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Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

#251

Post by cowl »

kypro wrote: post #77

Wonder how much this regulation cost to draft, pass, and implement? Several million dollars? Any EU tax payers care to justify this insanity? I mean does any normal person even care about this? Eg, not people on HN with Macbook Pros – your average Windows user. At the end of the day Windows does loads of stuff I don't like. That's why I don't use Windows anymore. Like with most things the EU regulates this just isn't…

what kind of question is that? what user does not care that the OS is not respecting his choice of Browser? It greatly impacts the daily work. You are logged in into services in your browser of choice, you have autofills in your default browser, you have your preferences (language, cookie settings etc) set in your default browser and just because a link is opened from somewhere inside windows you find yourself in another browser where you are not logged in in your services, you don't have saved passwords, you don't have bookmarks or the extensions you use etc, so you have to copy the URL and paste into your browser.

Are you telling me you really don't care about this disruption that happens tens of times per day or just that you are not impacted and so noone else should care?

Re: Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

#252

Post by hardware2win »

Pannoniae wrote: post #183
jwells89 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last 5% is killer, because it’s just enough to make rebooting into Windows a pain in the rear, and much of it is the type of software that refuses to run in VMs due to things like anticheat.

The games with kernel anticheat are exactly the user-hostile games you wouldn't want to play anyway. (PUBG, Valorant, Fortnite, etc.) Normal, enjoyable games don't have kernel anticheat.

Bullshit as hell.

Cheaters are serious problem.

Re: Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

#253

Post by spuz »

RajBhai wrote: post #128

The other day I tried to install Chrome on a new laptop. (Insert joke about what Edge is good for.) However, Edge wasn't letting me actually download the Chrome installer. When I clicked the download button on the Chrome website, instead of any indication of its progress or completion, Edge instead displayed a pop-up that kept reassuring me that Edge was just as good. So it turns out, Edge isn't even good enough to f…

Interestingly those banners telling you Edge is just as good only appear when you Bing Chrome, not Firefox.

Re: Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

#254

Post by Jowsey »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #182
tmpX7dMeXU wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t “love Microsoft” as if it is a homogeneous entity whilst carving out sections of it for the purpose of attributing everything you’re against. Not only is this simply a sign that Microsoft is a bloated old tech company like a bunch of others, looking to make more money, but it is also consistent with a pattern of Microsoft’s behaviour over the last few decades.

I can appreciate the good utilities they build can I not? I love Visual Studio, and I love .NET which went way more open source than I thought it would, I for sure assumed it would be licensed under the MS-PL which is far less demanding than the GPL but not as a free as MIT, but no, they went straight for the MIT license. https://github.com/dotnet Every single repo is MIT licensed. I also appreciate VS Code, I know s…

I'm in the same boat; I want to love Microsoft, but it seems internally split into two very opposing groups with very different ways of thinking.

I swear by a lot of their developer tooling and open source work but abhor the Windows ecosystem

Re: Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

#255

Post by Spivak »

skummetmaelk wrote: post #223
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #208

> In the European Economic Area (EEA), Windows system components use the default browser to open links. That shows such complete and utter contempt for the wishes of their users. The user has actively selected a browser as the one they want to use by default, but windows only uses it in the EEA because they were forced to. As it will be used by EEA system components, there's presumably no technical/compatibility issu…

Let's see what the people always screaming about how the EU only cares about fining American tech companies who do nothing wrong will respond to this.

I think the stance is that while what the EU does is good for the consumer it's annoying as hell for American tech companies to be assessed billion dollar fines all the time. If the punishment was "comply in 180 days or we'll suspend your business charter" I think you'd see a lot more support.

Re: Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

#256

Post by cwales95 »

lnxg33k1 wrote: post #98
cwales95 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument doesn’t hold at all. The functionality is already there, so ask yourself, why are they depriving people outside of the EU this functionality when it’s already there?

Mine was a sarcastic joke, but to reply seriously to your questions, it's not about the effort to implement the functionality imho, it's more about missed revenue, Microsoft is using Edge as a way to monetize windows users traffic, so this is going to affect somehow their profits

Apologies, I totally missed the sarcasm. And I get what you mea. Personally sick of companies forcing things on users for the sake of profit.

Re: Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

#257

Post by bjackman »

prng2021 wrote: post #133

As an American, I'm more annoyed that our government isn't working to protect consumers than I am at Microsoft. Microsoft is acting predictably from a business perspective. This is just a repeat of the Internet Explorer debacle decades ago.

I think this is the smart way to see it. Tax avoidance is another example. Being angry with Amazon for not paying tax is like being angry at the sea for sinking your ship. The absolute best case scenario is that boycotting Amazon leads to Amazon paying marginaly more taxes, and every other company and billionaire on earth continues to avoid it.

Instead, it makes more sense to direct your energy towards the government that's letting them get away with it.

Same with monopolies; it's absolutely fundamental to their nature that we don't have any leverage over them as consumers. We can either cry impotently about Google and MS being bad guys or we can actually demand our governments do something about it. It's bizarre how often people choose the former!

Re: Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

#259

Post by beembeem »

xg15 wrote: post #240
pjerem wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's presumably no technical/compatibility issues that would stop the rest of the world using it to. There never were an technical issue in defining the default browser. It's something that worked on any OS since nearly 30 years, including Windows. It's 100% disrespect.

Not to mention that MS already went out of their way and spent considerable technical effort to not have the system apps respect the default browser setting - such as introducing a separate URL scheme for "edge-only" links, then later patching the scheme registry so that no other app could register itself as a handler for that scheme. It was never a technical issue, on the contrary.

Correct, merely a money issue. Incentives are in the wrong place here.

Re: Windows 11 system components use the default browser to open links in Europe

#260

Post by _cenw »

Pannoniae wrote: post #183
jwells89 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That last 5% is killer, because it’s just enough to make rebooting into Windows a pain in the rear, and much of it is the type of software that refuses to run in VMs due to things like anticheat.

The games with kernel anticheat are exactly the user-hostile games you wouldn't want to play anyway. (PUBG, Valorant, Fortnite, etc.) Normal, enjoyable games don't have kernel anticheat.

You're missing the point. These are all games you likely play because your peer group does.

Also, the experience on Wine/Proton isn't always the best. If you have high-end hardware, you probably want features that just don't work because of your GPU driver of implementation gaps in Wine/Proton.

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