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Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

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Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#41

Post by hvgk »

tempfs wrote: post #8
watermelon0 wrote: post #6

Microsoft finally made a browser which renders websites as expected, is up-to-date regarding security and features, and (most) people actually don't have the need to replace it with anything else. I will never understand why they NEED to ruin this. It's baffling.

It is a for profit company, the reason is always profit.

It’s not profit. It’s monumentally stupid dick sucking promo hunting product managers. I’ve watched several products ruined by these people over the years. The engineers walk and they become the majority of opinion. Next thing you know your sleek well engineered product looks like a Mumbai train at rush hour.

It’s imperative you stop using a product when this happens so that the higher up stakeholders see the damage they do.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#42

Post by tomrod »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #31
AlexandrB wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly what they did: https://www.pcgamer.com/windows-11-context-menu-fix-right-cl... It's astounding that they would do this now, when monitor resolutions higher than 1080p are becoming increasingly common, rather than back in the Windows 98 800x600 CRT era.

>It's astounding that they would do this now, when monitor resolutions higher than 1080p are becoming increasingly common, rather than back in the Windows 98 800x600 CRT era. When you think like a developer/power user it astounding, but not when you think like some MS UX product manager who's chasing some promotion. They most likely justified to the higher-ups "Hey look, the new consumers are more accustomed to mobil…

As an industry, we should encourage power use of core products. Power use is adaptive, competent usage.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#43

Post by Mikeb85 »

FredPret wrote: post #18
Barrin92 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not sure how much profit a 2 trillion dollar company is supposed to generate from an interest free pay later browser bloatware feature Even if you're Scrooge McDuck that sounds not worth it

The winning play for them is to make genuinely the best browser, gain market share, and then start their shenanigans. Like Google did

What shenanigans do you think Google is pulling? There's nothing equivalent in Chrome...

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#44

Post by slimsag »

Barrin92 wrote: post #14
tempfs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a for profit company, the reason is always profit.

I'm honestly not sure how much profit a 2 trillion dollar company is supposed to generate from an interest free pay later browser bloatware feature Even if you're Scrooge McDuck that sounds not worth it

As another said, the goal to increase revenue is per team. The Edge team must likely find proof for how they will drive revenue in the future.

Suddenly you've got a full browser engineering team trying to figure out how to monetize a browser - tough sell. So they can't come up with anything, that's fine because a product manager is the owner of this task anyway. They propose a myriad of different ways to monetize Edge in the future:

* A "Edge Pro" subscription $10/mo where you get ad-blocking and no tracking (we'll need to block third-parties from offering this)

* A built in way to pay people online, we take a cut. Hey maybe we finance big purchases and that's a unique selling point?

* Premium apps/websites, web page authors can give access only to users with an Edge subscription and in return they get a cut of the profits.

They discuss these options as a team, and decide which one is least likely to cause backlash and is least difficult to "try out" and they land on what we're seeing here.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#45

Post by spiderice »

deadbunny wrote: post #25
charles_f wrote: post #22

I'm on the fence on this one. I don't like how the feature is pushed "in your face" like that. And at the same time, I trust Microsoft more than the average nowadays company to be respectful of privacy and my data - albeit the average is low and this is a low standard to achieve. If you don't make money out of selling your customer's data, then you need to find ways to actually collect money from them. How it's been…

Microsoft is still getting all your data.

Exactly. I don’t get how this is any better than what Google does. Google doesn’t sell your data either. They themselves consume your data, and use it to push ads in your face and track you across the web.

In other words, collecting insane amounts of data is also bad. Not just the selling of it.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#46

Post by prima-facie »

FredPret wrote: post #18
Barrin92 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm honestly not sure how much profit a 2 trillion dollar company is supposed to generate from an interest free pay later browser bloatware feature Even if you're Scrooge McDuck that sounds not worth it

The winning play for them is to make genuinely the best browser, gain market share, and then start their shenanigans. Like Google did

Today's Google is a saint compared to the nineties Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#47

Post by scottcodie »

AlexandrB wrote: post #15

> It allows any purchase between $35 and $1,000 made through Microsoft Edge to be split into four payments over a six-week period. > While the service is being promoted as ‘interest-free’, some were quick to point out that all transactions are subject to a “$4 flat fee”. $4 in fees on $1000 over 6 weeks is an effective APR of around 4% - pretty good. $4 in fees on $35 over 6 weeks is an outrageous APR of around 123%.…

The interest on $35 is only $4 since it is a flat rate not a reoccurring rate.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#48

Post by bearcobra »

I usually use the Canary build, and I'm a little confused based on the Insider blog post on how this works. It doesn't seem to just offer Zip as an option on any store based on my expeirence doing some Black Friday shopping today. If all it's doing is storing your credentails to an alternative payment system like it already allows you to store your credit card and prefilling it for retailers that offer this as an option, I can see the value of the feature. It'd be nice if they could do the same with PayPal or other services. But if the feature is now adding the option to use this service on websites that don't already offer Zip, I agree that is something that should not be enabled by default for all installs.

Re: Microsoft pushes ahead with controversial ‘buy now, pay later’ feature for Edge

#50

Post by LadyCailin »

jimhefferon wrote: post #37

It is a bad sign for a company when they start to focus on selling you finance stuff instead of focusing on what they nominally do. I remember how hard Sears pushed their credit card, for example.

I doubt this is Microsoft’s focus. I think this is some high level PM in the Edge division making this decision, and not getting any pushback from the right people. I doubt this is a sign of satya nadella’s roadmap, for instance.

Having said that, if this gets tons of negative media attention, and they still go ahead with it, then that is tacit approval, so.. we’ll see.

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