The software giant first introduced malware-like pop-up ads last year with a prompt that appeared over the top of other apps and windows. After pausing that notification to address “unintended behavior,” the pop-ups have returned again on Windows 10 and 11.
Windows users have reported seeing the new pop-up in recent days, advertising Bing AI and Microsoft’s Bing search engine inside Google Chrome. If you click yes to this prompt, then Microsoft will set Bing as the default search engine for Chrome. These latest prompts look like malware, and once again have Windows users asking if they are legit or nefarious. Microsoft has confirmed to The Verge that the pop-ups are genuine and should only appear once.
Every trick Microsoft pulled to make you browse Edge instead of Chrome
Isn’t that a textbook antitrust violation?
USA companies don’t give a shit about antitrust anymore. Look at Amazon and Apple, the only places they get bit for their behavior are the European countries.
the only places they get bit for their behavior are the European countries.
Even then Apple has been barely bothered. The DMA is the first big test, Apple has clearly not complied in spirit, lets see if that’s allowed and nothing changes.
Yes but Microsoft learned once you start lining the pockets of the right people, nothing happens to you!
The richest companies can probably afford the richest lobbyists
Yeah, but when they get fined 0.004% of their revenue with each violation then it’s hardly even worth worrying about. Legal penalties are basically minor business expenses to these companies - like buying toilet paper for the office bathrooms.
Isn’t that a textbook antitrust violation?
Apparently not. Google is nagging Edge users who visit Google services since years to switch to their “secure web browser with frequent updates” (implying that Edge doesn’t get any, despite being the same Chromium thing as Chrome). (Firefox is exempt because FF defaults to Google Search)
BWAHAHAhahahahaaaaaa! Aiiigh! Oh! Oh man. snif. Haha ha. Ahhhhhh fuck.
Yes. But micro$oft was declared a monopoly 20+ years ago and . . gestures to everything
what, you want reform? It didn’t have the votes.
Trust is when two or more companies secretly collude against the interest of customers. That is what you would find in a textbook anyway. This is more an abuse of monopoly.
Except it’s Google with the monopoly now.
*Laughs in Firefox*
Well I’m glad I switched to Linux, its only going to get worse.
I hope more users will do the same
Easy Solution: Linux, Firefox/LibreWolf, DuckDuckGo
Fuck Microsoft!
Ddg has content bubbles and tracking that you can stop.
Turn off location and you will still get results relevant to your area filling the page.
Duckduckgo once allowed trackers from Microsoft
- This only applies to the mobile app
- They stopped doing this in 2022
- LibreWolf comes with uBlock Origin preinstalled, which blocks all sorts of ads, trackers and other malicious JavaScript
I have nothing to do with Librewolf at all. Don’t confuse the two. I just said what Duckduckgo did with trackers based on a search agreement with Microsoft. BTW, this issue was initially exposed by others, not Duckduckgo itself.
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Suggest a better alternative then. Startpage, Mullvad Leta and Whoogle are just Google proxies (and Whoogle is pretty unreliable), SearX, SearXNG and 4get are also just proxies for multiple search engines. There are no good independent search engiens, Brave Search sucks because it’s made by Brave, a company notorious for pushing weird NFT and Blockchain shit, Mojeek has pretty bad search results and Kagi requires an account, and only allows 100 searches.
sorry to hear that; if you are using us any point in the future and want to flag this, we have a “submit feedback” button on pages, this is a really useful thing to do for us, as it helps us to identify results which are not so good :D
I would love to switch away from DuckDuckGo, and I would be very happy if Mojeek was a viable alternative. I’ll try using it for some time and I will report any issues I encounter with the search. Btw it’s great that you’re on the Fediverse!
thanks a lot in advance, and fedi is where it’s at ! 💯
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And DDG is just a proxy for Bing following that logic. I’d choose those three over DDG.
Yeah, but if the alternatives aren’t better, why not just use DDG?
Making a new account every 100 searches should be an option (albeit a somewhat tedious one), no?
That ain’t a great solution either
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laughs in Linux desktop
Why do people continue to put up with this? I don’t get any ads or bloatware like “Paint 3D” or “X Box” on Linux Mint. And Linux desktops are so easy to use now! Blows my mind that people tolerate these antics from Microsoft.
Only reason I still have windows is for Geforce now. Unfortunately the web browser version doesn’t support 1440p 120fps and it’s stuck using h.264 on Linux with AMD. The good thing is that once it’s setup I don’t really need to interact with Windows much since I literally open GFN and discord and that’s pretty much it.
Nothing turns me off of a product or service like the maker begging and trying to trick me into using their wares. Once they start doing that I will usually end up using technically inferior things to avoid them a lot of the time.
First of all fuck Bing and Microsoft. That’s it, comment complete.
Exactly I’m a tech guy and I don’t give a fuck how many other tech guys say “bing is really good now”, I’m never fucking using it.
Which hole do I fuck this corporation in?
That’s the spirit!
“wE VAlue prOviDING oUR CuStomERs With CHOice, So THerE IS An OPtIoN to DisMiss tHE NOTiFiCATiON” - Microsoft responding to Windows Latest regarding this
I don’t understand why anyone uses Windows.
Because it’s the most used system in the world and most programs run on Windows? Why wouldn’t the average user use it when it comes with the machine and it’s rather easy to set up.
Because some people don’t want to screw around with bash commands that look like Cthulhu incantations, and they can’t afford a Mac.
malware like popup ads
What the difference between a virus and window? A virus is well maintained by its creator.
Microsoft continues to make me thankful for switching to Linux. It is refreshing to be able to control your computer experience.
Haven’t seen this in the EU. Anyone knows if this is prevented here?
It might be blocked by the DMA, or at least, make Microsoft hesitate about it, since they’re meant to treat all browsers equally, which would also mean not advertising their browser in another browser.
If Apple injected Safari ads into Chrome on macOS…
They would block Chrome entirely if they could get away with it. macOS is so small compared to iOS which already did, so not worth the backlash.
Use Windows on the daily and still have never seen these at all, on multiple computers as well.
Generally I’d agree it’s shitty behaviour though.
cough install Linux
Laughs in Brave and Librewolf
librefox???
Sorry, my bad. LibreWolf.
