Microsoft begs you not to ditch Edge on Google's own Chrome download page Microsoft Edge has been spotted inserting a banner into the Chrome download page on Google.com begging people to stick with the Windows giant's browser. As noted this week by Neowin, an attempt to download and install Chrome Canary using Edge Canary – both experimental browser builds – led to the presentation in the Edge …
They also pop up a banner when you try and change the default browser away from Edge as well.
Every time someone tells me their solution is the most secure, most trustworthy, whatever, that's fine. When they start pulling stunts like that, it makes me very much less inclined to trust them.
Hijacking a rival's web page to say "There's no need to download a new web browser" demonstrates *exactly* why you need to download a new web browser.
(Albeit I wouldn't trust Chrome as far as I could throw it either, and would rather use Firefox, but that's beside the point here).
Surely it can't be legal to modify a third-party website without a specific Ad agreement in place with that website..
If Microsoft started putting banners on Debian.org telling you how Windows is so much better than Linux there'd be uproar
Or if they put banners on GitLab.com telling you to use GitHub ...
Or banners on Slack.com telling you to use Teams ..
Why are Microsoft so desperate to get everyone to use their slurpy piece of shite browser I wonder?
Digging out this old icon for its relevance
It's not modifying someone else's site. It's showing you extra stuff in the application you're using to view that site, without modifying the original site which is now below. This doesn't make the action less despicable, but it does prevent it from being illegal. Short of market manipulation complaints, there's nothing to stop a developer from putting any messages they want in the UI, and Microsoft's tiny slice of the browser and search markets make an anticompetition argument hard. Nobody's done anything to Google for pushing their browser, and they have a much larger market share, so I wouldn't hope too much for any regulators making Microsoft shut up about Edge.
It is precisely modifying Google's site.
When a user directs their web browser to download a web page, nothing but the server's response should determine what is on display in the user's browser as a consequence.
Be it code injection or aberrant browser behaviour, Edge is broken to the extent that it displays anything other than what the user asked for in the URL.
> It's not modifying someone else's site. It's showing you extra stuff in the application you're using to view that site, without modifying the original site which is now below. This doesn't make the action less despicable, but it does prevent it from being illegal.
Is this claim based on actual knowledge and experience of how the legal system(s) work, or are you simply taking it for granted that- in the real world- the legal process and argument would be based solely on that purely technological argument? (*)
As I already commented in this post (which I won't bore everyone by rehashing in full here), the impression given to the end user is that MS's banner/ad is a part of Google's page. And I strongly suspect *that*- i.e. the end result and obvious intent- would likely be of more legal relevance than how it was implemented. (Might be different if the ad were more clearly separate and/or the end user had knowledge of what the situation was).
I suspect their may be other legal issues with trying to associate their advert with Google without permission.
Then again, I should be clear that IANAL, and this is guesswork on *my* part as well.
(*) Back when I used to post to Slashdot you'd see a lot of "logical geek" types who knew a lot about computers and/or science- but with little obvious *actual* legal knowledge- take it for granted that their imagined idea- derived from guesswork and extrapolations and reflecting their own mentality- were correct, and the law was purely a pseudo-logical system that could be gamed.
(For example, the aforementioned technological rationalisations or the assumption that they could saunter into court with a clever-dick quasi-logical argument/trap that the court would be forced to concede, when in reality that sort of fantasy bullshit nonsense would get slammed down in the first five minutes.)
As I pointed out then, the only way to know how the law actually works is to actually know how the law works, and most of them didn't. A typical example of how expertise in one area and mode of thinking leads to overconfidence that their skills apply as well to others.
I am not a legal expert either, and there is always a chance that I'm just wrong. The problem comes when we try to decide what law this would be breaking, technical argument or not. The post that started this thread didn't name one. They just said "defacing", and "defacement" is not a legal offense. If code was injected into the webpage, there might be some claim to computer misuse legislation, although even that might not work since it's being done by the software the user chose to run and someone would try that argument. Since code isn't being injected, it's software showing a banner, which it already does. For example, this and other browsers will sometimes show warning pages about a site's security or reliability depending on whether it's told to look out for known malicious sites, and those banners would also not be what the page author wants the user to see, but they are also legal.
Tortious interference is totally irrelevant here. There is no contract or anticipated contract between the user and Google to force them to install Chrome. There is the license agreement, but this banner is in no way encouraging the user to violate or renege on that agreement.
Any illegal activity here would be related to antitrust law, though given Edge's market share at the moment I find it unlikely that any government will be interested in going after them for that (especially since they haven't gone after Google for pestering people to use Chrome).
I'm using "below" to refer to two dimensions, as you're well aware. When a screen is placed vertically in front of you, you can think of the vertical dimension as up/down and refer to an item placed vertically lower as below, where the original page content is. In fact, I find myself lacking in any better word to describe something that appears vertically lower, as the only other option I have thought of is "under", which I think is more likely to apply to the Z axis.
If it was so trustworthy, why does it need me to sign in? Doesn't MS trust ME?
Any company, device or piece of software that needs me to sign up just to use ... does not get used. Or at least gets scrutinised with a very large and ugly looking scrute. Why, yes, i do use Firefox.
Yep, but that's on Bing, their own site. This is ostensibly on someone else's web site - it's annoying, it's creepy, and - per the article - it's potentially the start of a slippery slope in terms of what users come to expect of a browser so could be a behavioural security issue.
Being quite honest, Microsoft's tricks to prevent me using the browser and PDF app of my choice only make me more determined. Just how often do they expect me to believe that some weird thing has happened that's meant both have had to be reset to Edge?
This has been working for me for a while now:
c:
cd "%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\Microsoft\Edge\Application\9*\Installer"
setup --uninstall --force-uninstall --verbose-logging --system-level
It hasn't come back in over a year. (You might need to change that 9* to an 8* – depends.) Also worth doing:
REG ADD "\\.\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\EdgeUpdate" /v DoNotUpdateToEdgeWithChromium /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f
but I don't think it really achieves anything any more.
"Microsoft has been desperate to keep people on Edge on newly installed Windows instances for quite a while now."
Yes, but one must wonder why. IFAIK they're not exactly monetizing Edge in any reasonable way, it is actually costing them money to manage the Edge fork mods from Chromium. So....why? Besides statistical market share, what is in it for them and what is their goal? Are they transmitting telemetry and serving Edge-only ads, where they get a slice of the income?
If this *is* just going after statistical numbers, then it only sounds like MS doesn't like playing second fiddle...even when that fiddle doesn't bring you a slim pence.
Yes, but one must wonder why
Simple - they don't want you using any competitor's software, for anything. It's harking back to the days when they were (successfully for a while) "owning" the web with their proprietary standards. To someone with that mindset, every Chrome user is a lost MS customersubscriber.
Why, I suspect that now they will be using adobe as the browsers PDF viewer that they will extend more and more things to only use bits of Adobes PDF that are not in the ISO standards thereby making websites less reliable on the Chrome PDF viewer. Mafia style. They do this type of thing continually across their range of products. I believe Apple (there sister company by way if cross licensing) also uses Adobe PDF viewer, so their monopolistic plan is coming together.
Yes. Because it's what 90% of my users are familiar with And what 90% of their websites integrate with.
I'm an IT manager, not a evangelist.
If it makes you any happier I have vetoed Win11 and will be switching people to a Linux desktop (that runs Chrome) for all but the standalone MS Office users as the years roll by.
"You do know that Edge is Chrome sans Google tracking (but with MS tracking added)."
Edge doesn't just add MS tracking. It also adds a lot of stuff like "Shopping with Microsoft" (which has no place in a web browser used for business) and soon will also add Adobe Acrobat Reader (including its nagware to pay for Reader Pro).
There's a lot to complain with Google, but Chrome has never pulled any of the shit that Edge has pulled (Chrome never told me that I should not download that other browser, never asked me whether I wanted to use Google Points, and doesn't ask me whether I want to set my browser to Google recommended settings).
I have no idea how anyone can conclude that Edge was a better browser than Chrome, because whatever you think about Chrome, Edge is far worse.
You know you can disable almost every crap MS is adding to Chrome, right? If not right from settings then gpedit?
And no, I don't like Edge, I'm a Firefox man (via Netscape), but I have to use it as my government thinks Chrome is the next best thing after hot water.
"You know you can disable almost every crap MS is adding to Chrome, right? If not right from settings then gpedit?"
Sure you can, right to the moment MS makes another change that renders the GPO or registry setting useless.
And the big question remains, which is why one should bother wasting their time to manually disable all the shit in Edge (and do so again when MS comes up with another stupid feature) when I could just install Chrome and avoid the mess.
"Yes. Because it's what 90% of my users are familiar with And what 90% of their websites integrate with."
This sounds very much like the rational given in the late 90s and 2000s for using Internet Explorer.
And since web standards weren't really a thing back then like they are now, it was probably a more compelling argument back then.
Exactly.
I do have Chrome installed. Mostly for testing/validation.
My web browsing I do in Vivaldi (with lots of customisation).
Just because you need a tool for supporting others does not mean you are restricted to that tool. After all a "pro" understands the difference between optimising my workflows and helping someone else.,
I co-founded my own startup a while ago. At the time, users choice Linux or Mac, with Mac as the default (Windows if you begged).
Today I'd seriously flip that to users choice, Linux or ChromeOS with ChromeOS as the default (Linux containers). A LOT less hassle and easier "I lost it" "it got popped" etc. resolution tree. If you really need legacy apps, look at something like Camyeo.
Dealing with heavyweight user systems for most users these days is more pain than it's worth. That said, the ChromeOS team REALLY, REALLY needs to fix the USB token problem with linux containers.
For quite a while now, I am using Ninite.com to download real browsers and a bunch of other utilities onto new installed Windows systems, and use the same downloaded file to later update those tools in more or less regular intervals. Won't get any annoying banners or pop-ups this way. Well, maybe once, when changing the default browser...
I was thinking the same, but mostly because I would love to see two privacy offenders go at each other's throat.
The long and the short of this is that:
a) Microsoft is watching you and
b) they don't have any problem subverting the information you receive online for their own purposes which ought to be a wake up call, if only because it demonstrates just how much control they have over what is supposed to be your machine.
What's next? Replace images, ads and even maybe news articles that are negative (basically being true) about Microsoft? Censor email? Maybe that's why they invested in ChatGPT?
This behaviour 20 years ago wouldn't have been tolerated, MS and Google need to up the ante and start playing properly dirty instead of all this tipsy-toeing around. Each one putting "our results are better and return this" on each other's search pages and stuff. Make each others platform's unusable. Not so their behaviour gets to them taken to court, rather to make people see what's more-or-less already happening now and get them to look for alternatives.
Many of the post-Ballmer Windows decisions smack of hubris, so perhaps it is only a matter of time. Some of my non-IT acquaintances complain of how unusable modern desktops and the web have become. They just can't think of any viable alternative, and for them neither can I. Apple? Too dear. Chromebooks? You're having a laugh. Linux? Too complicated, unless I volunteer to become everyone's sysadmin in residence.
Would like to see alternatives come forward but I can't see any on the horizon. Maybe we need the old order to fall before they will come.
> Linux? Too complicated
Not necessarily, depending on the level of cluelessness of the user of course. In my own experience, the user difficulty level of Linux Mint is around WinXP level, meaning that those who managed to work with WinXP can use Linux Mint just fine, unless/until they wonder why MS Office or the latest game doesn't install of course. That's the deal breaker moment -- that, and people having very strong opinions what a proper computer OS should look alike...
For instance I've had an elder relative running Linux Mint without even knowing it (she just needed web and email), until the day a granddaughter of hers arrived and decided she couldn't find something Windowsy, so she reformatted her grandma's computer, found and installed a cracked version of Windows instead, and from there everything went to hell (and beyond). By then I had officially resigned my position as private 24/7 hotline*, the conclusion of the story I heard is that this elder relative had to buy a new computer. With proper Windows...
* That might sound harsh in this circumstance, but I just can't guarantee service continuity when people make random changes of that importance behind my back without even asking me.
Having recently signed off on the next set of MS licences I'm definitely in the market for an alternative. I could live with Windows for clients but the costs of Exchange on the server are getting beyond a joke. Unfortunately, I've not come across an alternative to Exchange that would satisfy the users. I'd consider pretty much anything that managed to do shared calendars properly.
FWIW, we have a handful of clients who were fed up the lacklustre quality of MS365 and migrated to Google Workspace. Yes, it's less bling but it works reliable when MS365 is taking another break. Some of them are Windows shops, others a mixture of Mac, Windows and Linux. Very few complaints. Most standard users are happy with G apps instead of Ms Office, too (and for those that aren't they can use something else, even MS Office).
But at the end of the day it comes down to what you need (such as whether your business dependents on MS Office).
I've been contemplating an OpenSMTPD swap for my old Exchange box.
Not sure what gets lost in the translation for a larger organization however.
Really as long as you can hook Outlook and mobile to it people probably will not know the difference....I did that with Lotus Notes years ago.
MS has been like this since the mid-2010s when they were using dirty tricks to pretty much force-upgrade Windows 7 and 8 users to Windows 10 against their explicitly-stated wishes.
Remember when- amongst countless other things- they changed the widely-accepted behaviour of the dialog box "close" button from "implicit cancel" to "implicit accept"? Pretty much the definition of "dark patterns" right there.
Remember when they effectively hijacked the Windows upgrade system and the implicit trust it replied upon to do this?
When even dull, corporate-friendly IT websites compare your upgrade software and techniques to malware (as one did at the time), it's pretty safe to say that's not hyperbole.
> they were using dirty tricks
That's obviously not an excuse, but they all do it: "Yes" means "yes", but "Cancel" and "No" always mean "ask me again later".
"Not taking no for an answer" is a common marketing guideline. After all you don't care about the customers' opinions, you just want their money, ASAP.
That's annoying, as is the passive-aggressive, railroading, weasel-worded restricted "choice" between "Yes" or "Remind Me Later" (that 43300 already mentioned) which has become a common tactic in recent years and deserves nothing but contempt.
But from what I remember, this was worse- MS wasn't treating the close button as a "remind me later", they were treating it as if you'd clicked "yes" or "confirm" anyway and gone ahead with the upgrade.
Then again, they were pretty much ignoring users' requested refusal of the "offer" to upgrade regardless and/or "forgetting" they'd requested that and automatically upgrading them. To the extent that people were designing tools designed to enforce *users' own refusal*... and MS were actively working around those tools.
As I said, even the bland IT mainstream was comparing MS's tactics back then to malware. Then again, this was all to support the launch of the telemetry-loaded (i.e. spyware-infested) Windows 10, so hardly surprising.
The W7 to 10 situation was bad - we had some unmanaged machines at the time at some of the work sites and I had to get users to run one of those blocking tools, then when the next monthly update circumvented that, wait for the updated blocker and run that, and so on for months on end!
They do seem to have got the message that this was massively unpopular and the W10-11 upgrade hasn't been pushed anywhere near as aggressively (or not yet, anyway!).
and the W10-11 upgrade hasn't been pushed anywhere near as aggressively
Probably because it's not needed now. Outside of corporate managed environments, users no longer have a choice - so when MS decides it's time for you to "upgrade" to Win 11, you'll upgrade whether you want to or not. The only choice is when, and even that has a fairly limited bound.
I would feel sympathy if it was anyone other than Google and the reason that Microsoft have such a tiny market share on desktop wasn't that Google sneak-installed Chrome on to millions of devices via drive-by downloads with Adobe Reader, Flash etc.
What MS are doing is indefensible, but Google are just as bad.
"Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft," the banner proclaims atop a button labeled "Browse securely now."
What an oxymoron to place a secretly inserted ad in the browser claiming to be more private than a rivals equally privacy invasive software.
Whatever happened to the broswer choice window that MS had to implement in the EU, where it would randomly list several browser? Was it only required for older Windows versions?
Yes, that, and whoever controls the browsers controls the juicy Internet trade. Microsoft already knew this when they decided to kill Netscape (back then).
That's why people fight bloody wars over them: The last browser standing will control a market worth billions of dollars.
You might think so, but you should have a good look through all of the Vivaldi settings and see the number of phone-home-to-Google services that it includes and which are still enabled by default…
(Vivaldi is a less worse alternative, yes, but Firefox + suitable add-ons is still the least worst browser out there from a privacy perspective (I'm not sure if I can still really call it 'the best' any more, sadly).)
Yes, it's somewhat underhand, but how is this any different to when Google first launched Chrome and plastered "Download Chrome for faster/more secure browsing!" calls-to-action over their search results page?
Quite honestly, I'm surprised that Microsoft haven't tried this sooner.
How is it different? Really? Google is THEIR search results page that THEY code and host. They can do what the hell they like with it, just like Microsoft can do what the hell they like with Bing for what it's worth. This is Microsoft ostensibly placing code on Google's page and that is wrong. That's what's different.
It is indeed their browser and yes, they can do what they like with it, but - call it a gentleman's agreement - it's not something browsers have done in the past so it's unexpected at best, unwelcome at worst. If I host a website, I like to think that I have a degree of control over what "it" displays to the user. OK, I give up some of that if I sell ads on it, but there's a quid pro quo there. In this case Google are actually harmed by it (no, I'm not crying for them either) and the worry is where this will stop - I already have to disable the News and Interests pop-up from displaying clickbait links from downmarket tabloids if I happen to brush my mouse over it so it's not like MS don't have form.
Well yes, Edge is their own product so of course they can design it to do whatever they want.
However, the purpose of a browser is to allow the user to view webpages they've asked to view, rendered as faithfully as possible to the expectations of the page designer after taking into account any overrides/browser extensions/etc the user has enabled.
Note clearly the references to the USER and the PAGE DESIGNER there - at NO point in the execution of any of that, should there be the option for the browser itself to decide that the page could do with a bit of fine-tuning and start altering how it gets shown to the user without them having asked it to do so.
Consequently, if MS want to build this sort of behaviour into Edge, then so be it, however given that it's now demonstrated a clear inability to behave itself and act like a real browser when viewing this particular page, how much trust will you want to place in it that it won't pull a similar stunt (or perhaps even one that's less detectable) on other pages you've chosen to view?
So no, if MS want to advertise the benefits of Edge to potential Chrome users, then their marketing department need to make Google an offer they can't refuse, so that they can place actual ads on the Chrome download page, just like any other company would have to do if they wanted to advertise their own stuff there. Hijacking Edge to insert these ads is the sort of dodgy behaviour you'd expect from malware, not something baked into the bloody browser itself, so chalk this up as yet another PR fail from the geniuses at MS who keep coming up with these stupid ideas.
However, the purpose of a browser is to allow the user to view webpages they've asked to view, rendered as faithfully as possible to the expectations of the page designer after taking into account any overrides/browser extensions/etc the user has enabled.
How quaint.
Perhaps that was the purpose back in a simpler time, but not anymore, my friend. Nowadays, the purpose of a browser is to aid in monetizing anything and everything viewed on the web. And (since this is still the wild west), by any means possible.
"This is Microsoft ostensibly placing code on Google's page"
You do actually understand how the web works, right? Microsoft have not hacked Google's servers, they have not overwrittten any of Google's code - all they have done is detect the page that their browser is navigating to, and then inject a small extra snippet of markup into the top of the page, in much the same way Google did on their search results page when it detected it was being served up to browsers other than Chrome.
This kind of detection has been around since the early days of the web - anyone remember "Netscape crippled" pages? The only difference here is that Microsoft is working with an application they code and provide, whereas Google was working with a webpage that they code and provide. Perhaps you would prefer Edge present a modal popup box whenever you navigate to a Chrome download site?
... or is it that there are still those with their heads stuck in the events of over a quarter of a century ago?
> You do actually understand how the web works, right? Microsoft have not hacked Google's servers
Yes, we know all this.
> they have not overwrittten any of Google's code - all they have done is detect the page that their browser is navigating to, and then inject a small extra snippet of markup into the top of the page, in much the same way Google did on their search results page when it detected it was being served up to browsers other than Chrome.
Google posted an advertisement for their browser on their own site.
From the end user's point of view, Microsoft in effect (emphasis here on "in effect" since at a purely technical level we're all aware that's not how it was literally implemented) placed their advert on Google's site without their permission. That's the obvious difference (and has already been pointed out several times here).
Whether MS should be allowed to do this in "their" browser- without doing so at the user's request and making it clear to them- is open to question. Aside from the fact that they already have a dominant position in the desktop market they're going beyond leveraging into abusing to force that on users, there are issues beyond that.
I'm not much interested in nitpicking the technical details of the implementation. Since they only applied after the browser itself got its hands on the HTML I suspect they'd be legally almost irrelevant (i.e. almost certainly makes no difference whether the advert that *looks* like it was on Google's page was actually "injected" into the page DOM itself or held separately in memory, since it's all being done within the browser).
And I suspect that in real life, a legal case would focus less on those (irrelevant) implementation details than the "black box" end result shown by the browser, which is that it made MS's advert look like it appeared on Google's page.
I would not want to rely on the idea that "we wrote the software, we can have it do whatever we please" would cover them when they start to encroach onto that territory.
IANAL and if anyone here with genuine expertise in the area *does* understand the issues likely to be focused on here- or thinks that I'm talking uninformed shite above- please feel free to reply.
I should point out here that I wasn't a fan of Google's obvious self-promotion either, but on top of the fact that two wrongs don't make a right, the original point was that the two situations aren't comparable.
"The only difference here is that Microsoft is working with an application they code and provide, whereas Google was working with a webpage that they code and provide"
It might be the only difference, but it's a rather significant and fundamental one, which is where the problem lies...
For underhand you couldn't beat Adobe, who would by default install all manner of toolbars and PUPs with their monthly 'fixes' during the Win9x days unless you went through every single screen with a magnifying glass... or unless you discovered the secret page where they kept their 'malware-free' update packages
Wait til you use Edge with new Bing!!!! AI
"so you're trying to download Chrome. What are you some type of [ethnic slur]? Well I have your IP address so I know where you are and will order a hit on your family because your a google loving [ethnic slur] and should be put into a death camp"
Either that or it'll claim chrome/google never existed and was just 'fake news'....
Go on Google, change your web search so that anyone who searches for anything Microsoft related gets an animated gif of someone angry shaking their fist at a screen and saying "Windows update has bricked my computer again!". Searches for Azure can take them to Google Cloud. When MS complain you can reply "you started it!". Huge entertainment guaranteed.
Annoyingly, even if you stick with Edge (which I've chosen to do on some less tech-savvy friend's PCs to keep things simple) Microsoft *still* won't leave you alone since it'll frequently badger them to reset to Edge defaults (i.e. Bing instead of Google which they requested) - MS really should be applauded for making Edge the worst of all options even though there's nothing terribly wrong with the browser itself.
Got that a couple of days ago... complete with a login popup for MS Store and 'first time user' setup (on a 10yo+ laptop still running W10)
(I use it just for home banking and the occasional site that needs a more vanilla browser... everything else gets a screwed down FF)
I'm not sure about the search boxes, but the "Don't you want to use Chrome" box still appears on a lot of Google's websites if you ever end up there. I use relatively few Google services, but whenever I do, they see that I'm on Firefox and put the recommendation in there. The most common for me are using Google Translate (I'm unaware of a translation service that is both private and understands more than 40% of the words) or when people insist on sending me things stored in Google Docs or Drive. It also appeared on YouTube at some point though I can't remember if it's still there now.
> to keep things simple
Edge to keep things simple? Why, the simplest solution is Firefox with uBlock Origin. I have set it up for most of my family and friends and nobody has ever complained, except some teenagers with very strong opinions about what a proper browser should look like (peer pressure and all). For other people, especially the ones who's most technically advanced use is visiting YouTube, Firefox "just works".
When a product is better, people naturally switch to it. For example, people did not stop riding horses because Ford motor company used dirty tricks to get you to buy a car. It was because the car was clearly better than the horse, and as soon as Ford made one that was affordable to many, people naturally wanted one.
The fact that Edge has to continually nag and beg you to use it implies that is not better. If it was better, people would just accept it. Edge some serious flaws. First, the homepage is not a simple homepage; it is a Microsoft page with Microsoft ads that obviously make Microsoft money just by opening the browser. Firefox has a similar problem with their "pocket" on the default homepage. Second, has all sorts of junk that just gets in the way. A sidebar. A discover feature that who knows what it is tracking about you. Third, Edge wants to start when the computer starts, even though I did not give it permission to do so. Fourth, make one change in the group policy settings for Edge, and lots of other unrelated changes are locked out unless you delete the group policy setting in the registry.
I know Chrome has mindshare. But Edge could too, if it was naturally better. It would take time, but it could happen.
Beta was better, in quite a few ways.
So why is the standard long tape have a longer recording time on PAL Beta (L750 is 195 minutes)?
No long play but that was messy anyway.
Better picture on the decks I used.
Tape to tape is much much better with no degrade of sync pulses.
Anyway now on to PVRs, HDV, and Blu Ray.
> So why is the standard long tape have a longer recording time on PAL Beta (L750 is 195 minutes)?
I half-remembered some of this, including the fact that NTSC supported multiple speeds and PAL/SECAM came later and didn't.
So I checked out the Wikipedia article, which confirms the NTSC version of Betamax came out first and could only fit 90 minutes onto an L-750 tape. So that's where the problem with short running times would have come from.
A couple of years after it came out- presumably in response to VHS's longer running time- Sony introduced a half speed mode ("βII"). However, from what I've read elsewhere they also improved the specs so the half-speed mode made little difference in practice to the quality (whereas VHS was noticeably inferior in *its* half-speed "LP" mode). Also, apparently most of those later models couldn't record at the original βI speed, so I'm assuming that βII became the de facto standard.
(There was an even-later one-third speed "βIII" mode that *did* lose quality, but that was probably *meant* to be more like the VHS "LP" mode.)
I'm not sure which came first- the PAL/SECAM machines or NTSC models with the half-speed "βII" mode- but the running time of 195 minutes compared to the latter's 180 minutes suggests they were comparable, so the standard (and only) PAL/SECAM speed was *already* comparable to an NTSC model running in half-speed "βII" mode.
"Chrome isn't the world's most-used browser because it's 'better' though. Chrome is in the position it is due solely to Google's flagrant abuse of its monopoly in search."
That's nonsense, as Google search never required the use of Chrome - nor did any of Google's other services.
The simple reason Chrome is widely used was because IE was shit and Firefox often didn't work with common websites, suffered from a wide range of stupid decisions by Mozilla and didn't even come with the capability for central deployment and management.
Chrome simply did a lot of things right.
Indeed. I was there when Chrome was released, nobody knew it existed, but in half a year it was on all computers, silently installed by some other program's installer. Usually some of the constant and unavoidable Adobe Updates...
If I had been given $1 each time I uninstalled a clandestine Chrome I would have made enough to buy me a nice car.
Edge hijacks any usage of IE as well.
I had to recently manually log into some factory reset old Ruckus access points where the web interface would only work with IE, not Chrome, edge or Firefox.
But every time I entered the 192.168.0.1 address, Edge would close IE and put the URL in its browser - which of course didn't work.
I can understand the need to want IE retired, but it was incredidbly frustrating to have the application closed without my say so.
Well, if the world's various regulatory authorities remain true to form and repeat what they did for the IE antitrust farrago, they'll start an investigation into this in about 5 years' time, an investigation that will take 10 years plus, and by the time it finishes a) no-one will care about it or even remember what "a browser" is, and b) the mandated relief will be along the lines of "Microsoft, stop pushing Edge on Windows 10". As Microsoft by that point will be pushing the second generation of BingOS, having EOL'ed Windows 10 long since, this remedy will overwhelm them with apathy.
opened an email an clicked on the link in my pixel phone. message popped up asking if i'd like to open the link in the edge browser. Smartphone only has chrome installed, never had any reason to change it. was irritated and surprised to have my browsing experience interrupted, and not amused.
I ran into a disturbing MS activiy between EDGE and CHROME recently running with Windows 11. I was using my backup LOCAL user. I had made some shortcuts from the Chrome browser on the desktop. When I opened one of the shortcuts I got a dialog to choose a browser FROM THE MS STORE. The only browsers available are Edge and Firefox. I had an interesting conversation with a MS Help chat. To say the agent was evasive is an understatement. He explained some technical jargon why Chrome was not secure enough for the MS Store. Chrome is the default browser for that user. I investigated the default settings by protocol. Chrome was default for HTM and HTML but could not be set for HTTP or HTTPS. My shortcuts are HTTPS. This seemed to have happenedd after the last update. It appears MS is up too something with browser defaults.
Yes, I've found that too. I'm not very knowledgable about these subjects; however, I found that MS are changing some defaults when updating, Example, I had my S20 linked with my Acer Aspire 5 using Android, I could be mistaken. I didn't have MS Link on my phone. Following an update, my link wasn't working, message from MS your phone link is no longer called ---- It's now called MS Link. Darn it, I could not remove MS Link from my laptop, I fixed the link once them MS updated and the message appeared telling me the Link was now called MS Link. I believe I checked all of my default settings and some have definitely been changed. I frequently get a message you need an app. go to the MS store and choose one. Furthermore, I've had extra apps added by MS and had to ensure I found every way possible to block MS from adding unwanted apps. as well as changing my default settings. I'm 79 and haven't had any computer studies training. The only thing I've done is write a program in BASIC that will convert Fahrenheit to Celsius. I'm sure you will find mistakes, I'm learning as I go and won't let it beat me. Hahaha! I learned MS has insisted that Acer use only MS and not allow any other companies products on their computers, at all. I detest Microsoft, they're a pushy lot.
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Having to use Bing as my browser on my work system, I have noticed the default news feed page carries a huge amount of clickbait and, much more depressingly, a large number of articles from news sources, proven to be untrustworthy and known to be right-wing hate outlets, such as The Daily Mail, The Express and The Telegraph.
If Microsoft want to garner a reputation of being trustworthy, they might want to address the first thing any Bing user is exposed to.
Two things:
1) ABSOLUTELY FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2) Made me laugh so hard I nearly fell out of the chair.
Oh, and I also recommend that the person who created the phrase I'm using as a title here seek counseling immediately. The mind that can generate such a concept is in desperate need of help.
At this rate, Edge will start overlaying ads on other companies' websites. Just like malware has done for years.
Once had a client complain about all the inappropriate adverts all over my site. I don't have adverts - they had adware/malware/dodgy add-ons.
Still bad for the company reputation though.
Google has been begging me to use their Chrome browser for many years. I have been a MS Edge user for a long time. I do not know how many annoying pop-ups and nags from the Google-verse. Including YouTube. It is good that Microsoft is doing this as there is absolutely no difference I can find in using the Chrome browser and Microsoft Edge for most people who use browsers to surf the web.
"Google recommends using Chrome"
Nah, that's ok Googster you can keep it. LOL
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