Correct me if I'm wrong here: Microsoft is trying to get the default browser on the most popular desktop operating system, which they constantly try to foist upon users with every dark pattern in the book, a special exemption from DMA rules so that they can continue harassing and tricking users into using it?
And they believe that it deserves this exemption because despite their best efforts users still refuse to use their browser when not forced to (web analytics report low Edge marketshare).
They don't need to believe this deserves an exemption to argue for one. It's a low risk, high reward for them. The worst that can happen is that their application is rejected. The best that can happen is that they get a massive competitive edge worth billions.
It is quite hysterical when the 2nd largest company in the world pretends like it can't compete - and not that they'd rather get handouts because it isn't worth it to them to make the investment - especially when they can just beg for handouts like a dog instead.
The fact that this behavior is normalized is really pathetic.
Microsoft should be ashamed of themselves. Instead they're proud that they took an opportunity to seek a handout.
Maybe I'm naive thinking there was a world in which large companies ever had a shred of dignity - but if there was such a time - I wish the corporate world would revert back to it.
People go out of their way to install something else and don't use Edge and Bing because they are worse than the competition. Make a better product and people will actually use it.
Just so to make the case that not every company is good at everything, Apple Maps, despite recent improvements is also utter crap, and even Apple is not around crying wolf to restrict competition.
>People go out of their way to install something else and don't use Edge and Bing because they are worse than the competition. Make a better product and people will actually use it.
Well, Edge has objectively been better than Chrome on Windows (faster, less memory usage, longer battery life) for years now, but almost nobody knows this as people still default to installing Chrome out of 10+ years of habit.
Humans are creatures of habit and the bad and good impressions from the old days tend to stick around regrades if the current realities have shifted, because people aren't into browser hopping for the sake of experimentation, especially if they're already invested in the ecosystem of one browser (have their cookies already there, have their passwords already stored, have an Android or a Chromebook).
Edge could even cure cancer and people still wouldn't use it or give it a try, because the image that the default browser shipped with Windows (IE, Edge, whatever it happens to be called) must automatically be crap and Google's browser must automatically be better.
So market success in the browser space is clearly no longer about having the better product, otherwise FF would have a higher market share, but about having the stronger brand and supporting ecosystem.
> Edge has objectively been better than Chrome on Windows
No, Edge is not "objectively" better. It is not even better privacy wise, seeing that it will sell it's users for anything (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29288052), I can paste more and more such examples. Two products which are this similar can not be "objectively" better than each other enough to force one down everyone's throat.
> but almost nobody knows this as people still default to installing Chrome out of 10+ years of habit.
Then MSFT should fire their marketing department and start afresh. People know about other browsers like Vivaldi and Brave so they can clearly be explained about Edge's virtues with the immense MSFT budget.
> Humans are creatures of habit and the bad and good impressions from the old days tend to stick around regrades if the current realities have shifted,
By this logic all agency can be taken from people and they should be forced to use products deemed "objectively better".
> So market success in the browser space is clearly no longer about having the better product, but about having the stronger brand and supporting ecosystem.
Regardless of my views on the demerits of Edge, this is true of every industry and if MSFT doesn't know how to build a brand and ecosystem, clearly lots of execs need to step down.
Which benchmarks have you looked at to make this contradiction? It definetly is objectively better on Windows if you look at benchmarks on speed, memory usage and battery life, which is what most average users care about in a browers, and the reason why most switched from IE to Chrome originally.
Your average user has no idea nor do they care about the whole online privacy implications of a browser or any other SW product or service, otherwise they would have never touched Chrome, the product of an ad company, in the first place.
>By this logic all agency can be taken from people and they should be forced to use products deemed "objectively better".
You're drawing some really silly straw-men here for you to fight.
>if MSFT doesn't know how to build a brand and ecosystem, clearly lots of execs need to step down.
Agreed, but when was the last time you saw a big corp perform mass layoffs of execs?
> Your average user has no idea nor do they care about the whole online privacy implications of a browser or any other SW product or service, otherwise they would have never touched Chrome, the product of an ad company, in the first place.
When the Russians had to choose between 2 "dictators" (the word seems to have lost its original meaning), they chose the one who spoke their language.
Same is the situation with Chrome vs Edge.
Where do you want to give your data ? To Microsoft or to Google ?
So I just Googled "2023 browser benchmarks" and aside from one result that went Firefox, Edge, ..., Chrome, every single one I've read has been "1. Chrome 2. Edge ..."
Obviously Google could be biasing the results so I asked ChatGPT with Bing and got:
Did you also check battery life and memory usage? That's more noticeable than a website loading 1% faster in Chrome. Sure, now Chrome can also sleep inactive tabs now to save memory, but that's relative recent feature, while Edge had this for over 2 years.
You made a very strong claim of Edge being objectively better. When I pointed Edge privacy issue you narrowed objectivity to 3 metrics of your choice. When another commenter said Edge is better in one of those, you stick with the remaining 2. Edge might be better at some things sure, but then we are very far off from Edge being "objectively" better, otherwise every MSFT product will be "objectively" better than competition since one can always chose 2 random metrics that favour one product over other.
Metrics weren't random but exactly those metrics that mattered for the users switching from IE to Chrome: speed, ram usage, battery usage.
Here's the first results on Google from a review on October 2023:
"Edge performs similar to Chrome in benchmarks, but has markedly lower RAM usage when you open some tabs. We're declaring Edge the winner in performance, which is quite a turnaround for Microsoft, the company that made Internet Explorer."
Agreed. But then what's the point of building a better and faster browser if all users are just gonna install the "slower" Chrome anyway out of habit? Clearly "build it and they will come" doesn't work organically once a competing player has an entrenched monopoly plus a strong brand image, regardless of how much better your product now is. Sometimes marketing and brand beats technical superiority and innovation.
Not defending Microsoft's attempts to shove "better-Edge" down your throat as the solution to user growth, just asking a serious question on how else they could have convinced Chrome users to switch back to "better-Edge" the "nice way". We've all been there when we had a better solution/idea which didn't go through because nobody cared about it and the worse solution was pushed through.
> But then what's the point of building a better and faster browser if all users are just gonna install the "slower" Chrome anyway out of habit?
They do better on marketing, get more comparative studies published. Just because MSFT feels their product is better, they should not get a free reign to force it down the throat of their users.
> just asking a serious question on how else they could have convinced Chrome users to switch back to "better-Edge".
The answer is simple and yes there is no shortcut. If they believe their product is better then do better on marketing, brand building, demonstrating that, instead of taking shortcuts like using one existing monopoly to drum up newer products.
I do not know what would compel normal users, but clearly the point at which people change browsers is when they get a new machine. Get it to have good integration to get bookmarks off of one's Google account (there are APIs for that). Get it to have features that the techy people will want to use and deem it necessary to talk about them to their circle of non-techy friends. This is how I saw chrome take over - lots of techy people teaching their friends that chrome works better. My mom won't use anything but chrome unless I tell her otherwise, for instance.
As far as features that techy people appreciate, it has no tab containers, and it probably has too much telemetry for my taste, so I won't be recommending Edge over Chrome to anyone, I'll staunchly defend the dwindling marketshare of Firefox.
Also, marketing has got nothing to do with exploiting one dominant product to shove another down the users throat, that's just an evolution of a blind by-the-numbers guided marketing strategy that was A/B tested against all other solutions. Chrome didn't get to where it's at by doing this, they did so by doing actual marketing.
I agree with your points, just trying to build on that.
If Edge had some feature that is impossible to miss (I guess like Chrome integration with google stuff), then people would feel more compelled to use it?
Apart from that, if it is only a marketing issue, they should start by doing better marketing, perhaps.
If Edge had some feature that is impossible to miss (I guess like Chrome integration with google stuff)
then everyone here would cry foul that microsoft is using their dominating market position to create a dependency for edge.
the real argument against edge should not be that it would be worse. i would not use it even if it were 10 times better. the argument should be that it is owned by a company that dominates the desktop market.
the only way to justify the existence for edge is to make it an independent product that is not owned by microsoft.
> Well, Edge has objectively been better than Chrome on Windows (faster, less memory usage, longer battery life) for years now, but almost nobody knows this as people still default to installing Chrome out of 10+ years of habit.
Is this some braindead new trope on HN? I'm seeing it the second time on HN today.
There is and cannot be anything objective about "better" unless the choice of "better" is explicitly and unambiguously stated. "Objectively taller"? OK. "Objectively more infectious"? Not impossible to show in context. "Objectively better"? Idiotic. My "better" is the opposite of yours, what now?
>is this some braindead new trope on HN? I'm seeing it the second time on HN today. There is and cannot be anything objective about "better" unless the choice of "better" is explicitly and unambiguously stated.
Mate, I explicitly mentioned the meaning of "better" in the context of browsers: faster, less memory usage, longer battery life. If you have trouble reading text, maybe go back to finish school first before commenting on technical topics.
Also, please stop acting like a 10 year old on X-box live insulting people calling them braindead just because you don't agree with their opinion. You're breaking HN rules.
You still haven't understood what objective means in the context of a web browser. That's what benchmarks and tests are for, to quantify objective performance of something be it a car or a web browser.
You might not agree with the importance of certain benchmarks or performance metrics because you think the UI is more important to you, but that's called subjectivity then.
I loved using Edge but their disregard for privacy and lack of control over my own data, was too much. I still part use it on my work machine (it's not my data so I care less).
> Well, Edge has objectively been better than Chrome on Windows (faster, less memory usage, longer battery life) for years now, but almost nobody knows this as people still default to installing Chrome out of 10+ years of habit
On my work computer (with Chrome installed), Edge opens by default every URL. And it is worse than Chrome (MS own aurhentication works better in Chrome that in Edge). Battery life is eaten by svchost.exe (and its subprocesses).
It's a better product in many ways. It can read aloud documents, and it offers GPT features for free. Besides browser engines are similar.
But google has done a better job of locking-in users and, eventhough it is not that hard to switch passwords etc, people like me don't want to have multiple copies of their data so we don't switch. Google took advantage of the network lock-in features by adding profiles, all your passwords, your history etc etc. I want to use only 1 browser in all operating systems now, so I don't switch.
The switch might have happened with Firefox , but not with Edge
I haven't opened Edge in a while, but it used to give you a consent dialog from IAB, with which Microsoft informed you that they share your data with the entire advertising industry. Its telemetry is probably impossible to deactivate. Like Chrome, it also shares an advertising ID that tracks you, meant for Bing Ads. Edge doesn't e2e encrypt your synchronized data. Edge is hardcoded to use Bing even more than Chrome is hardcoded to use Google's Search. And overall it seems more bloated. I want a browser not a coupons dispenser.
Bing's AI is available for other browsers as well. That sidebar is nice, but I can live without it.
I really don't understand why people say that Edge is a better browser, when it's objectively the worst of the mainstream ones.
Lots of people from our generation are automatically going to turn down Edge because it comes from Microsoft and so gets mentally stashed with Internet Explorer. In reality its a Chrome clone that is slightly better integrated with the Office suite and which will let you access Bing chat.
Speaking of Bing chat, how many people don't use it because it is named Bing? Bing was a joke for so long and the more Microsoft pushed it, the more of joke it was.
When you try to use Edge to download Chrome, it aggressively prompts you to not install Chrome and just keep using Edge. I imagine it's similar if you try to install Firefox.
(On the other hand, while Apple has been taking unix tools out of the default install, Windows now comes with a bundled curl, so I just use that to download Chrome)
What counts as aggressive is obviously a personal opinion, but what it did was open an (ignorable) dialog in the url bar stating that Edge is based on the same technology as Chrome and with better performance (and a button to switch to the edge download page). Also, it didn't do anything when I tried to download Firefox (from the standard download page).
Eye of the beholder, sure, but I would argue that when my computer prompts me more than once not to do something that is my clearly expressed intent, that counts as aggressive.
Hell, it's less aggressive about prompting you not to run malware.
The success of Chrome and their shady ways of delivery on PC (bundled with Shareware and Freeware) shows them that people will use it if you push it onto them. They just have to push harder...
Whenever the topic of OS-bundled browsers comes up, I always wonder how Apple manages to get away with iOS (Maybe also macOS?) + Safari in the EU, especially considering the fact they even restrict the browser engine (on iOS).
I think society generally thinks of phones and computers as separate concepts. Phones are supposed to be locked down for security, and computers are supposed to be open. Apple's dominance is in the phone sector, and people who use Apple computers are largely used to or supportive of that locked down, Apple knows-best-approach to devices.
Apple also knows what mistakes MS made, and can avoid them while slow-walking OSX to the same locked-down ecosystem as their other devices use.
I'm curious if Microsoft could build their own iPad knock offs and get away with the same stuff that Apple does, but my guess is no.
They just received regulatory approval to acquire one of the largest game developer/publishers on the planet for $69b. They're probably feeling pretty invincible right now.
They can, and nobody in the EU will care. Unless they somehow convince OEMs to require acceptance of the Windows EULA prior to purchase of a device with Windows preinstalled(and even then they'll need to provide it in understandable terms to the layman), then the EULA doesn't mean anything. Microsoft has had that issue for decades where they're in violation of consumer rights. You're not allowed to require acceptance of additional terms after the transaction has occurred.
Wait, do they have a different laws about shrink-wrapped licenses in EU? I thought this particular aspect was pretty much universal everywhere, with very minor deviations. My understanding is that you buy a computer with Windows pre-installed, it requires to accept an EULA on the first boot, you either do it, or you can install a different OS (and theoretically ask for a refund, although this is where jurisdictions and realities start to really differ and I don't know about EU).
OEMs only put some bits on the device (drive and firmware), but to best of my awareness license acceptance always happen after the sale and is between the user and Microsoft. If EU had tackled this somehow, please let me know (and forgive my lack of awareness).
> You're not allowed to require acceptance of additional terms after the transaction has occurred.
Surely they can with a new version? Apple does it this way (e.g. just recently watchOS 10.1 came with new EULA, requiring acceptance before an update can be installed) worldwide and I haven't heard of any government having issues with it.
In Microsoft's best new traditions they can pester users to upgrade and even make it super Microsoft-friendly, with forced automatic upgrades that spend 30 minutes applying patches, then showing an EULA, then rolling back for another 30 minutes after it's declined.
The EC has generally been harsher on MS on this issue than US regulators; mandatory browser choice, when it was a thing, was an EU-only thing, for instance. Do you have examples of the EC accepting bribes to ignore corruption issues, or is this just the usual aimless "eurocrats BAD" stuff?
And they believe that it deserves this exemption because despite their best efforts users still refuse to use their browser when not forced to (web analytics report low Edge marketshare).