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.”
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.
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?
neiiigh, its dead.
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.
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).
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.
why go after microsoft.
Go after fucking google.
Chromium is the plague, not Edge.
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
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
And try to reset edge as the default every single time Windows updates
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).
Don’t give them any ideas
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.
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.
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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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never used it here. microsloth has enough claws in me as is
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.
The early versions of edge were absolutely terrible and didn’t support modern standards. I fully believe that YouTube didn’t work on Edge but I don’t believe it was anything to do with Google and everything to do with Microsoft not being able to build a web browser.
I’m a web dev, fully disagree with you. I don’t even think this comment is based in any reality, just MS hatred (which, to be fair, I currently hate them for other reasons, but it’s a big company with many parts)
I warned my colleagues against doing all development and testing in Chrome, because they would inevitably code towards “Webkit features” unknowingly, and leave both Edge and Firefox in the dust. I set up Edge as my default because, in an effort to catch up in popularity, they were being very strict and communicative with standards. If I wrote a page to work in Edge, it would work in other browsers. Meanwhile, there were horrific features like linear gradients that needed a full 15 lines of CSS specifically because Webkit would implement it, realize their implementation had gaps, reimplement it, and end up with 14 used-in-release syntaxes that you needed to account for, instead of the Edge/Firefox “Build it right” philosophy.
I sincerely doubt the current YouTube situation is actually because YouTube is a complex site. 90% of the motivation for whatever feature they’re putting in is to push Chrome and fuck over other browsers.
I’m not saying that I like the fact that they’ve gone over to a new render engine, I don’t.
But frankly the alternative wasn’t working and either they couldn’t or were unwilling to put in the effort to develop their own system.
I fully believe Google might have been doing some messing around with YouTube. but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they did and no one was ever able to provide any evidence for the accusation.
With regards to things like linear gradients, kind of get your point but also at the same time who the hell still codes raw CSS? I’ve been out of the industry for probably about 8 years and even back then people were using SASS, so needing a bunch of vendor prefixes is kind of irrelevant really.
Citing SASS feels like “Who codes HTML when we have Dreamweaver” type of comment.
SASS just translates your styles to CSS, so even if you write one simple line, it’s polyfilling 13 - and for various technical reasons it’s better if one line polyfills one line for consistency. Just to give one example, an app might bloat its page load by inadvertently having 1MB-large CSS files post SASS translation.
I’ve heard the comment about “not keeping up, wasn’t working” in regards to Edge several times, but I haven’t heard any concrete examples of that that didn’t relate to Chrome flexing its position or jumping the gun on standards. It’s even realistic a large percent of that was people, web devs included, having trailing feelings of “Ugh, IE - I mean Edge” long after that stopped making sense.
Dreamweaver is an IDE (a bad and crappy one). SASS is a pre-processing language.
They don’t even remotely do the same thing
It seems that comment went right over your head.
History disagrees with you on this one.
What do you mean history disagrees with me? If you look at reviews of Microsoft edge when it released pretty much all of them talk about how it lacked compatibility with modern standards and was nowhere close to feature complete. Large parts of the HTML5 spec were missing, including any support for
webmoroggencoding.I mean that there is several indicators that Google did indeed try to sabotage other browsers on YouTube.
That was a claim that was made yes, but never proven.
Meanwhile what I said is demonstrably verifiable. Early versions of Microsoft edge that they put out were an absolute travesty, and all of the criticism leveled at it was 100% earned, it had nothing to do with any machinations from Google. Microsoft made a terrible browser put it out to the general public and were rightfully criticized for it. They couldn’t fix it so they switched to chromium.
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.I don’t know have any lag on YouTube using Firefox
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.
Old Edge was a better browser
more responsive/lower overhead
…and we all know what that advantage can do! (Covertly looks in IE’s direction)
