microsoft would actually produce trash on purpose and piss off lots of their remaining customers with some optimistic big picture in mind. Nah, the truth is they actually think it's a great OS which is really the scary thing in this entire thing. You'd think one day they'd manage to hire at least one good UX person from their competitors to clean up the trash Windows has been for years now but they keep thinking they can do it themselves with the same people who have already been doing the same trash for way too long.

Does anyone know if they're displaying similar popups on the Firefox download page?

eh. google.com pops up a nearly identical box when using edge. seems like a bit of a nonstory. is it anti-competitive because its on a microsoft OS? hardly seems like consumers are being harmed.

Every feature update they try to get you to reset your browser preferences. And sometimes it'll say "oops! Something went wrong and we had to reset your browser preferences."

"Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft."

Hmmm, can I trust you to not put your own ads onto competitors websites?

That is beyond f'd up. Will they never learn?

"With the added trust of Microsoft"

You must be borderline and delusional if you work at microsoft and have the guts of thinking that the company deserves even the tiniest amount of trust

Welcome to the new Microsoft. Same as the old Microsoft.

This is becoming a joke... Along with the tricks hiding firefox from search results, the inclusion of buy-now-pay-later schemes, Microsoft is well on its way proving to us why we shouldn't trust them being a major player on the browser market. A fact they have proven to us once before of course.

I really thought they were on a good path when Ballmer stepped down but this is old Microsoft all over again.

This brings back memories of their 1990s shenanigans. I guess expecting ethical behaviour from them was always a pipe dream.

Just a friendly reminder that whenever I open gmail from Edge, then it asks me about using Chrome too

Why would anyone prefer Chrome over Edge? I mostly use Firefox but also Edge as the secondary browser on the Windows machine. It's the same engine but better UI (e.g. vertical tabs), both are equally proprietary.

I could have sworn this started years ago, albeit with different messaging.

Quite tacky really. Would be interesting to see if that is effective. It seems like it's a one time hit as you download Chrome and annoying enough for people to mark it.

It actively refuses to download Chrome since Windows Server 2016. The fastest bypass I do is by first downloading Firefox and then download Chrome from Firefox.

For people complaining about "Evilz M$"--isnt this roughly the same strategy Chrome used?

My question is: Do you see these prompts when downloading Firefox?

They should have a popup saying "Try Firefox", then I'll believe it's based on a genuine concern for their users.

It is a somewhat silly game, but I like it anyway. It is just good entertainment.

It's annoying, and kind of sad, how bad Microsoft pushes Edge.

Download Firefox.

Url changed from https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/2/22813733/microsoft-window..., which points to this.