> there's presumably no technical/compatibility issues that would stop the rest of the world using it to.

There never were an technical issue in defining the default browser. It's something that worked on any OS since nearly 30 years, including Windows.

It's 100% disrespect.

I have to ask a really basic question: Why does Microsoft have such a vested interest in users using Edge over competitors?

I get the argument: "it's their browser, of course they want people to use it" but for me that answer isn't satisfactory. What is the financial motive to go through all the trouble of pushing Edge? The only reason I can think of is "your data" but even then, what sort of data might MS want to extract from your browser that they can't get from the underlying OS?

Let's see what the people always screaming about how the EU only cares about fining American tech companies who do nothing wrong will respond to this.

I hope someone manages to write a crack or something that enables the same behaviour in non-EEA locales, if only to see what mental gymnastics MS will engage in to explain why that would be bad for users.

Microsoft is unwilling to evolve ethically as a company on this point. They don't understand that we remember who they are, and you don't have to use the wayback machine to remind yourself: https://www.theringer.com/tech/2018/5/18/17362452/microsoft-...

It also shows how the EU keeps mega corps in line while other government bodies allow companies to get away with these things.

With Github. Microsoft now controls much of the world's open source code. Wonderful.

On the windows front, it actually costs them more to make the feature geographic dependent. But on the browser dominance, the choice would actually cost M$.

When will Apple admit?

The worst part is they have the resources to make a browser that people want, without having to shove it upon everyone. If they did the following in some alt timeline, I'd be a happy Edge user:

- Stuck to EdgeHTML and Chakra for a better diversity of web technologies

- No bloat, tracking, data siphoning, sign in pressure, sketchy financial services, bing integration shitware

- Cross platform (Win/OSX/Lx at least)

- Open source so we know there's no funny business

That would be a genuinely interesting browser that would have a chance of selling itself.

Instead we get a poor Chrome reskin that offers minimal incentive to use it.

If respecting user preferences reduced Edge/MS ecosystem adoption, then that's a cost.

It would actually cost them a significant amount in lost revenue. It's not merely disrespect of users, its money vs user goodwill.

Interestingly those banners telling you Edge is just as good only appear when you Bing Chrome, not Firefox.

I just tried it out, Edge showed the banner twice, once over the Chrome download confirmation (when the browsers asks if you're sure you want to keep an .exe file), and the second didn't obey the X to close. I had to click on the downloads list to be able to tell Edge to keep the Chrome installer.

wait a minute...were you able to download chrome in the end? Or was edge straight up refusing to download it?

Because they do not respect you as a user anywhere out of choice.

Regulations that were passed in the EU but not e.g. the US.

Yes, that changelog entry is basically "We will do the decent thing only when forced to."

We don’t police tech monopolies in the USA, they are actually in charge because all of Congress owns the SP500, which is dominated by tech. We have to find a way out of this dystopia spiral.

To be fair, they also don't respect your choice in the EU, it's just that they can't legally act on their disrespect in this particular way.

Because fuck you, that's why

Microsoft decided they would rather to extract more value from their captive users than the users are will to hand over if the law doesn't make it too expensive.

I love Microsoft, but I hate whoever is controlling all these awful choices for their OS. Lets be real its probably a marketing team trying to sell office and whatever else. I just want a version of Windows for actual professionals with no nonsense on it. Slim it down, make it feel like I'm on a 2023 machine with the minimalism of like idk Windows XP or Windows 7. No nonsense.

Because companies only ever respect user choice for two reasons. 1. it coincidentally makes them money, 2. they're forced to by government. In the US it's interesting to see that state governments are increasingly pushing on several issues (albeit sometimes for dubious reasons), but the federal government is somehow chronically AFK.

I can tell you that it's because in the US, some people have vested interest in a dysfunctional government.

Because other places have thriving tech industry which can’t waste time checking what browser to run

Microsoft is determined to make users use Edge + Bing.

the goal isn't respect, the goal is to leverage their position to try to trick you into something against your interest but in theirs.

$

> Microsoft is acting predictably from a business perspective

A business can be predictable without being shitty to the core. Microsoft has been a shitty scofflaw company since the day it was founded. Apple and Google are pretty shitty, but they weren't in their early days. Microsoft has always been a criminal racket.

We just need a new era of trust-busting. It's what pulled our economic system back from where it was headed in the "robber baron" era of the early 1900's, and allowed for the post-war boom. The Fortune 500 has learned to stop at duopolies and triopolies, but private equity is quietly trying to monopolize literally everything else. Lina Kahn and the current FTC have been trying, but they are hampered by the economic forces, corporations, and billionaires that have gotten us to this place already, and I just don't see them making much substantive progress. It certainly doesn't help that the public is also filled with Microsoft stans who think allowing them to buy Activision somehow "increases competition," when what they really mean is that they just hate that Microsoft is in third place behind Sony and Nintendo, as if this means the gaming division is somehow a failure, and pressure the FTC to back off of preventing more consolidation.

I think this is the smart way to see it. Tax avoidance is another example. Being angry with Amazon for not paying tax is like being angry at the sea for sinking your ship. The absolute best case scenario is that boycotting Amazon leads to Amazon paying marginaly more taxes, and every other company and billionaire on earth continues to avoid it.

Instead, it makes more sense to direct your energy towards the government that's letting them get away with it.

Same with monopolies; it's absolutely fundamental to their nature that we don't have any leverage over them as consumers. We can either cry impotently about Google and MS being bad guys or we can actually demand our governments do something about it. It's bizarre how often people choose the former!

This hits the nail on the head. The issue is that the system is shitty - the entities within the system practically have to act shitty, otherwise the other one that does goes ahead and takes the profit. Doing the right thing is often not just orthogonal to business, but is actually hurting it directly. So not only is there no incentive to do the right thing, there's direct incentive to do the opposite.

I wouldn't expect this to ever happen post-Citizens United.

> I don't have the answer. Especially in the past, it seemed like a cost factor to keep up a modern browser (just ask Mozilla) if people might as well install anything else and still buy your OS and use your services.

Microsoft ditched their own browser engine and the current version of edge is just using chromium, so it's cheap to maintain.

Edge uses bing by default so Microsoft can serve you ads, and it has a shopping plugin built in which also probably generates revenue. They can also try to redirect people to other microsoft services whenever they want in the future.

> Does Microsoft (plan to) run an ad business?

Microsoft Advertisement is pulling in 10 billion dollars a year (~=5% of total) and Microsoft wants to aggressively expand it.

These companies are all about efficiencies and supporting a single setting globally is more efficient than having per country settings.

They also like to take choice away from power users with the same excuse.

But regarding browser choice, they are happy to support different behaviors depending on geographic location... which already tells me that current Microsoft's practice of forcing Edge onto users does actually make a difference.

The marketshare figures will just be the cherry on top.

You'd think, but GDPR has done little to nothing to advance a privacy-focused constitutional amendment.

The USA's legal system is, plainly, only driven by the interests of the groups willing to pay the insanely high legal fees to do anything about it.

Over here, privacy is an afterthought, and I sincerely doubt anyone will discuss it this election: nobody profits financially from it.