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
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.
Because Linux has a terrible reputation and has no PR or advertising. People think Linux is overly complicated, has WAY too many distributions to choose from, and there’s absolutely no tech support besides what you can find geeks arguing about on a forum.
People think Linux is overly complicated, has WAY too many distributions to choose from, and there’s absolutely no tech support besides what you can find geeks arguing about on a forum.
As someone who has always used windows since troubleshooting doesn’t sound like a good time for me, you have perfectly hit the nail on the head
It’s the “I’m in this photo and I don’t like it” meme
Community support is a thing, it’s not the lack of support that’s to blame here - have you ever used Microsoft support? Linux support is much more accessible even.
A lot of the blame here, is Microsoft’s clever marketing campaign providing windows to educational institutions - with support - for far below cost, in the early days when pc adoption was on the rise.
Distribution saturation is a barrier to entry and focused support, and it is sometimes more complicated to install and repair. Sometimes it’s easier to repair, because windows is too busy trying to hide its internals from you.
It’s usually easier to support a remote IT-illiterate person using Linux, by comparison to windows, today.
e: I guess to be fair, if you factored in community support for windows, your options open up quite a lot. I was more thinking about my own interactions with their support. But enterprise support/problems are not the same as personal ones.
Yeah, I was talking about perception more than reality
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
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.
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)
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.
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.
Microsoft and the government:
Haven’t seen this in the EU. Anyone knows if this is prevented here?
I’ve seen it in the UK. Another Brexit bonus.
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.
I looked at the links in the source and they’re Windows popups, not Chrome injections. Shitty reporting from the verge.
The headline says “stuffing”. This archive 15 minutes before this post was made also says “stuffing”. Stop blaming The Verge for everything, they’ve moved on from that PC fiasco long ago.
Still incorrect, I believe. The pop ups are from Windows. They’re not doing anything to Chrome. Maybe that’s a pedantic technicality but it matters to me, and probably in a legal sense as well.
Microsoft has plenty of shitty practices to report on, including the browser pop ups in windows. There’s no need to lie for clicks. I dunno what the commotion about The Verge is you’re referring to, I’m just commenting on the headline.
They control your OS. Instead of just running the program you told it to, it’s checking what program you are running and then displaying a pop-up intended to make them more profit. Functionally, there isn’t really a difference when the OS can already do whatever injected code might want to do.
It’s like if your bank is inserting flyers for their investment services into any safe deposit boxes that include stock certificates and arguing about whether they are picking your lock to get in or just opening a door in the back that gives them access to each box.
Hmm, to me stuffing doesn’t sound like they’re changing Chrome, but I get your point.
It absolutely does?
Stuffing means cramming something into another thing.
Microsoft is stuffing pop-up ads into Google Chrome on Windows again
That’s a blatant lie. Nothing is getting injected/stuffed/whatever synonym-ed into Chrome. It’s a Windows popup.
It’s still a textbook abuse of dominant market position, and therefore illegal, so there’s no need for the article to lie and hand MS and their fans the opportunity to dismiss this reporting as being fake news, which it essentially is.
You expected better from the verge?
almost just as scummy though
I don’t disagree but damn, can we get some accurate reporting? No need to lie about how shitty Microsoft can be.
Yeah agreed, that title is literally a lie.
I gotta hand it to Apple for taking one for the team and soaking up all of the EU’s anti-trust efforts. Lets other American tech companies do egregious shit like this. /s
What makes you think Windows wasn’t hit by the DMA? Search it up
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.
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.
*Laughs in Firefox*
They’re doing this at the OS level, so Firefox can’t protect you from that, the issue is with Windows. They could do the same to Firefox, they just don’t bother.
Well I’m glad I switched to Linux, its only going to get worse.
Like, Christ — this is the kinda shit Microsoft has to do when they are the majority market share of desktop computing?
I hope more users will do the same
Good, let these two horrible browsers fill eachother with bloat until they both fall out.
Laughs in Brave and Librefox
librefox???
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.
Bing is not good now.
I jump search engines regularly trying to find my happy place, and though I never use Bing directly, I do use DDG (which in turn uses Bing), and I’d say about 50% of the time on DDG I have to !bang swap to other platforms because the results just aren’t helpful.
“Bing Is Not Good” 😆
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.
“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 😉
Because some people don’t want to screw around with bash commands that look like Cthulhu incantations, and they can’t afford a Mac.
Work, proprietary software runs shit on linux.
Easy Solution: Linux, Firefox/LibreWolf, DuckDuckGo
Fuck Microsoft!
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
This only applies to the mobile app They stopped doing this in 2022
Ah, in that case they are a highly trustworthy company whose products I will happily use in the future. They only allowed trackers with one of their privacy promising products and they stopped doing that after they got called out on it. Thank you for clarifying that they are one of the good ones.
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 ! 💯
>Brave, a company notorious for pushing weird NFT and Blockchain shit,
what nft shit?
SearX, SearXNG and 4get are also just proxies for multiple search engines
And DDG is just a proxy for Bing following that logic. I’d choose those three over DDG.
Kagi requires an account, and only allows 100 searches
Making a new account every 100 searches should be an option (albeit a somewhat tedious one), no?
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
Yeah, but if the alternatives aren’t better, why not just use DDG
Because those alternatives never explicitly whitelisted trackers from MS.
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.
Ublock Origin does not black “malicious Javascript” reliably. You need NoScript for that, and a opt-in approach. Block everything, unblock what you need, hope its not malicious.
I also run disabling addons for java script and flash as well as an overlay remover in Firefox
Flash should be possible to disable about:config as its legacy technology.
Could you explain the overlay remover?
Noscript is the only good addon for blocking javascript and allowing only some parts for specific origins.
Those pop up pages that prevent you from seeing the underlying page. It doesn’t happen as often anymore but it’s nice to have a way to remove them
uBO can be set up to block all JS by default, allowing you to manually whitelist each script. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Blocking-mode:-hard-mode
While I actually do that, you cannot seriously recommend it to anyone. Hardly any site works without Javascript nowadays.
Yes thats why you have the button to click on. I also need to allowlist basically every site I visit.
There should be some way to share such a list, to reduce the manual work.
I highly recommend manually enabling Javascript.
Sometimes it’s great. If people complain about paywalls, for example, and you didn’t even see the pop-up.
And sometimes it prevents sites from working, because paywalls that are avoidable by blocking the cover are deprecated and nowadays real solutions are used. This means such size will just break.
Ublock can also remove overlays, and I am sure it you add more lists they will be blocked by default.
Having less code run in your browser is always recommended.
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.
Microsoft convinced me to switch… to Linux
Nearing 6mo since I booted into my windows drive (been a daily user since 98)
