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.”
It’s like the mid 90s all over again. Let’s see if anything happens this time.
I want that Web to die, die, die.
Gemini is a step in the right direction, but the new Web should be both non-extensible by design and transparently allow distributed storage, distributed untrusted computation, and separation of the concepts of a site and a machine that serves it. In other words, serverless, where websites and services and even web applications are identified cryptographically, and anybody can contribute their computing power (or storage) to a site\service\application, out of desire to help or for money. With smart contracts, ghost keys and other buzzwords I have no real idea about.
And fuck Microsoft.
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.
I’m not defending Microsoft… but if we’re going to go after a tech company for leveraging their other assets to give themselves an unfair advantage can we also go after Google?
In the first releases of Edge, Microsoft tried to build a new web browser from scratch to compete with Google Chrome. By google kept changing YouTube’s code so that videos would playback janky on Edge. Microsoft eventually gave up trying to fix for YouTubes ongoing changes and now Edge is based on Chromium (the same open source web browser maintained by Google, that chrome os built on). Google leveraged YouTube to prevent completion from Edge.
And now Google is blocking ad blocking extensions so that users are forced to see more google ads in their browser.
Microsoft’s has leveraged their unfair advantage to get a little over 5% market share.
Google’s leveraged their unfair advantage to get 66% of the market.
Both companies need a hard smack down, but I want to see Google taken down too.
Please, please do act on google too. Didn’t knew about YT thing, but god I loved Spartan Edge. It was soo…resource unintensive. It…simply did it job, was quick, low resource, looked good… :( I switched to it from chrome and then it became chrome.
YT does a lot of sneaky sneaky stuff. My Firefox constantly lagged on YT pages until one day I installed UserAgent-Switcher and pretended I was a Chrome. The lag went away.
And no it doesn’t work now.
Its working for me now, I tested it this morning. Even tried swithching the user agent back to Firefox and yep - Youtube gets magically some buffering problems with it.
Close youtube tab, switch user agent back to chrome, clear cache and restart the browser: no buffering problems. What a bunch of assholes.
I’ve reported this earlier to EU competition ombudsman, like a about a year ago, and they confirmed then that they were getting reports about the issue, Google of course denying the practice. Hopefully they are working on some punishment for Google in the background.
Maybe I misconfiguted it. I’ll check it out another day
Don’t have any of the switcher things ony my firefox deskrop and mobile.
The only modifications I use are uBlock origin.
Any source that YouTube is the reason that Edge switched to chromium?
I’m betting it’s just cheaper and easier than making their own engine.
They’re was never any evidence of google’s wrongdoing, the accusation came from former MS edge developers:
https://www.developer-tech.com/news/edge-developer-google-youtube-chrome-browsers/
Officially Google denied it:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18148736/google-youtube-microsoft-edge-intern-claims
You may be right, this could have been MS couldn’t make a better browser and pulled the plug, and the devs just blamed google.
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?
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
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
And some linux distros bcs somtimes it’s preloaded with firefox and chromium and also macos with safari
Fuck, this. My gf doesn’t even know what a “web page” is, she just knows this Google widget.
why go after microsoft.
Go after fucking google.
Chromium is the plague, not Edge.
Isn’t Edge also chromium?
Yes, and its a nasty story thats all unofficial cause no one is ever gonna go on the record, at least not for another 10-20 years when it comes out in someones book…
but the short of it is, Edge had its own browser engine, but google kept making changes to youtube and other google sites that broke Edges performance and made it run like dogshit, while leaving chromium based browsers alone.
after many instances of sabotage > microsoft workaround > google sabotage> microsoft workaround. Microsoft finally gave up and remade Edge as a chromium based browser.
So Google establishing a now industry standard of evergreen versioning so that they could iterate relatively quickly on features, rather than have to maintain compatibility with years old versions, and iterating quickly on their own major websites - is a bad thing?
Right.
Yeah, let’s go back to having to maintain terrible legacy browsers that behaved completely differently for the rest of time.
Edit - rofl. Bunch of revisionists here on Lemmy.
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-201001-202409
But sure, Google has been doing shitty things lately so let’s retroactively change history and make Microsoft the browser hero? Right.
ah yes, the google white knights. here to completely misconstrue the argument to make everyone but google the bad guy.
because thats what a trillion dollar company that threatens to seize control of the internet needs.
Rofl. So let’s white wash the browser history before chrome, then. Back when IE reigned supreme. You must either be too young or not in the industry to champion that.
Dude. Seriously. Genuinely.
Are you on drugs?
Or are you the victim of a mental derangement?
Because we need an explanation for this complete divorce from reality you seem to be suffering from.
On “features” they would like to see. Most of the time features that make it difficult to block tracking and keep their advertising business going. The web is all about communication standards between different programs and this includes the joint adoption of new standards and respect for the existing standards.
And Google established a lot of the standards that were both open and long living.
Yeah, Google has strayed far from the “Do no evil” philosophy in the last decade. But this rewriting of history to praise IE and demonfy Chrome from that era is ridiculous.
This is about EdgeHTML not IE
Because we should wipe away 2 decades of history and pretend the next thing is flawless on release?
Edge came in with a freight train of baggage, and didn’t make it. It’s absurd to frame this otherwise.
It’s possible to go after both. M$ has some fucked up practices that trick the user into using edge that shouldn’t be okay
I went to the widgets pane on my w11 laptop once, clicked an article and to my horror, all of my data had been synced from chrome to edge, including passwords, history, open tabs, extensions, pretty much everything.
I even went as far as to report it to the ACCC (the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission) since I’ve never seen it from other browsers, and that I found it pervy the fact they did it without consent, although I doubt the ACCC would be enough to change this shitty practice, and others like it.
They’re not even trying to trick the user anymore, they’re forcing them.
You have to opt into that behavior. It prompts you on first launch
I agree, that has happened with other windows devices I’ve used recently (both w10 and 11), although this was completely reset, no data other than a chrome sign-in and a few games, this had also been the first time I opened edge, so I’m pretty confused how an opt in feature just magically stops requiring consent from the user…
It’s possible to. Are they? Correct me if I’m wrong, but they’re not. They’re going after Microsoft and not Google.
Not that it makes any difference since Edge is just reskinned Chrome now anyway. If it was still it’s own thing I’d be rooting for Microsoft, at least up until they start to become bigger, then I’d turn on them.
Makes you wonder if these companies bringing the complaint are getting kickbacks from Google. Free search rank boosting for their respective companies comes to mind.
I agree with going after the Edge Lords and making things more fair…but I’m guessing Chrome is the most used we browser by a long shot even on windows so the “No platform independent browser can aspire to match Edge’s unparalleled distribution advantage on Windows." part feels like users are comfortable stepping over Edge’s corpse to download chrome anyway.
It’s true, although chrome has gotten a significant boost from Google promoting it in search and every Google app (which I don’t know if they still do).
So chrome beats edge on users, but it’s also likely largely because of the unfair advantage it receives/received from that promotion. Those options are not really available to other browser developers (unless Amazon or meta also decided they want a browser for some reason).
Chrome got popular at introduction because it was much faster at loading and displaying websites. Sure, there was a marketing push by Google, but it succeeded on the products merits and not some unfair business advantage. It still is a great browser.
We do need antitrust protections but not always because consumers are getting a bad product. It’s more about the balance of power. Maybe their products are good now, or their business practices are fair now to other market actors, but you never know when that will change and then it’s too late. It’s like you need safeguards against autocracy also when they’re genuinely doing good job of running the country, because it’s never worth it in the long run when they inevitably start doing nasty shit
Yes, chrome certainly had other merits too. Neither of us can say with certainty why it succeeded. Personally, I don’t think a crap browser pushed by Google would have but also an amazing browser pushed by an unknown independent developer would have either.
Certainly agree with your 2nd point though.
Don’t give them any ideas
If users had a pop-up which allowed them to select more than just Edge or Chrome, other browsers may see an increase in users. Chrome is as much a default as Edge is in that way.
Again I’m in favor of choosing browsers on install, but lots of Chrome installs on Windows is not the same as being the default.
So much so that you even get this annoying popup from Edge when you try to download Chrome with Edge - which should be against the rules imo.
And try to reset edge as the default every single time Windows updates
Sorry, I phrased that poorly. It is the default alternative, most users don’t bother to look for anything else.
And Chrome also does pop-ups not unlike it when you visit Google websites on a non-Google browser.
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.
They’re suing because Microsoft got an exclusion from the Digital Markets Act. Google did not.
Suing? It’s just a letter
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?
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.
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
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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.
running “winget install firefox” in an elevated powershell gets you a better browser without ever opening edge. but then you still cannot uninstall it and all the other shit about it still stays active.
As it’s based on chromium, I’d call what it has a handicap and just keep on using Firefox.
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Long last effect from us nerds telling everyone to stop using IE, because Google wasn’t a hotplate covered in wet shit at the time.
Theres like 2 or 3 commonly supported browser engines and the people who run them are complaining about unfair monopoly by a browser whose main purpose is to find another browser?
One might even say it has an… Edge
