Some of the top browser makers around have issued a letter to the European Commission (EC) alleging that Microsoft gives the Edge browser an unfair advantage and should be subject to EU tech rules.
A letter seen by Reuters, sent by Vivaldi, Waterfox, and Wavebox, and supported by a group of web developers, also supports Opera’s move to take the EC to court over its decision to exclude Microsoft Edge from being subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
As Edge comes pre-installed by default on Windows machines, users must navigate the Microsoft offering in order to download their browser of choice. The letter states that, “No platform independent browser can aspire to match Edge’s unparalleled distribution advantage on Windows. Edge is, moreover, the most important gateway for consumers to download an independent browser on Windows PCs.”
A letter seen by Reuters, sent by Vivaldi, Waterfox, and Wavebox, and supported by a group of web developers, also supports Opera’s move to take the EC to court over its decision to exclude Microsoft Edge from being subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA).
OK…
Shouldn’t they be fighting Chrome, more than anything? Surely there’s a legal avenue for that, though I guess there’s a risk of getting deprioritized by Google and basically disappearing.
Yeah they can’t fight Chrome, they are Chrome.
They’re suing because Microsoft got an exclusion from the Digital Markets Act. Google did not.
Suing? It’s just a letter
ftfy
Yeah I personally use Brave but that’s what I found.
Edit: wow. I get downvoted for the browser I use… ok I guess.
MS is literally back to square one its about damn time.
They’re even worse now and aggressively pressure you to use edge if it’s not the default.
I guess it could be said that Edge has an unfair…edge?
Take your upvote and gtfo. Lol
It was an edgy comment.
Yikes, all these browser-based puns are a bit much for this little internet explorer. I’m out.
I think youre just going to have to Brave through it.
Netscape.
One might even say it has an… Edge
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That’s not the problematic metric though. It’s the 70-80% (link) install base of the Windows OS on desktop computers that Edge is installed with that’s the basis of the anti-competitive allegation.
The fact that it still only takes 5% of the browser usage is more of a happy accident.
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Ooo what about safari on mac? Isn’t it the same thing but just not as hated?
Yes, but they’ve got the advantage of having done it for longer, and not stirred the pot.
I honestly don’t think it would have been an issue for Microsoft if they just decided to sit on Internet Explorer instead of trying to push everyone into using Edge.
An out of the box OS should include a browser. Microsoft takes a ham-fisted approach, however, Apple makes it entirely possible to uninstall Safari. You do have to jump through the hoop of disabling System Integrity Protection to remove it, but it’s simple as trashing the app and deleting the data. I speak from experience. Very easy to do.
Seriously, showing a pop up confirmation if the user tries to uninstall the last browser on the device is all that is needed.
Forget mac, it’s even worse on iOS/iPadOS, where all third-party browsers must use Safari’s rendering engine too.
It would be if Mac’s held the dominant market position for computers, yes.
They should make second dominant subject to such laws too.
The issue is with how aggressive Microsoft is about it.
Trying to download chrome? “Hey, are you sure you don’t want to try Edge?”.
Changing default browser? “Hey, are you sure you don’t want to try Edge?”.
Windows update… “We’ve done you a solid, because we know you want to use Edge”.
I’m sure at one point, it was a warning in the security center that you aren’t using Edge.
Also Teams (in sure there are others) will open links in Edge, despite what default browser you have set.
Yup. Teams ignores default browser and opens URLs in Edge. I have to right click copy and open in Firefox. I refuse to be forced to use Edge
There’s a setting Teams, under “Files and Links” where you can change it from Edge to Default Browser. Scummy that it works that way, but you can work around it at least (for now anyway).
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Good to know. Thanks. Still a shady thing to do. Why have it ignore the global setting?
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Teams is built on Edge webview. It’s Microsoft’s lighter-weight version of Electron.
never used it here. microsloth has enough claws in me as is
neiiigh, its dead.
…and we all know what that advantage can do! (Covertly looks in IE’s direction)
Not to forget than when using bing, if you look for words like Firefox or Chrome, you get a large banner saying to use Edge instead. Super shady stuff
This doesn’t make that behavior any less scummy, but have you tried using any Google website on a browser that isn’t chrome?
Not to mention that Microsoft forces you to use a Microsoft account when you create your account on your home computer which is then automatically logged in to edge and *bing so that they can track and quantize more of every single thing you do on the internet to monetize you
No it doesn’t. I just reinstalled Windows 11 pro and I’m running without a Microsoft account.
Edit: I was unfamiliar with how different that is from the home experience. I’m still using Windows 7 keys to install Windows 11 so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ consider me out of the loop.
Home versions, which most home users have, force the use of MS accounts. They’ve patched the bypass tricks that people used before.
I do a workaround when installing/setting up Windows on others PCs. Use my dummy MS account -> create local user -> change to admin -> delete out the MS account. Boom, then only the local account is on the PC.
I’m willing to bet you’re still ending up in their database. Unless you are using some sort of VPN to first obfuscate your location and then a brand new account that has not been used before, then there’s going to be some record of similarity.
When I’m installing Windows 10 or 11, I use the Rufus installer to create a pre-built admin account that I can sign in with.
That’s a good point, and a good idea about modifying the installer. I will give this a shot next time I have to do a reinstall. Thanks!
Ah. Did not realize this was an issue with home. I can not say I experienced that. Hell, I still use Windows 7 pro keys to activate Windows 11.
Do you know if you could use audit mode to bypass OOBE and get around it? Simply curious.
Ah. I was unfamiliar with the home version.
Well, it is impossible to install W11 Pro without MS account for normal person. Sure tech people can do it after couple seconds of web search, but your average PC user? Nope. No way.
Oh yeah?
Open edge and search for something. Check in the top right corner and tell me you’re not signed into some sort of pseudo-created Microsoft account.
You win.
Is this blocked by ublock origin coz I’ve never gotten that at all on Firefox.
It’s possible, I use Firefox and uBO as well on my main PC, but I remember seeing it when installing Firefox on my windows partition
I completely understand where this is coming from, but I’m just a little confused about what the solution would be. For the average consumer and certainly the target users for Windows, shipping with a browser is the expected norm, and none are expected to open a terminal, much less run tools like winget. I guess you could have a setup dialog of major browsers to choose from?
One solution could be during PC initial setup, a list of all browsers above a certain user count is given and the person chooses which to install and use as default with the ability to change at a later date.
I can think of some options
Level 1: Allow uninstall of edge. They can have the engine still for store/background processes, but no user icon. You can use edge to install other browsers then remove it.
Level 2: same as level one, but it comes “uninstalled”. OOBE asks you to choose a browser.
Level 3: They rip out the deep integration they knew damn well they shouldn’t have done because their asses were handed to them in the IE days.
Click ‘browse web’ Microsoft gives a list of popular and mixed browsers that the user can select. Microsoft then installs selected browser. At least this is the only tangible way I can see.
Anyone else remember this badboy?
For the uninitiated, BrowserChoice.eu was a popup and associated website that Microsoft was forced to create by the EU courts becasue of their monopoly in 2010.
Also, an opinion: Edge was a great browser even before they switched to Chromium. I wish they’d kept at it so there was a better variety of rendering engines out there.
Yes, I’m really confused about this article - isn’t what you describe still in effect? Why on earth not? (I haven’t used Windows in ages so I personally have never seen that.)
Microsoft and the European Commission agreed to an initial period of five years. That ended in 2014, and the measure was not extended mainly for two reasons:
- Data showed the selection screen had had essentially no effect on browser market share whatsoever.
- This period was basically the height of browser competition, with Chrome, Safari, IE, and Firefox all showing significant market share.
With competition in the browser market seemingly healthy, and the browser ballot not doing much to affect it, it was seen as pointless to keep requiring Microsoft to display it.
Thank you for that information.
One might also say, with the dire current state of browser competition, it won’t make much of a difference.
I’m just privately hopping that Firefox won’t lose its last few percent market share and go the way of the dodo. 🤞🥹
so does Microsoft Windows
You could say the same about Android and iOS. They are preloaded with a web browser not many people change. In fact I’ve noticed that many users (mostly older) using Android don’t even know what browser they are using, since they just type shit into Google widget on their home screen.
The google widget search bar is the thing I hate the most on default Android ui, alongside stupid bixby. Like the windows search bar, it doesn’t look good, always stays there and isn’t actually useful since you can still search with sometimes one click sometimes two. And the results are horribles with filled MSN-like news
IIRC Samsung devices default to a Samsung web browser labelled “Internet”. You wouldn’t want to disable the “Internet”, right?
iOS seems even more egregious, where it’s internally using Safari no matter what browser you install, giving the illusion of choice.
Fuck, this. My gf doesn’t even know what a “web page” is, she just knows this Google widget.
