I just got this popup while playing New vegas. I don’t even use chrome, i’ve switched to firefox. How can this be allowed? Also, this is Win10
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It’s getting REALLY difficult to tell normal operation and viruses apart.
Is this an attack or a Windows update?
Maybe I’m missing something, but why would this be illegal?
Anti consumer and anti competitive. Using their position as the OS to bug the living shit out of you to use their services
Anti consumer and anti competitive.
I’m not so sure how it’s either of those things. I mean yeah, it’s annoying (especially if it’s popping up while you’re playing a game), but I don’t feel like it’s crossing either of these lines. If you click “Don’t switch”, it goes away, and it’s not changing anything without your permission. I’ve never seen it pop up again on my devices. I forget where in the settings it would be, but I seem to recall there being an option to disable suggestions like this, as well (although an argument could be made that this should be opt-in instead of opt-out).
I know this community has a (largely justified) hate-boner for big tech companies, but not every annoyance is a crime. If anything, I’m just glad to see that they’re at least respecting the user’s consent these days; in the before times, Microsoft would just revert all your shit to what they wanted, whether you liked it or not, permission be damned. I lost track of how many WinXP updates would reinstall that Bing Bar (or MSN or whatever they called it back then) without asking me.
Unless there’s another angle that I’m not seeing, I don’t see how this is that much of a problem. If anything, it’s a good advertisement for Linux, though.
I’m not even remotely a legal expert and I don’t know what type of popup that is but I think the anti-competitive piece is “could Google use the same technique to push the user to switch to google search on Edge or not?”.
If this was an ad from a web page OP had opened or from the game and if clicking “Yes” only directed the user to a site with instructions on how to switch default search engine on Chrome, then yes, obnoxious but probably fair. Google could strike a deal with the game developers to push their search engine to Edge users or buy an ad. Someone writing a new browser or search engine will probably have considerably less money than Google but could reasonably do something similar to try and gain market share.
On the other hand, if that popup comes from Windows itself and especially if clicking “Yes” directly changes Chrome’s settings, then this is Microsoft using their ubiquitous (on desktops) OS to nudge more users to switch a competitor’s browser to their own search engine. Google, or even less a new competitor. would probably not have the same type of OS-level access to switch the settings of a different browser.
Google already does this - and has been for years - use Google Search or Gmail on a non-Google browser and it will “suggest” you use Chrome
Using a dominant market position as leverage against competitors, is per definition Anti consumer and anti competitive.
Apart from that, they are basically hijacking a competitors product to show this, which I think if not already illegal, it absolutely should be.
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Anticompetitive is a matter of antitrust law. Microsoft doesn’t currently have a monopoly on operating systems in the way they did 25 years ago.
Looking online in January they had a 74% share of desktops.
Linux is certainly dominating in the cloud but that doesn’t really make much difference here.
74% market share for desktop OS is actually a lot less than I thought. Guess macOS had a solid comeback
For desktop and laptop computers, Microsoft’s Windows is the most used at 69%, followed by Apple’s macOS at 17%, and Google’s ChromeOS at 3.2% (in the US up to 8.0%), and desktop Linux at 2.9%. In addition, 5% is attributed to “unknown” operating systems - which are likely forms of BSD or obscure varieties of Linux.[4]
From Wikipedia. Not sure when the numbers are from exactly.
Apple has been slowly growing for years. Google took a little with their Chromebooks but they never really took off. Linux continues to grow steadily but is still pretty rare in desktop environments.
Those have to be old. Last I saw chromeOS had overtaken MacOS a few years ago due to Google’s huge push to give chromebooks to schools during the pandemic for remote learning. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56116573
Unless chromeOS just cratered.
It’s hard to find numbers but I did find this:
According to current data from research firm Gartner, ChromeOS’s market share dropped considerably from 2020 to 2022, with just 6.8% of the worldwide PC market in 2022
So seem like it has bombed since that article.
Your article suggest it was a boom due to lockdown. Maybe that’s faded as kids go back to school.
it’s also notable that Microsoft has no realistic mobile OS of their own, and a huge amount of what used to be done on a desktop OS is now on mobile. Operating an ecommerce site for instance, 65% of the traffic is from mobile phones, even browser vs apps.
According to Rules of the Internet § 12 “if I find something to be annoying, objectionable, or wrong it surely must be illegal.”
MS literally got in trouble for bundling IE with the OS 20 years ago… This is so much worse.
If you cannot understand why people are rightfully upset… LEARN YOUR FUCKING HISTORY.
Those days are long gone. Else we’d see Apple and Google getting in trouble for bundling their own apps for everything on their devices.
upset
Upset != “Illegal”
They had to separate it you numpty. They literally DID get in trouble because it was illegal. How are you seriously missing this detail?
I’ve been a Linux warrior since '98. I’ve hated MS for decades now.
But not everything they do is illegal.
You’re talking about the past. Notice you’re not explaining how this thing in the present is illegal.
Having some something illegal doesn’t mean everything you do is illegal afterwards.
Way to completely and utterly miss the entire point of ethics. Does it HAVE to be illegal for it to be bad when it is WORSE than what they’ve already gotten in trouble for in the past? Why must I have to point at a law in order to say it shouldn’t be?
If you even begin to hate MS, why are you defending them with piss-poor logic?
Things were a little bit different in the late 90s though. Windows had a 97% market share and a massive deal with pretty much every computer maker to only put Windows on their pre-built machines. They had a true monopoly in a way that doesn’t exist today.
They also made IE free and bundled with the OS when every other browser at the time you had to buy. On top of that, they made it so that windows would slow down and malfunction if you uninstalled IE, and made installing any other browser a complicated process.
Today you can freely and easily install pretty much any browser you want. Chrome has the hugely dominant share in the the desktop browser market now, despite Edge being bundled with Windows.
On top of that, Microsoft doesn’t have the massive stranglehold on OS market share that they used to. In the desktop space, MacOS is about 1 in 6 computers with Windows holding 71%, mostly in the enterprise sector.
And this doesn’t even factor in that the majority of web traffic is mobile now, where Windows doesn’t even have a presence anymore.
Basically every point you’re trying to make about how MS was in the 90’s is truer today except for market share.
Why is market share such a critical point when we’re suffering from WORSE problems?
Market share matters because Windows was a functional monopoly back then.
Market share matters a whole lot less than people pretend… Yes, “monopoly” requires it, but in reality, in the real world where real things happen, you do NOT NEED a literal monopoly to start suffering from the same problems!
Jeeze, it’s like you people want to no-true-scotsman yourselves in to a future where corporations literally own you and your time…
yes officer, this comment right here.
Because OP is a crybaby.
One of the many reasons why I will never return to Windows.
What company was it that lost an antitrust lawsuit again? It was something like Macrosoft? Microphone? idr
It is because you agreed to to the terms and conditions of the Windows operating system
Those are likely mostly unenforceable.
“I will make it legal.”
-Darth CEOus
Run a debloat script for windows from christitustech. And if you want to start from fresh install w10/11 ltsb/ltsc and run the debloat script, that is the safest option, if you don’t want to swap to Linux.
I especially love that it was blurry. I shit you not, a blurry popup telling me to switch the search engine like some 2010 malware.
They got in trouble for setting internet explorer as the default and had to pop a prompt when you installed windows a while ago.
I don’t think asking if you want to is illegal though. But it could be as they are using their ownership of the operating system to push you towards their other products.
“Microsoft rewards points” wtf?
I’m not entirely sure how I’m earning Microsoft reward points, but they keep sending me $10 Amazon gift cards for them so… that’s cool anyway.
Those are one of the few Microsoft offerings that are actually good. I’ve been rolling free Game Pass Ultimate for years (with 2+ more in the bank) thanks to MS Rewards.
The people at Microsoft who remember the ftc action have retired I guess
Lets just rename this community to MicrosoftTechSupport and be done with it.
I really don’t know why I bother reading the comments on any windows posts. It’s just full of Linux users trying to convert people.
It’s not going to happen. Most of us use our computers for leisure, not to have to find workarounds for most anything.
That’s an odd way of saying “I don’t like Arch users”
I don’t know why lemmy bothers having a specific instance for PC and Linux if the communities for everything from technology to mildly infuriating is just going to be people bitching about Windows.
Really feels like the quality of lemmy has gone down tbh, you can’t go anywhere without someone posting “Windows Bad.” The population grew but it was only the ones who cared about the API changes which just so happened to be the Linux community apparently.
I use Linux on everything that’s not my main desktop and it still pisses me off to see it just flooding everywhere.
" Microsoft Service Agreement"
/shudder
Use Linux and quit worrying about this kind of shit.
And worry about other shit that you have to deal with
That’s like telling a smoker “just stop smoking and you’ll be healthier”.
A joke will at least get more positive reactions. It may convey the same message. -sad penguin noises-
Did you just tell someone to smile more but in text form?
It is perfectly legal. That’s what you get for using and choosing a shitty corporation’s useless operating system while harassing GNU/Linux users for decades. Frankly, all of you Microsoft bootlickers are getting what you deserve.
No one but MS wants this. Stop strawmanning people, you dolt. No one hates on Linux for its lack of ads.
But you enable MS’s bad behavior. They know you all have no backbone.
There’s no strawmanning, just the consequences of endorsing abusive behavior done by parasites.
Don’t say “you”. You have no idea what we stand for, wish for, or condone. Such pretentiousness should be saved for when you actually know your audience.
Using Microsoft Windows or any of its derivatives is endorsement of that software. Every user of Windows is a sucker. OP’s post is not the end nor the start.
Get real, the audience of Windows is an audience of self-enabling victims.
“But I have to use it for work!!! I have to make money!”
You are still a sucker and perpetuating this broken system. If that makes you angry, it should, the artifice of respectable neo-liberal society was stripped from you.
