This, and every other screw-up in the same vein, is why those of us old enough to remember the Halloween documents don't buy the whole "new Microsoft" thing.
Want to get me to try Edge? Great -- instead of a passive-aggressive ad, try telling me how it's better than Firefox and why I'd like to use it instead. What will it get me? Better privacy? Better performance? Better development tools?
Cynically, it's amazing that Microsoft collects so much personal data about each user -- and yet its "target" ads are hopelessly generic and tasteless.
Also, leaving the matter of whether or not I should even be seeing ads after I paid for the damn thing aside, the company that brought us Internet Explorer is the last one that should crack jokes about other browsers, even if they're good (which this one isn't).
>those of us old enough to remember the Halloween documents don't buy the whole "new Microsoft" thing.
>Cynically, it's amazing that Microsoft collects so much personal data about each user -- and yet its "target" ads are hopelessly generic and tasteless.
This doesn't surprise me. As someone else old enough to remember the Halloween documents, MS has long suffered from serious organizational incompetence. Just look at that whole debacle they went through with music players: "PlaysForSure", Zune, etc., where each one obsoleted the last one and screwed over any users who had bought into it. Exact same with their phone OSes.
Maybe it has to do with that funny org-chart picture with the different MS business groups pointing guns at each other. They collect a bunch of personal data, but can't look at things from a big picture and think "we collect all this data from our users, so maybe we could use a little of that to target our ads better". Of course, if you look at MS's marketing over the past 20 years, it should be readily apparent that they have some of the worst and most clueless marketing talent in the entire corporate world.
Over the last couple of years I've been coming round to the fact that microsoft aren't necessarily a major problem now, compared to google and amazon at least.
Doesn't take much to put the shields back upto full.
I just don't understand why people run windows. Maybe I just use computers wrong, having been on linux for the last 20 years, but my family (who I refuse to help with IT needs) are all far happier on chromebooks than on windows
I've used Linux for about the same time and honestly, I understand it completely. I would switch, were it not for muscle memory and for the fact that at least 50% of my work involves systems-level development for Linux (mainly embedded stuff, so a lot of cross-compiling). In the last five or six years I've come to dread the Linux desktop and its constant churn of rewrites and UX "improvements".
I have a Windows machine that I use for work the other half of the time and honestly... it's great. Yeah, the occasional update breaks some fringe feature. But the chances of something like waking up to the announcement that Microsoft is removing desktop icons in the next update and you can just install this third-party application for it (which will break with every update) are practically zero.
Microsoft puts out a lot of broken stuff (some of which slowly morphs into non-broken, useful stuff over time, e.g. Powershell), but you can mostly be assured that, if something works today, it'll work ten years from now, modulo some registry hacks. That's incredibly valuable.
I really don't care about things like UI consistency and whatnot -- what I do care about is stability and functionality.
Edit: tbh, the main reason why I'm not switching today is that I don't really trust this whole OS-as-a-service model. If it were Windows 2000 instead of Windows 10, I wouldn't think twice before switching, but these are different times.
I do. And just a disclaimer, I am using linux 100% on desktop (and prefer freebsd on servers). Where I run firefox, i3, terminal, evolution (as I am forced to use it due to Exchange support, while I actually prefer mutt) and this is it. I rarely run anything else that is windowed.
The reason is simple.
Linux desktop really sucks. Instead of whole community stepping together and make ONE well made, bugless desktop, where most of people wouldnt need to install 3rd party hacks, edit config files and do everything using mouse, you need to fight which one is better and you end up with 20+ desktop enviroments that all sucks one way or another. Linux would have edge over windows desktop if there wouldnt be higlanders fractions fighting which half finished desktop is better. And I am observing this for 20 years.
Same goes with binary compatibility.
Personally I dont care but for ordinary "dumb" user it is revolting. And immidiately when freebsd will give me working hw support, I will move away from linux too. As it is a mess since systemd came, where more and more non existant problems are beeing solved while you still cant clean dhclient mess from the system without killing it (-r? -x? Only in man pages.)
It is a sad story of egoism and vanity where something that could be great, never was.
I switched over to running desktop linux a couple months ago because I was so fed up with these things, but the truth is... it's just pretty bad. Like if I let my laptop go to sleep my touchpad will never work again. I had to do a bunch of weird kernel hacks to keep my wifi working when the device goes to sleep, and even then it's a hack (I had to enable the airplane mode button, and then make sure to hit it twice any time I open the screen. Come on!). And the lock screen breaks if I'm plugged into a monitor, it shows this weird low resolution version and a high resolution one on top of it. Everything is just incredibly sloppy and either outright broken, or kind of broken. This is Kubuntu btw! I tried Fedora and it crashed every two minutes if I booted X windows so, that didn't work out. Also the main thing with Fedora was it couldn't recognize my sound card, which is like the main intel thing built into every laptop. Maybe it's a winmodem thing again or something, but overall it just does not work at all.
So the reason people are still using Microsoft: You HAVE to unless you explicitly buy hardware for Linux. It's just unusable otherwise and the trajectory is getting WORSE, not better.
For me the main reason is games. Dual booting is really annoying and jumping through the 15 hoops it takes to run games on Linux doesn't seem worth it considering how poorly games seem to run natively on Windows already. It's not a question of "there are no games for Linux" but rather "the game I want to play is not on Linux".
This one point is basically the anchor that all the other usage is centered around for me. Linux simply doesn't offer something amazing enough over what Windows does to warrant all this trouble for games. If the games I wanted to play ran decently on Linux with few problems then I'd probably switch over. But considering that MS is now doing that Xbox game pass subscription even on Windows, I think the chance of switching is becoming less and less likely.
>Over the last couple of years I've been coming round to the fact that microsoft aren't necessarily a major problem now, compared to google and amazon at least.
Yet, a large majority of computers are running an operating system that spies on you and serves ads to you. Not just personal computers, but most businesses too. Buying a computer that doesn't come with windows on it is difficult for the average person who isn't trying, I don't mean Chromebooks or those system76 type computers, I mean walking through best buy or something the way a lot of non tech people end up buying computers. I mean i've had windows restore itself on my hardrive after a boot issue despite formatting it away years ago. Or at least try to, I was really confused when the windows recovery prompt popped up. As far as I.knew it had been gone since the day I got my laptop.
Not to mention, thanks to Microsoft, I now essentially need their permission to install anything other than windows on modern hardware(I know it's not quite that simple and kernel modules can be self signed etc.), but effectively, at least from the issues i've dealt with...and continue to deal with, the most recent being with virtual box and having to self sign kernel.modules to make it work, uefi really feels like Microsoft trying to keep whatever bit of control they can over every computer whatever you decide to do with it.
I'm not trying to start a uefi debate, I know there's work arounds and other things ways to deal with it, but since it's existed, it's been nothing but hassles for me and it's something I never asked for or wanted in my computer.
My main priority is to give my family technical solutions they could manage if I were to kick the bucket, and to ultimately own their data they need.
Between my wife and I we have 1tb of photos and videos. We could store it all in the cloud, but then if they shut her account down for whatever reason we would lose them all. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't find this acceptable. I do seem to be in the minority here, everyone I know just hosts all their files at a single cloud provide. It seems nuts to me.
And I haven't found an off-site backup solution that works with Linux. CrashPlan used to offer family plans but they got rid of them. Backblaze only has B2 for Linux - not really acceptable given my requirements.
For example, my in-laws got a Chromebook a few years ago. My father-in-law definitely liked it better. For my mother-in-law, it was an unmitigated disaster. He really only uses the computer for watching Netflix and reading the New York Times. She, a teacher, also uses it for work, and she found that most of the programs she used for classroom prep simply weren't available for ChromeOS, and didn't have any equivalent. So I ended up helping her give her old Windows desktop a nice deep scrubbing, put some more RAM in it, all that good stuff, and that's now what she uses when her iPad won't do.
My own parents prefer Windows, too, though that's a more fuzzy situation. Basically, it's just that it's what they've always used. They've tried other platforms a couple times, and quickly found that it just wasn't even remotely worth the hassle of learning all the differences. That's down to differences in file sharing, printer set up, all that good stuff.
Me, for a while I was thinking of switching back to Windows at home for a while, simply because I used Windows at work, and I was getting sick of having to remember two different sets of keyboard commands and suchlike. (Then I went to a shop where all the devs were given Macs, so I ended up there instead.) For my purposes, running some other OS as the host and Linux in a VM is plenty good enough.
I like gaming. That's pretyty much all I do on Windows. I have a macbook for work because MacOS gets out of your way and just works. I have a linux server and a linux workstation for other stuff - the workstation for coding, experimenting etc, the server for VPN endpoint, gitlab, time-machine and various other servery things.
But for games, if you're wanting to game on PC, windows is King. And that's why my workstation has windows installed too.
(My mother and my brother still use it because I can't be bothered to try to teach them anything else)
My use of my home computer mostly consists of making/learning music and playing games. Both of these activities pretty much require Windows. There are some ways around it, like I could be running games under Wine and use a Linux DAW and use something like LinVST to get my plugins working, but it requires a lot of effort and the results are not guaranteed (people seem to have mixed experience running Kontakt 6 under Wine and not all games run equally well). Or I could go the money route and buy a console for games and a Mac for music, but it seems like an overkill and I would be exchanging a nasty proprietary system that is Windows for two separate nasty proprietary systems of Mac and PS4/Xbox.
support is an obvious reason. with the exception of some dev tools and mac-only creative software, pretty much everything supports windows.
I can go out and buy any high end laptop and be confident it will work well with windows. similarly, if I want to throw some random hardware in my desktop, I don't have to worry about whether drivers exist for my os. all this stuff requires an additional research step with linux.
in short, if you're a power user (and especially if you like choosing your own hardware) and you want your os to "just work", windows is the best of few options.
Because I work in a Windows-only facility, at least where my level of dev work is done.
And I live in a house where the only other person has only ever user Windows, and hates change. Like even desktop icons shouldn't relocate unless she does it herself.
She fights every application update unless there's a clear reason, then there better not be any more differences than the ones indicated.
- Chromebooks don't meet my needs and Macs are incredibly expensive.
- There's a lot of software I care about which is Windows-only and doesn't have a good Linux alternative, especially games.
- I have not had great experiences using Linux. I still run into lots of dumb little issues that make me feel like I'm back in the Windows XP days, except this time I have to enter mysterious terminal commands I found on Stack Exchange to make things work right.
- You can easily avoid this kind of nonsense in Windows 10 with like half an hour of setup after your initial install.
I've seen so many good answers but to me, the main one is that people don't know there are alternatives.
I know virtually no one in "real" life that knows what Linux is. Windows is pre-installed and people just roll with it. Some are aware there's this thing called "Mac" that it is more expensive and that's it.
My windows computer is for goofing off and gaming. That is the only reason I keep it. If I want to get real work done I boot back into linux or use a macbook.
Microsoft didn't buy Github out of the goodness of their heart. They also didn't buy it because of it's significant revenue, a couple hundred million is probably a marketing budget to Microsoft, not something that drives the bottom line. Microsoft also didn't buy it to score appearance points with the socially conscious dev community that populated most of Github, although it was a nice PR story for a bit. You could say the ICE thing has driven all that goodwill away.
Microsoft bought Github for the data set. To mine code to train models to write code to put developers out of business. Microsoft is coming for all of your jobs. They aren't investing billions in AI research and Open AI for philanthropy. The sooner people realize this the better.
Sure it's tin-foil, but it's a hill I am willing to die on.
Some friends think I'm overreacting for refusing to use Microsoft products to this day, yes they have open sourced a lot of cool tech but they are still Microsoft. I felt vindicated when I bought a Lenovo laptop after using mac for the last 8+ years and found out you need to create a Microsoft account to use it!
>I felt vindicated when I bought a Lenovo laptop after using mac for the last 8+ years and found out you need to create a Microsoft account to use it!
I don't have the same laptop so I can't comment on your exact situation. That said, I have a Windows machine and I am not using a Microsoft account to log in so your experience is not universal.
> Want to get me to try Edge? Great -- instead of a passive-aggressive ad, try telling me how it's better than Firefox and why I'd like to use it instead. What will it get me? Better privacy? Better performance? Better development tools?
Isn't this exactly what Microsoft is doing? Clicking on the ad leads to the product download page which also describes the features.
In most cases, average users like to try software by feel, not by looking at a technical spec sheet.
Exactly this. Show me facts, what percentage of battery life will it save my _specific_ laptop compared to FF, how much faster will _my_ experience be.
Is there anything that the dev tools will allow me to do that I can't with FF Developer Edition?
Just a few days, people were celebrating new Microsoft Edge being a viable competitor to Google Chrome and how it is all good for privacy. Let the thing take some hold, then complain about monopoly.
If people want to "ban" something, they should ban "browser detection / user agent" and targeted ads based on that.
If some state in "middle america" ran an ad targeted at users in SF stating "move to xyz, your life will be better", is that intrusive too? Well, then ban all targeted ads.
Has anyone here actually looked at the "anti-Firefox" ad in question? It's literally a tile that says "Still using Firefox? Edge is here!". I'm not really sure what we expected here. This is about the same as a browser asking you to make it default when you open it. All big companies do weird anti competitive things. This isn't one of those things. I know I'll likely get downvoted for this opinion, but to many commenters here saying things like "this is why I don't believe in the new Microsoft or that Microsoft has changed", I'm not entirely sure how some meh ad telling you to switch your browser counteracts things like SQL Server on Linux or Azure supporting Linux VMs, or Microsoft's purchase of github, or .net core being cross platform, etc. I don't generally care to support a large company, nor am I an active developer or user in the microsoft stack, but the over reaction is a bit absurd.
Does anyone who uses Firefox realize for a long while they were primarily funded by having Google pay them to be the default search engine?
It's not an overreaction. It's literally a targeted ad showing up in your day to day work space. It's invasive. I switched to mac a long time ago, but I still have a Windows device because some things are just painful (or impossible) to use on a mac.
The difference between using an application that prompts "make this default?" and a specifically targeted ad showing up on your start menu is that the user used the application that threw the prompt...That might actually be helpful.
The fact is, if Microsoft wants me to switch to Edge, they need to tell me the benefits. A chart will do fine comparing it to other common options. I don't need a targeted ad that proves they know and keep track of what browser I'm actually using. That's literally ridiculous.
Apple does the same sort of thing these days, Music.app on my phone keeps showing me a full screen ad for Apple Music around a month, dismissed it about 5 times now.
Still – it’s a misleading title (border-line click bait). Anti-Firefox ad implies that they say something negative about Firefox, which clearly isn't the case.
This is Microsoft using their desktop operating system market share to drive their web browser market share. That's pretty much what they got sued for before.
Given, their market position in desktop might be a different one now than back then. But it's still quite close to what antitrust laws were written against.
Also saying "oh all corps do stuff like that calm down" is a really bad defense IMO.
Don't most linux distros come with Firefox preinstalled? How is that not pushing the other way? OSX comes with Safari. Every time you visit youtube with another browser it nudges you to install Chrome. Why is Microsoft singled out here?
Many people did not appreciate Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub, and Azure wouldn't be very successful if it didn't support Linux (the predominant server operating system).
It is completely reasonable to be skeptical of Microsoft's actions here, as they have a history of anticompetitive behavior in the web browser market.
Most people, myself included, were skeptical when Microsoft bought GitHub and assumed it would change for the worse. In this case I'm happy to have been proven wrong and I've seen nothing but improvements to GitHub following it's acquisition. They pretty much immediately made private repos free if you have less than four contributors and have allowed GitHub to continue to deliver awesome features like GitHub actions for free to open source repos.
It's probably not just the ads, but the fact that they have complete, unlimited access to one's machine to install apps and copy/modify data as they see fit that makes them worse than the MS of the 90's. To me, it's incredible anyone who cares at all about security would even consider Windows at this point, let alone large companies with company secrets and other private information. MS is likely mining through any file or data on any machine it wants. This invasion of privacy in many ways eclipses FB and Google, which provide services that can be avoided. This data collection is unavoidable on Windows. We don't even know the extent of the data collection, let alone what they're doing with it and they are doing it something like 90% of the installed PC user base or whatever their market share is these days. That's an incredible surveillance machine, likely the largest in the world. It's amazing to me people who work in tech can defend such practices and claim they are not a big deal. A lot of people just don't care at all about security, judging by their use of Windows.
> This is about the same as a browser asking you to make it default when you open it.
No, it's one thing (OS) pushing another (browser). The equivalent would be opening chrome and it popping up a message, "Still using Windows? Click here to upgrade to ChromeOS!"
I think it's more like Google harassing you to install Chrome when using any Google property, or, even worse, getting it packaged into every installer under the sun, so if you forgot to uncheck the "install Google Chrome" box while installing a new version of Java, congratulations, you now have Google Chrome.
I'm not defending this behavior, but unfortunately the norm has been set.
I think what we were expecting was that the operating system shouldn't be making advertisements? Yes it's "just" a meh ad, but why are you ok with your OS advertising dumb bullshit to you? This isn't just an app, you can't just casually drop your operating system. It's inappropriate and it should be viewed as such.
When Microsoft does these things, it's not just a matter of "well go with someone else". There is no-one else, a lot of times. So we're trapped, and Microsoft says: by the way, now you have to deal with advertisements in your operation system. And we're going to do one that totally tweaks our nose at the antitrust issues of the 90s just because we can.
None of that is ok! It's not an overreaction to say, hey guys, knock it off.
"Targeted" for me would imply that Windows is checking first to see whether Firefox is installed, and only showing the suggestion if so.
If this is just a general suggestion that gets pushed out to all Windows computers, then it's not so much targeted as merely questionable use of platform.
When I actually saw the ad, I realized it was not actually that inflammatory AND I had been click-baited onto a page to look at an ad surrounded by inane copy and wait for it...yet more ads.
Because of what I do, I am on a lot of Windows 10 machines for the first time. I use chocolaty to push out all the apps needed for systems at work, or my VMs at home.
When you switch browsers for the first time, Win10 will ask like a whiny little bitch, "Are you sure you want to not use Edge? It's really nice."
An anti-Firefox ad on Win10 would not surprise me.
So I guess you were talking about my post? Since I'm one of the "this is why I don't believe in the new Microsoft or that Microsoft has changed" people you mention :-).
First of all, this isn't just about this ad. As I said in my comment, it's "this -- and every other screw-up in the same vein". Like the other Start Menu ads, like the dark patterns in privacy-related config settings. But okay, let's talk about this one specifically.
The "old Microsoft" (specifically, to put it in context: the one with the Halloween Documents [0]) that I don't trust (I want to emphasize this part for reasons that I'll explain in a minute) is a company that:
1. Specifically used its dominating position in the operating systems industry to push its browser and eliminate competition in that space
2. Engaged in competition partly by spreading FUD about other products (note that this is not a post-hoc exaggeration: the internal memos specifically call FUD by this name, and refer to it as an entrenched, well-known internal technique)
3. Was deliberately dismissive of competing open source software in its public statements, even though it sometimes uses it internally
4. Set out a strategy to compete against open source (note though -- I think the documents predate the term "open source"?) that went beyond merely spreading FUD, and was based on embracing, then extending existing protocols in incompatible ways.
This "meh ad" is just the latest in Microsoft's constant, and extremely irritating push for Edge (e.g. see the system's behaviour when you try to change the default browser). It's the same stuff we've seen back in 1998 -- not as aggressive, seeing how Microsoft nearly got broken up when it tried something that aggressive, but it's in the same vein. And looks very much like #1 above.
It's also not happening just in the browser space. For instance, until recently, Windows wouldn't shut up about the damn OneDrive thing, either.
Things are different in the cloud and server space -- where SQL Server, Azure and .NET core happen -- because Microsoft isn't even close to being in a dominating position. Of course Microsoft can't elude competition there. They could ban Linux from Azure if they wanted to, but more than half of their marketshare would evaporate with it, too.
But I don't see any reason to think that this is part of some internal reform of some sort -- it's just the corner Microsoft painted themselves in. Of course they have to play the "Microsoft loves Linux" PR game, too: a whole generation of open source developers grew in a climate of mistrust about Microsoft, and it just so happens that the software written by this generation of open source developers powers much of the cloud space, of which Microsoft would reaaally want a slice. A long time ago, Microsoft also sold software for the Macintosh. Then it stopped. Then it started selling OS X software again. They aren't dumb, and they certainly don't lack good engineers -- Microsoft can compete on technical merit when it needs to.
Just like you, I don't generally care to support a large company, and while I do earn about half my yearly income writing or support Linux software, I don't really have a stake in it (honestly, I'd much rather write or support QNX software but that ship has sailed...). I'm not... OK, I'm no longer a Linux fanboy, which I definitely was twenty years ago but we all did a lot of stupid things when we were young. This isn't about "loving" or "hating" Microsoft, it's about whether or not I want to trust them with my stuff -- and stuff like this makes me not trust them :).
Edit: man, the last time I wrote so much about Microsoft I was fifteen, I think...
Even later edit: also -- as far as Windows 10 is concerned, save for the ads and data collection policy, I actually like it very much. I use it on one of my machines and I'm very happy with it -- so happy, in fact, that the moment this ads nonsense stops, I'll seriously think about switching to it :).
I agree with you. This comment should be higher up as it's more objective to this whole situation than a lot of the top comments that quickly resort to Microsoft bashing and "remembering the old Microsoft is the same Microsoft" type of comments.
FWIW, Microsoft did add tracking prevention tools much like Firefox and Safari have. So they did add the common browser feature Google refuses to integrate. Privacy-minded people who insist on using Chrome should switch to Edge over Chrome.
But I refuse to contribute to the Chromium monoculture.
I'm probably getting downvoted for this but I switched from Google's Chrome to Microsoft's and i've seen a significant increase in performance especially with a lot of open tabs. Microsoft definitely removed something or optimized. And indeed they have anti-tracking features which google doesn't and ublock origin works unhindered.
It's really a shame. The engineering that the teams at Microsoft put to the kernel and the actual operating system at large is amazing.
But then some Product Management division decides to shove this shit down people's throat and, for me at least, ruins all the fun of what would is otherwise an amazing piece of an operating system.
I paid for an operating system, just let me use the damn thing in peace will you ...
Microsoft doing shady stuff again. It's really a shame. The engineering that the teams at Microsoft put to the kernel and the actual operating system at large is amazing.
This has been Microsoft forever. They have always made some good things, but from a business perspective, they've always been parasitoids. They infect you, then eventually consume you from the inside-out.
THAT is their DNA. And so far, I have seen zero indication they've changed.
I feel largely the same... they build some really cool things, and developer division, the azure guys and .net core guys I've talked to are all great... why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things, I don't get.
Just auto-update edge and put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble... no need to disparage anything, it'd be more assertive and less annoying at the same time.
> Why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things, I don't get.
It smells of desperation on the product management side of things. They can't show growth anymore.
I'm not saying they should just give up, but folks, be a bit more dignified over there. Your company's doing great and Windows still does a pretty decent job in many places, cut the crap... At some point you have to accept that Windows is the mature partner, not the hot 20-year old :-D
> Just auto-update edge and put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble...
Ah, but some users don’t even use the taskbar. They want this ad to be visible to their tablet market, too. And for screen-reader users, presumably. Microsoft seems like the kind of company to be concerned about the accessibility of their ads.
Saying "again" has zero bearing on frequency, unless you mean to suggest that every single action that MS and it's individual employees take are "shady stuff," continuously, without exception.
How is this shady compared to Google's ads for Chrome on google.com or the paid search results in the App Store? All the tech giants participate in this behavior.
Just because someone else does it doesn't make this right. This is shady. And Google's ads for Chrome on google.com is shady. And paid search results in the App Store especially when exploited by Apple is shady.
Microsoft are somehow now expected to be the good guy, because everything else will harm your GitHub social credits that are required for hiring being hired in SV.
Everyone else does cross promotion of their products but some people hold a special place in their heart for hating on Microsoft. It usually manifests itself with frothing at the mouth, exposition about how they were sued as a monopoly, and they're the devil. It's as if Microsoft was breaking into homes in the 90s and swapping your Macs out for PCs.
Someone will respond to this post with a laundry list of complaints about them that they've had saved off in a .txt to counter posts like this.
>I paid for an operating system, just let me use the damn thing in peace will you
It's always been about control. You can apply this to damn-near everything too. "I paid for an operating system, let me use it as I see fit" "I paid for an internet connection, let me use it how I want" "I paid for a laptop, let me upgrade the RAM" "I paid for a phone, let me install whatever apps I choose / let me replace the battery" etc etc.
It's everything infuriating about modern computing in a nutshell. Every company wants absolute control over everything you do. And if they can't have that, they want _data_ on everything you do.
You use to always be able to buy aftermarket parts for a car. Now try buying parts for a Tesla to repair it yourself. It's literally impossible. It's just as bad as trying to get replacements for Apple parts. It's bullshit.
I want to see Windows 11. I would rater pay for a new product update than just have Win 10 forever with ads and tracking. Microsoft stop this bullshit. In my world, your OS is good for one thing: gaming. Even then I have to install an outbound Firewall controller (currently Windows 10 Firewall Control) and spend an hour trying to disable all your shitty adds and phone-home and Cortana rubbish! My Linux box is what I use for anything important.
Microsoft could probably charge an extra $60 for an ad-free, privacy-aware consumer version of Windows 11 and make a considerable amount off that audience. But right now, there is no choice.
Microsoft went through an extended process with the DOJ about almost this exact thing in the day of Netscape Navigator -- using market power in operating systems to try to gain advantage in the browser market. That's unethical and generally illegal under antitrust law.
Mind you, most Windows home users haven’t paid for an operating system. Either because they’re pirating Windows (e.g. most of the Asian market) or because they’re using an OEM license that Microsoft sold basically at cost (after CapEx:OpEx conversion of R&D expense, ala pharma companies.)
The only profit “Windows” as a product makes, at this point, is 1. Whatever tie-in channel partnerships they can sneak in (like the Candy Crush ad in the start menu), and 2. The cross-department budget Windows gets from Azure as lead-gen revenue (given that Windows is gradually becoming ever more tightly integrated with the Azure SDK, such that it’s only natural to use Azure to build a backend for a Windows app.)
... which they paid for. If MS is undercharging for those OEM licenses (that is, sum of R&D costs/ongoing maintenance costs is lower than sum of sale prices), that doesn't mean the OEM (by extension, the user) didn't pay for it.
Seems anything but shady? On the start menu in full sight and just explicitly suggesting their browser over Firefox. Doesn't even claim anything about either browser, just suggests theirs! Seems as honest and upfront as any advertising could be? 'Try our band of coffee' effectively.
The wording "still using Firefox?" does suggest subtly that Firefox is outdated or passé... so no, their wording is problematic, as also is the placement of the ad. It is also unnecessary given Firefox's rather small market share and the fact that Edge will be bundled with Windows which means that almost everyone who doesn't use Chrome will likely use Edge.
If W10 is on 800,000,000 computers[1], and it costs each user 1 second of productivity, then every time that ad shows, Microsoft is stealing 222,222 hours of productivity from people and businesses around the world to advertise its subpar browser in an operating system they've already been compensated for.
It's certainly shady, given that they own both the product they're advertising and the medium they're advertising it through.
I don't expect that I'll be able to get them to give me a top spot for an ad saying "Concerned about Microsoft's tracking policy? Mozilla Firefox is here", or "Still using Edge? Why not just get the original -- Google Chrome is here'.
It's bullying non-technical users into thinking that Firefox is old.
They can be shy to ask anyone if Firefox is viable in fear of being ridiculed and they might end up thinking that Firefox is bad for months or even years.
Perhaps they could have gone down a different road:
> Still installing browsers from internet ? Edgium is here, faster and pre-installed. Try it out!
Firefox is great as a product and even greater for this reason. All other browsers are either packaged with the OS (by the company selling the OS) or as you said.
Firefox accounts for about 5% of browsers used. It's not dead, but far from thriving, and many web sites ignore Firefox to the point they are not compatible with it. Yet I have not seen a major impact of this quasi-disappearance.
What is up with the recent wave of relativism-type comments? "Yes, Facebook is bad, but what about Reddit?" "Yes, Microsoft is bad, but what about Google?" etc etc
They're not productive. Yet a ton of people are doing it. It almost smells like astroturf.
Btw, I should add that the always-on OneDrive button placed in a prime spot of File Explorer so that you inevitably click on it by accident every so often which then launches OneDrive, plus the regular “security” nag that you aren’t backing up to OneDrive is way worse. Surprised no one even talks about this. (IIRC the OneDrive button can only be disabled via registry or group policy. Might not even be possible on Home Edition. Ridiculous.)
Disclosure: I was actually a dedicated OneDrive user back in the days. Even wrote a full blown CLI suite for it. I pulled the crap out when they decided that unlimited = 1TB.
Are you talking about the old Edge or the new one? The new Blink-based Edge is pretty good, and doesn't have the lingering incompatibilities of old EdgeHTML.
The old Edge to be fair. I don't think it is that bad, but the html engine would be the least of my concern. Only rarely do I create websites and Edge gave me no problems here.
I don't like its restrictive and opinionated settings. Some criticism has been adressed but I don't have an incentive to switch. Because I believe bad habits of MS resurface as soon as enough people do so. I have seen that it got better, but it just isn't enough. I don't use an online account for my OS because that would be silly, so some of its functions aren't even accessible.
Overall it just cannot be configured to my liking. It is usable, but certainly no Firefox.
Readit News
Want to get me to try Edge? Great -- instead of a passive-aggressive ad, try telling me how it's better than Firefox and why I'd like to use it instead. What will it get me? Better privacy? Better performance? Better development tools?
Cynically, it's amazing that Microsoft collects so much personal data about each user -- and yet its "target" ads are hopelessly generic and tasteless.
Also, leaving the matter of whether or not I should even be seeing ads after I paid for the damn thing aside, the company that brought us Internet Explorer is the last one that should crack jokes about other browsers, even if they're good (which this one isn't).
>Cynically, it's amazing that Microsoft collects so much personal data about each user -- and yet its "target" ads are hopelessly generic and tasteless.
This doesn't surprise me. As someone else old enough to remember the Halloween documents, MS has long suffered from serious organizational incompetence. Just look at that whole debacle they went through with music players: "PlaysForSure", Zune, etc., where each one obsoleted the last one and screwed over any users who had bought into it. Exact same with their phone OSes.
Maybe it has to do with that funny org-chart picture with the different MS business groups pointing guns at each other. They collect a bunch of personal data, but can't look at things from a big picture and think "we collect all this data from our users, so maybe we could use a little of that to target our ads better". Of course, if you look at MS's marketing over the past 20 years, it should be readily apparent that they have some of the worst and most clueless marketing talent in the entire corporate world.
Doesn't take much to put the shields back upto full.
I just don't understand why people run windows. Maybe I just use computers wrong, having been on linux for the last 20 years, but my family (who I refuse to help with IT needs) are all far happier on chromebooks than on windows
I've used Linux for about the same time and honestly, I understand it completely. I would switch, were it not for muscle memory and for the fact that at least 50% of my work involves systems-level development for Linux (mainly embedded stuff, so a lot of cross-compiling). In the last five or six years I've come to dread the Linux desktop and its constant churn of rewrites and UX "improvements".
I have a Windows machine that I use for work the other half of the time and honestly... it's great. Yeah, the occasional update breaks some fringe feature. But the chances of something like waking up to the announcement that Microsoft is removing desktop icons in the next update and you can just install this third-party application for it (which will break with every update) are practically zero.
Microsoft puts out a lot of broken stuff (some of which slowly morphs into non-broken, useful stuff over time, e.g. Powershell), but you can mostly be assured that, if something works today, it'll work ten years from now, modulo some registry hacks. That's incredibly valuable.
I really don't care about things like UI consistency and whatnot -- what I do care about is stability and functionality.
Edit: tbh, the main reason why I'm not switching today is that I don't really trust this whole OS-as-a-service model. If it were Windows 2000 instead of Windows 10, I wouldn't think twice before switching, but these are different times.
(More edit: please realize that I'm the same person who posted this reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288917 , yeah?)
I do. And just a disclaimer, I am using linux 100% on desktop (and prefer freebsd on servers). Where I run firefox, i3, terminal, evolution (as I am forced to use it due to Exchange support, while I actually prefer mutt) and this is it. I rarely run anything else that is windowed.
The reason is simple.
Linux desktop really sucks. Instead of whole community stepping together and make ONE well made, bugless desktop, where most of people wouldnt need to install 3rd party hacks, edit config files and do everything using mouse, you need to fight which one is better and you end up with 20+ desktop enviroments that all sucks one way or another. Linux would have edge over windows desktop if there wouldnt be higlanders fractions fighting which half finished desktop is better. And I am observing this for 20 years.
Same goes with binary compatibility.
Personally I dont care but for ordinary "dumb" user it is revolting. And immidiately when freebsd will give me working hw support, I will move away from linux too. As it is a mess since systemd came, where more and more non existant problems are beeing solved while you still cant clean dhclient mess from the system without killing it (-r? -x? Only in man pages.)
It is a sad story of egoism and vanity where something that could be great, never was.
So the reason people are still using Microsoft: You HAVE to unless you explicitly buy hardware for Linux. It's just unusable otherwise and the trajectory is getting WORSE, not better.
For me the main reason is games. Dual booting is really annoying and jumping through the 15 hoops it takes to run games on Linux doesn't seem worth it considering how poorly games seem to run natively on Windows already. It's not a question of "there are no games for Linux" but rather "the game I want to play is not on Linux".
This one point is basically the anchor that all the other usage is centered around for me. Linux simply doesn't offer something amazing enough over what Windows does to warrant all this trouble for games. If the games I wanted to play ran decently on Linux with few problems then I'd probably switch over. But considering that MS is now doing that Xbox game pass subscription even on Windows, I think the chance of switching is becoming less and less likely.
Yet, a large majority of computers are running an operating system that spies on you and serves ads to you. Not just personal computers, but most businesses too. Buying a computer that doesn't come with windows on it is difficult for the average person who isn't trying, I don't mean Chromebooks or those system76 type computers, I mean walking through best buy or something the way a lot of non tech people end up buying computers. I mean i've had windows restore itself on my hardrive after a boot issue despite formatting it away years ago. Or at least try to, I was really confused when the windows recovery prompt popped up. As far as I.knew it had been gone since the day I got my laptop.
Not to mention, thanks to Microsoft, I now essentially need their permission to install anything other than windows on modern hardware(I know it's not quite that simple and kernel modules can be self signed etc.), but effectively, at least from the issues i've dealt with...and continue to deal with, the most recent being with virtual box and having to self sign kernel.modules to make it work, uefi really feels like Microsoft trying to keep whatever bit of control they can over every computer whatever you decide to do with it.
I'm not trying to start a uefi debate, I know there's work arounds and other things ways to deal with it, but since it's existed, it's been nothing but hassles for me and it's something I never asked for or wanted in my computer.
My main priority is to give my family technical solutions they could manage if I were to kick the bucket, and to ultimately own their data they need.
Between my wife and I we have 1tb of photos and videos. We could store it all in the cloud, but then if they shut her account down for whatever reason we would lose them all. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I don't find this acceptable. I do seem to be in the minority here, everyone I know just hosts all their files at a single cloud provide. It seems nuts to me.
And I haven't found an off-site backup solution that works with Linux. CrashPlan used to offer family plans but they got rid of them. Backblaze only has B2 for Linux - not really acceptable given my requirements.
So my family runs Windows. I run Linux.
There are many, many products that either run significantly better on windows (Office) or are completely unavailable on other OSs (many video games).
That's changing, for sure. But there's still a long tail of products that semi-necessitate windows.
For example, my in-laws got a Chromebook a few years ago. My father-in-law definitely liked it better. For my mother-in-law, it was an unmitigated disaster. He really only uses the computer for watching Netflix and reading the New York Times. She, a teacher, also uses it for work, and she found that most of the programs she used for classroom prep simply weren't available for ChromeOS, and didn't have any equivalent. So I ended up helping her give her old Windows desktop a nice deep scrubbing, put some more RAM in it, all that good stuff, and that's now what she uses when her iPad won't do.
My own parents prefer Windows, too, though that's a more fuzzy situation. Basically, it's just that it's what they've always used. They've tried other platforms a couple times, and quickly found that it just wasn't even remotely worth the hassle of learning all the differences. That's down to differences in file sharing, printer set up, all that good stuff.
Me, for a while I was thinking of switching back to Windows at home for a while, simply because I used Windows at work, and I was getting sick of having to remember two different sets of keyboard commands and suchlike. (Then I went to a shop where all the devs were given Macs, so I ended up there instead.) For my purposes, running some other OS as the host and Linux in a VM is plenty good enough.
I like gaming. That's pretyty much all I do on Windows. I have a macbook for work because MacOS gets out of your way and just works. I have a linux server and a linux workstation for other stuff - the workstation for coding, experimenting etc, the server for VPN endpoint, gitlab, time-machine and various other servery things.
But for games, if you're wanting to game on PC, windows is King. And that's why my workstation has windows installed too.
(My mother and my brother still use it because I can't be bothered to try to teach them anything else)
My use of my home computer mostly consists of making/learning music and playing games. Both of these activities pretty much require Windows. There are some ways around it, like I could be running games under Wine and use a Linux DAW and use something like LinVST to get my plugins working, but it requires a lot of effort and the results are not guaranteed (people seem to have mixed experience running Kontakt 6 under Wine and not all games run equally well). Or I could go the money route and buy a console for games and a Mac for music, but it seems like an overkill and I would be exchanging a nasty proprietary system that is Windows for two separate nasty proprietary systems of Mac and PS4/Xbox.
I can go out and buy any high end laptop and be confident it will work well with windows. similarly, if I want to throw some random hardware in my desktop, I don't have to worry about whether drivers exist for my os. all this stuff requires an additional research step with linux.
in short, if you're a power user (and especially if you like choosing your own hardware) and you want your os to "just work", windows is the best of few options.
And I live in a house where the only other person has only ever user Windows, and hates change. Like even desktop icons shouldn't relocate unless she does it herself.
She fights every application update unless there's a clear reason, then there better not be any more differences than the ones indicated.
- Chromebooks don't meet my needs and Macs are incredibly expensive.
- There's a lot of software I care about which is Windows-only and doesn't have a good Linux alternative, especially games.
- I have not had great experiences using Linux. I still run into lots of dumb little issues that make me feel like I'm back in the Windows XP days, except this time I have to enter mysterious terminal commands I found on Stack Exchange to make things work right.
- You can easily avoid this kind of nonsense in Windows 10 with like half an hour of setup after your initial install.
Because not everyone wants to get things to work through command-line especially Broadcom drivers.
I've seen so many good answers but to me, the main one is that people don't know there are alternatives.
I know virtually no one in "real" life that knows what Linux is. Windows is pre-installed and people just roll with it. Some are aware there's this thing called "Mac" that it is more expensive and that's it.
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Software that doesn't exist elsewhere (maybe OSX).
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Microsoft bought Github for the data set. To mine code to train models to write code to put developers out of business. Microsoft is coming for all of your jobs. They aren't investing billions in AI research and Open AI for philanthropy. The sooner people realize this the better.
Sure it's tin-foil, but it's a hill I am willing to die on.
I don't have the same laptop so I can't comment on your exact situation. That said, I have a Windows machine and I am not using a Microsoft account to log in so your experience is not universal.
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Isn't this exactly what Microsoft is doing? Clicking on the ad leads to the product download page which also describes the features.
In most cases, average users like to try software by feel, not by looking at a technical spec sheet.
Is there anything that the dev tools will allow me to do that I can't with FF Developer Edition?
In any case I'm mainly a MacOS user, but still.
If people want to "ban" something, they should ban "browser detection / user agent" and targeted ads based on that.
If some state in "middle america" ran an ad targeted at users in SF stating "move to xyz, your life will be better", is that intrusive too? Well, then ban all targeted ads.
Does anyone who uses Firefox realize for a long while they were primarily funded by having Google pay them to be the default search engine?
The difference between using an application that prompts "make this default?" and a specifically targeted ad showing up on your start menu is that the user used the application that threw the prompt...That might actually be helpful.
The fact is, if Microsoft wants me to switch to Edge, they need to tell me the benefits. A chart will do fine comparing it to other common options. I don't need a targeted ad that proves they know and keep track of what browser I'm actually using. That's literally ridiculous.
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Same thing. Abuse of monopoly.
I turned the ad off... there's nothing but 32 pixel icons in my start menu.
I simply never see the outrage, customize your Windows install and move the fuck on.
That's why Linux gets jacked off all the time right, customizability?
(that was rhetorical, I support Linux and realize the most beneficial aspect is it's open-source nature)
Also saying "oh all corps do stuff like that calm down" is a really bad defense IMO.
This is pretty harmless in my opinion.
It is completely reasonable to be skeptical of Microsoft's actions here, as they have a history of anticompetitive behavior in the web browser market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu
No, it's one thing (OS) pushing another (browser). The equivalent would be opening chrome and it popping up a message, "Still using Windows? Click here to upgrade to ChromeOS!"
I'm not defending this behavior, but unfortunately the norm has been set.
When Microsoft does these things, it's not just a matter of "well go with someone else". There is no-one else, a lot of times. So we're trapped, and Microsoft says: by the way, now you have to deal with advertisements in your operation system. And we're going to do one that totally tweaks our nose at the antitrust issues of the 90s just because we can.
None of that is ok! It's not an overreaction to say, hey guys, knock it off.
If this is just a general suggestion that gets pushed out to all Windows computers, then it's not so much targeted as merely questionable use of platform.
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When you switch browsers for the first time, Win10 will ask like a whiny little bitch, "Are you sure you want to not use Edge? It's really nice."
An anti-Firefox ad on Win10 would not surprise me.
No longer in development but the latest version works fine. Anyone is welcome to take over: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=8147
Haven't tried this fork yet: https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu
They still are.
First of all, this isn't just about this ad. As I said in my comment, it's "this -- and every other screw-up in the same vein". Like the other Start Menu ads, like the dark patterns in privacy-related config settings. But okay, let's talk about this one specifically.
The "old Microsoft" (specifically, to put it in context: the one with the Halloween Documents [0]) that I don't trust (I want to emphasize this part for reasons that I'll explain in a minute) is a company that:
1. Specifically used its dominating position in the operating systems industry to push its browser and eliminate competition in that space
2. Engaged in competition partly by spreading FUD about other products (note that this is not a post-hoc exaggeration: the internal memos specifically call FUD by this name, and refer to it as an entrenched, well-known internal technique)
3. Was deliberately dismissive of competing open source software in its public statements, even though it sometimes uses it internally
4. Set out a strategy to compete against open source (note though -- I think the documents predate the term "open source"?) that went beyond merely spreading FUD, and was based on embracing, then extending existing protocols in incompatible ways.
This "meh ad" is just the latest in Microsoft's constant, and extremely irritating push for Edge (e.g. see the system's behaviour when you try to change the default browser). It's the same stuff we've seen back in 1998 -- not as aggressive, seeing how Microsoft nearly got broken up when it tried something that aggressive, but it's in the same vein. And looks very much like #1 above.
It's also not happening just in the browser space. For instance, until recently, Windows wouldn't shut up about the damn OneDrive thing, either.
Things are different in the cloud and server space -- where SQL Server, Azure and .NET core happen -- because Microsoft isn't even close to being in a dominating position. Of course Microsoft can't elude competition there. They could ban Linux from Azure if they wanted to, but more than half of their marketshare would evaporate with it, too.
But I don't see any reason to think that this is part of some internal reform of some sort -- it's just the corner Microsoft painted themselves in. Of course they have to play the "Microsoft loves Linux" PR game, too: a whole generation of open source developers grew in a climate of mistrust about Microsoft, and it just so happens that the software written by this generation of open source developers powers much of the cloud space, of which Microsoft would reaaally want a slice. A long time ago, Microsoft also sold software for the Macintosh. Then it stopped. Then it started selling OS X software again. They aren't dumb, and they certainly don't lack good engineers -- Microsoft can compete on technical merit when it needs to.
Just like you, I don't generally care to support a large company, and while I do earn about half my yearly income writing or support Linux software, I don't really have a stake in it (honestly, I'd much rather write or support QNX software but that ship has sailed...). I'm not... OK, I'm no longer a Linux fanboy, which I definitely was twenty years ago but we all did a lot of stupid things when we were young. This isn't about "loving" or "hating" Microsoft, it's about whether or not I want to trust them with my stuff -- and stuff like this makes me not trust them :).
Edit: man, the last time I wrote so much about Microsoft I was fifteen, I think...
Even later edit: also -- as far as Windows 10 is concerned, save for the ads and data collection policy, I actually like it very much. I use it on one of my machines and I'm very happy with it -- so happy, in fact, that the moment this ads nonsense stops, I'll seriously think about switching to it :).
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_documents
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But I refuse to contribute to the Chromium monoculture.
https://www.ghacks.net/2019/04/09/microsoft-edge-google-feat...
It's really a shame. The engineering that the teams at Microsoft put to the kernel and the actual operating system at large is amazing.
But then some Product Management division decides to shove this shit down people's throat and, for me at least, ruins all the fun of what would is otherwise an amazing piece of an operating system.
I paid for an operating system, just let me use the damn thing in peace will you ...
This has been Microsoft forever. They have always made some good things, but from a business perspective, they've always been parasitoids. They infect you, then eventually consume you from the inside-out.
THAT is their DNA. And so far, I have seen zero indication they've changed.
Just auto-update edge and put it in a pinned taskbar position with a new icon and a notification bubble... no need to disparage anything, it'd be more assertive and less annoying at the same time.
It smells of desperation on the product management side of things. They can't show growth anymore.
I'm not saying they should just give up, but folks, be a bit more dignified over there. Your company's doing great and Windows still does a pretty decent job in many places, cut the crap... At some point you have to accept that Windows is the mature partner, not the hot 20-year old :-D
I have to disagree here. Messing with people's pinned taskbar icons is much more intrusive than a suggestion (which anyone sane has already disabled)
> why are they so heavy handed on the windows side of things
I'm sorry but that's pretty funny right before suggesting to literally change users settings without their consent.
Ah, but some users don’t even use the taskbar. They want this ad to be visible to their tablet market, too. And for screen-reader users, presumably. Microsoft seems like the kind of company to be concerned about the accessibility of their ads.
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They can both be bad. It isn't either/or.
All the tech giants participate in this behavior.
That doesn't make it OK.
Largely because it's Microsoft.
Everyone else does cross promotion of their products but some people hold a special place in their heart for hating on Microsoft. It usually manifests itself with frothing at the mouth, exposition about how they were sued as a monopoly, and they're the devil. It's as if Microsoft was breaking into homes in the 90s and swapping your Macs out for PCs.
Someone will respond to this post with a laundry list of complaints about them that they've had saved off in a .txt to counter posts like this.
It's always been about control. You can apply this to damn-near everything too. "I paid for an operating system, let me use it as I see fit" "I paid for an internet connection, let me use it how I want" "I paid for a laptop, let me upgrade the RAM" "I paid for a phone, let me install whatever apps I choose / let me replace the battery" etc etc.
It's everything infuriating about modern computing in a nutshell. Every company wants absolute control over everything you do. And if they can't have that, they want _data_ on everything you do.
Microsoft could probably charge an extra $60 for an ad-free, privacy-aware consumer version of Windows 11 and make a considerable amount off that audience. But right now, there is no choice.
Mind you, most Windows home users haven’t paid for an operating system. Either because they’re pirating Windows (e.g. most of the Asian market) or because they’re using an OEM license that Microsoft sold basically at cost (after CapEx:OpEx conversion of R&D expense, ala pharma companies.)
The only profit “Windows” as a product makes, at this point, is 1. Whatever tie-in channel partnerships they can sneak in (like the Candy Crush ad in the start menu), and 2. The cross-department budget Windows gets from Azure as lead-gen revenue (given that Windows is gradually becoming ever more tightly integrated with the Azure SDK, such that it’s only natural to use Azure to build a backend for a Windows app.)
With you so far...
> because they’re using an OEM license
... which they paid for. If MS is undercharging for those OEM licenses (that is, sum of R&D costs/ongoing maintenance costs is lower than sum of sale prices), that doesn't mean the OEM (by extension, the user) didn't pay for it.
Seems anything but shady? On the start menu in full sight and just explicitly suggesting their browser over Firefox. Doesn't even claim anything about either browser, just suggests theirs! Seems as honest and upfront as any advertising could be? 'Try our band of coffee' effectively.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-says-windows-10-is-n...
I don't expect that I'll be able to get them to give me a top spot for an ad saying "Concerned about Microsoft's tracking policy? Mozilla Firefox is here", or "Still using Edge? Why not just get the original -- Google Chrome is here'.
They can be shy to ask anyone if Firefox is viable in fear of being ridiculed and they might end up thinking that Firefox is bad for months or even years.
Perhaps they could have gone down a different road:
> Still installing browsers from internet ? Edgium is here, faster and pre-installed. Try it out!
Someone inside Microsoft at a senior level needs to intervene here with the marketing teams and tell them to stop.
Just stop buying from them.
They're not productive. Yet a ton of people are doing it. It almost smells like astroturf.
Dead Comment
Also it’s quite odd that Firefox is singled out.
Disclosure: I was actually a dedicated OneDrive user back in the days. Even wrote a full blown CLI suite for it. I pulled the crap out when they decided that unlimited = 1TB.
I don't like its restrictive and opinionated settings. Some criticism has been adressed but I don't have an incentive to switch. Because I believe bad habits of MS resurface as soon as enough people do so. I have seen that it got better, but it just isn't enough. I don't use an online account for my OS because that would be silly, so some of its functions aren't even accessible.
Overall it just cannot be configured to my liking. It is usable, but certainly no Firefox.