Microsoft defends barging in on Chrome with pop-up ads pushing Bing, GPT-4 Microsoft is cheerily popping up adverts over Chrome on Windows PCs to push its search engine and AI assistant. As users have pointed out this week, while using Google's desktop browser on Windows 10 or 11, a dialog box suddenly and irritatingly appears to the side of the screen urging folks to make Microsoft's Bing the …
Tim: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit. That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on! Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!
Sir Galahad: Get stuffed!
Tim: He'll do you up a treat, mate. I'm warning you! He's got huge, sharp... er... He can leap about. Look at the bones!
King Arthur: Go on, Bors. Chop his head off!
Sir Bors: Right! Silly little bleeder. One rabbit stew comin' right up!
Likewise, Outlook for Android (it's a "managed" work phone, I don't have a choice) asks me EVERY DAY if I want to make O365 the default app to open PDFs. EVERY DAY I click no and the next day it ASKS AGAIN. How many time do I have to tell it no? For all eternity, it seems. All it does is make me hate MS even more. Unfortunately, as far as my job is concerned, I can avoid them.
Oh, I'm sure the various national competition regulators will eventually stir from their torpor and look into this; after a 10-year investigation, they may eventually find Microsoft guilty and as a penalty, announce that from 2036 onwards Microsoft is not allowed to promote Bing in Windows 10 or 11 anymore. And Microsoft, by then hard at work on the 36H2 release of Windows 14, will look suitably chastened and promise to stop doing that, as they try to keep a straight face...
Because unlike the 90s, they're have 5% market share, not 95%.
To be fair to MS they're only doing what Google did, we forget it now, but if you go on Sourceforge and download something from the mid 2000s, it's a very good chance the installer will offer to install (and set to default) chrome for you.
Google still do this. When I use Google Maps or YouTube, I often see a message that the experience is much better in Chrome. This is less intrusive than someone hijacking your operating system, although I've never tried to install Firefox on ChromeOS. They are all happy to abuse their dominance and pay the one hour of profit fine later.
There is still a fraction at MS acting like it is 1998 which they claimed Linux doesn't even properly support USB.
I just installed ms-edge to openSUSE TW via Terminal and I noticed my default browser has been set to Edge. This is the only instance a developer abuses the "default apps" mechanism of UNIX desktop. That should give a clue about my claim. Ballmer ideology is still wandering around at MS.
So they now have the operating system running processes that just monitor the applications that you use for the sole purpose of prompting you to use the Microsoft alternative services, altering your settings, AND continuing to monitor whether you try to change the settings back when the application notifies you (as intended) that something external tried to change the settings and scare you into ignoring it? (Or does that second prompt just happen automatically without actually looking at the settings, on the assumption that Chrome would be warning you?)
I'm okay with their websites prompting to switch, that's old news, and it's THEIR site. Even having the browser itself prompt when you visit the competitor's site is still that one app doing it. But monitoring my installed apps using a process built into the operating system to see if there's an opportunity to push their own is crossing the line.
There's a whole bunch of processes that are dedicated to doing stuff like that and other snooping. I have very noisy HDDs on my gaming PC (large and relatively inexpensive because of the amount of gaming mods and crap I download, and they're okay for RAID; but they are bloody noisy) and I can hear them unexpectedly rumbling away on a regular basis. It's nearly always the result of something that came hidden amongst the inevitable bloatware that all IT companies are now guilty of that's decided without asking permission that it's going to rummage through all my shit and phone home with its findings. Some of it is more persistent and difficult to get rid of than others. It's kinda scary/annoying (depending on mood) how much of this stuff goes on, and I'm probably only aware of the more blatant examples.
"Something must be done", though I'm not going to hold my breath. Big Tech™ still exists in a current-day Wild West and I don't see that changing any time soon.
This is confusing for the user as they don’t know where the message came from. Is it Google Chrome? Is it the computer itself? Is it Windows? Is it the web page they’re on? Most people don’t know or care - it’s just another message asking a question they don’t want to answer when they’re trying to do something else. It’s the same as:
- cookie warning messages. We didn’t ask for them, we haven’t got time to deal with them and they’re making the whole experience worse
- messages that appear in web sites to give you a coupon code and sign you up, when you’re in the middle of looking for something
- having to listen to a message on a phone call asking if you want to leave feedback after the call. No, I want the whole process to hurry up
- buttons on card machines in petrol stations not letting you pay unless you answer yes or no to the ‘donate to charity’ button. No, I’m in a hurry, I don’t want to have to parse whole messages to work out if I have to press one button or another
These are all obstacles and speed bumps in our lives that aren’t designed to help us at all, they’re designed to block us, frustrate us, annoy us and generally use us.
To me at least, all the above are the same. It’s just big corporations pissing about not thinking of the customer / user experience.
"tell us to take out custom elsewhere."
The problem is that they are ALL doing it. If you complain, odds are you'll get no response, but if they do deign to responds, they'll waffle on about how it only take s a few seconds of your time and will help "improve" the service. They never, never will understand that few seconds, minutes, whatever, mounts up when they are all doing it and it pisses off every customer. Almost every interaction with a business these days results in a "feedback survey" by email or phone. And the survey NEVER has a free form reply where you can complain about the waste of time the survey is!
Almost every interaction with a business these days results in a "feedback survey" by email or phone.
If it's an SMS phone message it gets the report and block treatment. If I absolutely have to deal (as rarely as possible) with those who are apt to end such guff I allocate them their own email address and set it to bounce as soon as the transaction is complete.
It was always thus.
I remember "upgrading" to an early version of Netscape from a slightly earlier version and suddenly being assaulted by modal message boxes stating "You have received a cookie". Which was annoying, especially since we say "biscuit" in my part of the world.
They (Netscape) could have done us all a big favour by offering a "fuck off and don't try this crap ever again" option.
-A.
windows 14
Running system process load analysis on win kernel
MMU : 0.10%
GFX: 1%
Network: 0.5%
User data analysis: 10%
Serving ads based on above :85%
Remaining resources for user processes: 4%. Microsoft are pleased to announce that if you buy an Intel I11 15Ghz 24 core CPU, you'll have a extra 1% for your programs. click here to buy.
It does not help Microsoft's corporate image when this bollocks pops up on corporate clients' desktops. There have been several such escapades while I have been working in such an environment recently - less than a year, and part-time at that. Every instance sets the noise around the water cooler a little higher and the corporate Love-Microsoft thermometer a little lower. Please, Microsoft, we want to see more of this in the CEO's face, they're coming up to their annual review of the IT strategy, and you have this great chance to play Boeing's once-too-often card. Don't waste it!
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