In order to be able to choose their own browser, people must be free to download it, easily set it to default and to continue using it – all without interference from the operating system. Windows users do not currently enjoy this freedom of choice.
To investigate Microsoft’s tactics and the impact on consumers, Mozilla commissioned Harry Brignull and Cennydd Bowles, independent researchers and experts in harmful design. Today, the researchers have published a report detailing how Microsoft prevents effective browser choice on Windows. In the report, they document how Microsoft places its own browser — Edge — at the center of its operating system and weaponizes Windows’ user interface design to undermine people selecting rival browsers.
Mozilla Research
We all already know Microsoft does these things, and of course, a study paid for by Mozilla agreeing with Mozilla is not exactly earth-shattering, but stuff like this is important for aiding in convincing regulators to do something about this stuff. It simply shouldn’t be legal to employ all kinds of nasty tricks and dark patterns to force people to use a certain browser.
Geh, reminds me of the good old days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHtBgU2JDK8
Transformers; “Cosmic Rust”
Wrong article I think, but, I like the reference.
Microsoft is up to it’s old shenanigans.
Wake me up when I can remove Chrome from Android and use whatever browser i want. Say what you want about MSFT it takes less than 10 minutes on a modern system to just toss Windows and slap on Ubuntu, yet I have 2 year old octocore phones that are in the trash because I can’t get updates. Google could have solved this problem a decade ago by implementing a driver standard and forcing OEMs to adhere to the standard, but Google wants to sell more Pixels.
Meanwhile my 15 year old former Windows hardware runs an up to date Sparky Linux just fine so if MSFT wants to push Edge just like Google does every.single.time. I use Gmail or Google search in Firefox so what? Even your grandma can use Ubuntu these days.
bassbeast,
These are separate issues, and they both deserve criticism.
As for Microsoft’s dark patterns, the US gov has no backbone to prosecute antitrust anymore. The corporations know damn well what they’re doing and they’re guilty of monopoly abuses, but since they’re allowed to get away with it, it’s no wonder they keep abusing the market. All tech companies have been allowed to get away with this for far too long. Meanwhile anyone who has their eyes open can see that competition is dying across tech markets
Edit: “prosecute antitrust cases anymore”.
Wake up!
I’ve owned multiple Android phones over the years and have never had a problem disabling Google Chrome and installing Firefox or Firefox Focus as the system browser. Most recently, I bought a Google Pixel 6a (about 2 years ago), disable Chrome and installed Firefox Focus. The Chrome icon does not appear on the app menu and every application uses Firefox Focus as the system WebView.
On the other hand, I clicked a link from Outlook on my work computer yesterday and, lo-and-behold, it opened in Edge with a message stating something along the lines: “We’re opening this link on Microsoft Edge. Switch Now!” Honestly, I don’t know exactly what it said cause I remedied this nonsense so fast it’s now slipped out of my mind.
No, you can’t. “Remove” and “disable” are not at all the same thing. Disabling it leaves hundreds of megabytes of storage unusable, whereas removing it would actually let that space be reused.
Minuous,
Android uses different partitions, the system partition being readonly makes it possible to do a real factory reset. You are right this takes up space. You generally need root access to permanently change the read only system software.
While I can sympathize with anyone wanting to be able to use every last megabyte, I think it’s important to point this into context since reserving space for restoring system software is a normal practice. While the implementation may be somewhat different, most windows OEM computers reserve space for all the originally installed software. This is space that normal users can’t access whether they need that software or not.
Honestly the windows 10 reserved storage seems more wasteful to me, that’s a full 7GB disk space.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/managing-reserved-storage-in-windows-10-environments/ba-p/1297070
Google’s own policies define malware as including “making the default option in the uninstaller to hide the software instead of removing it”, and also require that “once software is disabled or deleted, the removal should be complete.” What hypocrites. https://www.google.com/about/unwanted-software-policy.html
It should be up to the user whether they want to retain a copy of every piece of crapware that comes with the phone, I’ve never needed to do a factory reset so I certainly wouldn’t want all that junk around. Surely it should be possible to have something a minimal image for a factory reset (ie. OS only, no apps), the other components could then be downloaded automatically or something if the user wants them.
teco.sb already covered it, you can definitely do exactly that, and I’ve done so on my Pixel 8 Pro with Firefox as the default browser. With that said:
Are you sure you weren’t conflating Android and Chrome with iOS and Safari? Apple will let you install another browser in iOS and set it as default, but it’s not actually another browser at all; every alternative browser on iOS is just a re-skin of Safari because Apple doesn’t actually allow a different browser engine on iOS.
Morgan,
IOS is one of the most oppressive platforms for competition and for better or worse apple leads the way in owner restrictions and they’re setting terrible precedent for other dominant corporations to follow. A few of us keep warning about how dangerous it is for a few corporations to hold so much power over our technology, but the public are sheep and don’t learn until it’s too late and they’ve lost control
Agree, however since i moved my mom to apple ecosystem i have not received a single free tech support request… all platforms have their positive and negative sides i guess. I hipe we had more choices than apple/android in the mobile world and definitely open bootloaders to enable the linux option.
@bassbeast
I don’t see much difference between the major desktop OS vendors, I think the criticisms are vastly over-stated and the perspectives come across more political than technical.
I feel the hypocrisy is palpable, no one mainstream desktop OS is better than the others, no one mainstream OS is harder or easier to remove the default browsers than the other. The position taken by most is at best arbitrary based on personal assessments of the steps required to complete the task. If someone is incapable of processing those steps, they are probably also largely ignorant of the existence of alternative browsers.
cpcf,
While installing browsers isn’t supposed to be difficult, I don’t think it’s good to overlook or condone the manipulative actions that microsoft are using right now, like having windows update subvert user choices, or inserting their own browser ads on competing websites. While you may argue users can still reinstall their preferred browser even after their preference is changed by a windows update and they ignore the microsoft ads, it’s still fair to cite it as abusing their windows monopoly. Not for nothing but they’ve been prosecuted for these things before. It’s just a browser you’ll say, but every year we cede a little bit more here and a little bit more there. It says a lot about the state of our government that corporations flout antitrust issues without a care in the world.
Incidentally, I predict a re-emergence of robber barons with absolute power.
https://www.britannica.com/money/robber-baron
@Alfman
The problem here is that the trust or cartel can just as easily be Linux as it is Google or MS.
Not excusing behaviour, but as an aside for the non-technical user is building and integrating a 3rd party browser in Linux any easier or less difficult to customising Windows, Android, iOS or MacOS?
Is the behaviour of alternative browser vendors in any way better than MS or Apple? (Recent experiences with some products, even some recently discussed here, suggests not!)
cpcf,
For the record I do criticize linux at times. However between an entity actively harming competition, versus one that theoretically could…well it’s not the same thing at all.
Not sure what you mean by “non technical users building and integrating 3rd party browser”, but I’ll interpret that to mean “installing”. I’d say that to the extent that an OS like windows overrides competing choices, then yes that does make it more difficult to use alternatives. Of course we can talk degrees of force, and I suppose this may be your point, but it’s still an anti-competitive force never-the-less. Ask yourself, honestly, if firefox had the benefit of spontaneously replacing chrome & edge browsers, then shouldn’t we expect firefox marketshare to grow? That’s the thing, by allowing microsoft to use their monopoly power, we’re allowing them to gain an unfair advantage in the market.
Not sure what you mean. Mozilla have their own skeletons, but in terms of anti-competitive abuses, both MS and apple are unquestionably worse than mozilla.
Yeah, but no. “Get-AppXPackage | Remove-AppxPackage” in powershell as administrator removes edge and all edge related packages. including webview. Microsoft i lying about it’s removability. Just like they did with IE.
IE is not removable though in the same way, unless you are prepared to also lose the windows explorer. It is doable though if you use dopus or nc or total commander as a replacement.
I encountered just last week Outlook (desktop version) started opening web links in Edge, though Chrome is my default. Luckily there is a setting in Outlook to restore it back to MY chosen default browser.