Microsoft tests third party browser 'warning' in Windows 10

[HEXUS]

Pop-up: "You already have Microsoft Edge – the safer, faster browser for Windows 10".

Read more.

[Usernamist]

This coupled with the fact that any page you visit in the Edge browser has a "would you like to switch to a better faster browser? Install Chrome!" message, makes it pretty annoying to use anything other than Chrome

[aidanjt]

There isn't an eyeroll gif on the internet that could possibly match, much less exaggerate the reaction appropriate for the cringe.

[philehidiot]

I recently tried to install my new GPU. I did everything as usual by removing old drivers and so on. I popped in the new GPU and WHILST I was in the middle of installing the drivers from the CD (the resolution was 1024x768 so it was easier to install from that to just get thing working properly before then updating online), Windows decided IT wanted to install different drivers with no warning or way of stopping it. I'd given it time to see if it would install a generic driver and it didn't, so obviously it must have gone and downloaded one and then automatically installed it. Made a total mess of the whole thing and I couldn't boot into safe mode because that's now impossible to do before it boots. I was left to fix a PC that wouldn't display anything once it hit the Windows environment and couldn't boot into safe mode because for some pathetic reason they removed the boot options menu (you can get one, but you have to be able to get into Windows to enable it... MADNESS!). All because they decided that they knew better than the person who has been building and setting up PCs for decades and that a simple "we're about to install drivers for your new hardware, please click okay to continue or cancel if you intend to do this manually" box is too much. I get they're trying to make it easy but someone who doesn't know what they're doing and needs everything doing automatically and quietly doesn't go swapping out graphics cards.

Dear Microsoft,

When you fix STUPID stuff like this, I will consider using your software more than the bare minimum I have to. Even your Outlook phone software is slow, buggy, bloated, pesters me to tell them how much I love it and uses >1% of battery per hour. That's around 28% of my daily battery use just for background emails.... everyone else can manage to write software that doesn't do this, why can't you?

[Unique]

why bother making edge good and making people actually want to use it instead of another browser when you don't need to bother and can just annoy people instead

[Ttaskmaster]

why bother making edge good and making people actually want to use it instead of another browser when you don't need to bother and can just annoy people instead

Because every browser is useless and full of bugs and slows the system down, if comments on the internet are to be believed. People are never happy...

[Tabbykatze]

I'm sure Microsoft will be hauled over coals for this because they're basically saying alternative browsers are less safe and more slow.

I hate that Microsoft are leveraging their market dominance to do this, this is very similar to how Google got hauled up for their Shopping results and they lost that lawsuit!

[philehidiot]

I'm sure Microsoft will be hauled over coals for this because they're basically saying alternative browsers are less safe and more slow.

I hate that Microsoft are leveraging their market dominance to do this, this is very similar to how Google got hauled up for their Shopping results and they lost that lawsuit!

I expect the EU is already licking its chops at the prospect of a huge fine. Certainly a slap is justifiable.

[dannyboy75]

[afiretruck]

Didn't Microsoft get slapped for something similar to this in the early 2000s with Internet Explorer?

[Jonj1611]

I hadn't noticed it before as I don't use it but needed to use Edge to test something and noticed it has signed me in. To edge?? Never seen that before, has it been there a while?

[AGTDenton]

The iron grip of their consumer OS is slipping fast as they prove more successful in the cloud. They no longer understand or listen to what people want. Forcing OneDrive into the OS will bite them in the future.

[OilSheikh]

Isn't this Deja vu from the Windows XP days?

[Tabbykatze]

The iron grip of their consumer OS is slipping fast as they prove more successful in the cloud. They no longer understand or listen to what people want. Forcing OneDrive into the OS will bite them in the future.

Dunno wgat you're getting at but its a long way off, if at all, to do fully scalable cloud vdi.

One company im working with is doing a nutanix hyper converged mega cluster locally to run their entire business as thin clients.

But nothing will beat windows for enterprise manageability and software integration for a long time. They aren't losing that much, if at all noticeable to restrictive, closed book cloud OSes like ChromeOS.

[scaryjim]

Because every browser is useless and full of bugs and slows the system down, if comments on the internet are to be believed. People are never happy...

This. Chrome hammers your disks with a ridiculous amount of writes. Firefox is a complete memory hog. Edge has it's issues, but it's hugely less resource intensive than either of those.

I'm sure Microsoft will be hauled over coals for this because they're basically saying alternative browsers are less safe and more slow.

I hate that Microsoft are leveraging their market dominance to do this, this is very similar to how Google got hauled up for their Shopping results and they lost that lawsuit!

I doubt MS will get hauled up for adding a pop-up to the OS. It's no different that when you visit a google site in anything other than Chrome and you get a banner suggesting that you install Chrome.

Didn't Microsoft get slapped for something similar to this in the early 2000s with Internet Explorer?

No, that was a more serious issue with IE being an embedded part of the OS, having tons of undocumented API hooks, and potentially interfering with the operation of other web browsers and web-connected software. This isn't even vaguely comparable.

I hadn't noticed it before as I don't use it but needed to use Edge to test something and noticed it has signed me in. To edge?? Never seen that before, has it been there a while?

For as long as I've used Windows 10 with a Microsoft account. So pretty much since I started using Windows 10 … maybe as late as the first feature update. In the same way that using Chrome on an Android device will sign you in to Chrome with the Google account you used for the device. I mean, honestly, why would anyone use Windows 10 with an MS account if it wasn't to be signed in to everything automatically? I actually find it annoying when I have to sign in to MS services on Windows 10...

[Jonj1611]

Must admit its the first time I had noticed it and I don't have a Microsoft account, well I do but not one I use to login into Windows with, mines an 'offline' account. So was a bit of a surprise to see me logged into it, logged straight out though. They won't take me alive!