this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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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.”

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

As it's based on chromium, I'd call what it has a handicap and just keep on using Firefox.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

never used it here. microsloth has enough claws in me as is

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (9 children)

Ooo what about safari on mac? Isn't it the same thing but just not as hated?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It would be if Mac’s held the dominant market position for computers, yes.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

They should make second dominant subject to such laws too.

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 2 months ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 91 points 2 months ago (12 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago

Old Edge was a better browser

more responsive/lower overhead

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 2 months ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

neiiigh, its dead.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

...and we all know what that advantage can do! (Covertly looks in IE's direction)

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