Microsoft is Once Again Asking Chrome Users To Try Bing Through Unblockable Pop-ups (engadget.com) 163
Microsoft has been pushing Bing pop-up ads in Chrome on Windows 10 and 11. The new ad once again encourages Chrome users (in bold lettering) to use Bing instead of Google search. From a report: "Chat with GPT-4 for free on Chrome! Get hundreds of daily chat turns with Bing Al," the ad reads. If you click "Yes," the pop-up will install the "Bing Search" Chrome extension while making Microsoft's search engine the default.
If you click "Yes" on the ad to switch to Bing, a Chrome pop-up will appear, asking you to confirm that you want to change the browser's default search engine. "Did you mean to change your search provider?" the pop-up asks. "The âMicrosoft Bing Search for Chrome' extension changed search to use bing.com,'" Chrome's warning states. Directly beneath that alert, seemingly in anticipation of Chrome's pop-up, another Windows notification warns, "Wait -- don't change it back! If you do, you'll turn off Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome and lose access to Bing Al with GPT-4 and DALL-E 3. Select Keep it to stay with Microsoft Bing."
If you click "Yes" on the ad to switch to Bing, a Chrome pop-up will appear, asking you to confirm that you want to change the browser's default search engine. "Did you mean to change your search provider?" the pop-up asks. "The âMicrosoft Bing Search for Chrome' extension changed search to use bing.com,'" Chrome's warning states. Directly beneath that alert, seemingly in anticipation of Chrome's pop-up, another Windows notification warns, "Wait -- don't change it back! If you do, you'll turn off Microsoft Bing Search for Chrome and lose access to Bing Al with GPT-4 and DALL-E 3. Select Keep it to stay with Microsoft Bing."
I see that Microsoft hasn't really changed .... (Score:5, Informative)
Strange: the same attitude that Microsoft displayed during the browser wars (yes: I'm that old) seems to pervade again in the AI-age?
I guess leopards don't really change their spots.
Re:I see that Microsoft hasn't really changed .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Same attitude that Google had that led to Chrome winning browser wars. This isn't about a [company], this is about all companies. This is why regulation of anti-competitive behavior is important for health of a capitalist system.
Re:I see that Microsoft hasn't really changed .... (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Same attitude that Google had that led to Chrome winning browser wars"
They haven't won yet, not as long as Firefox exists. But almost.
But yes, lest we forget the *YEARS* of constantly being spammed by any Google service/site about "Try Chrome" "Use Chrome" "Works best in Chrome" blah blah blah. No thanks. No to all chrom* is what works best for openness, privacy, flexibility, control, customization, standards, and performance.
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Firefox has become Chrome-lite. They killed their own extensions program and introduced their slightly modified version of much more limited Chrome's webextensions in its stead for example.
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If you don't turn it off, Firefox's telemetry is only marginally less gnarly. That's why you don't use Firefox or Chrome. You use your favourite fork of Firefox and Chromium.
I personally like Waterfox and Vivaldi, but your mileage will vary depending on your needs.
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>"Firefox has become Chrome-lite."
Perhaps more Chrome-*like* but certainly not Chrome-lite. Firefox has more features and control, not less.
>"They killed their own extensions program and introduced their slightly modified version of much more limited Chrome's webextensions in its stead for example."
1) From my understanding, the current Firefox extensions model is not more limited than Chrome's.
2) Mozilla had no choice at the time, they had to change the model so it would be possible to make the brows
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There are still people who believe in all the Quantum PR? You'd think we'd be past that nonsense, and yet here we are. Literal regurgitation of all of the old marketing talking points.
Modern Firefox is Chrome-lite in all but name. And yes, Mozilla's PR team shat all these excuses that you list. My personal favourite is "improved security via castrating add-ons that actually improve security". That one, Mozilla's PR team ended up so ashamed of, it was quietly dropped from mainstream talking points after back
Re: I see that Microsoft hasn't really changed ... (Score:2)
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Same attitude that Google had that led to Chrome winning browser wars.
Google "won" (or dominated might be better?) the browser wars because they had the best browser. (Well, at least at first, and for a long time. It's not clear if this is still the case, however.)
As far as attitudes go, Google controls Android like Microsoft controls Windows, so ... does Android complain when you install Firefox?
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It never has when I've installed it. And the same goes for when I make Firefox my default browser and when I disable Chrome.
Re:I see that Microsoft hasn't really changed .... (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Google "won" (or dominated might be better?) the browser wars because they had the best browser. (Well, at least at first, and for a long time. It's not clear if this is still the case, however.)"
Yes and no.
Chrome was a better browser in SOME aspects for several years when it first came out. Primarily, it was better as far as speed. And yes, that certainly mattered. But it was *NOT* a better UI or the in the ability to customize. I believe most would argue it was considerably worse. It was also not better from a stability or privacy aspect, but not worse either at that time. As for security, that is hard to say.
As time went on, Firefox caught up by using their new engine. So that chrom* advantage was lost. But Mozilla also cloned much of the UI of Chrome and its cusomizability, thus, reducing those advantages it had. And ticked off many users with the necessary (but temporary) breakage of many addons. BUT they improved privacy more, while Chrome slipped more. And the addon issue was resolved pretty quickly (although we didn't gain back anywhere near as much UI control, but there is still userChrome ability). I won't comment on the other non-Firefox non-chrom* browsers at the time.
What we can learn from what happened is that the drive for competition is what created Chrome. And the actual competition is what greatly pushed the massive performance improvement of Firefox, to the point it is just as fast and perhaps better with resources. And Firefox is easily just as secure and even more privacy-oriented.
But the competition with Google also destroyed all other multiplarform browsers in the process (and yes, converting to a chromium base is being destroyed). So here we are now with only two [actual] choices: chrom* and Firefox. It isn't good or healthy. And we know that Google has a perverse incentive to violate privacy with Chrome, and all chrom* browsers give Google various power over the entire web ecosphere, which is also not good.
I think the better choice is obvious for now- Firefox. But we *NEED* another healthy engine like Firefox's, something open and independent (unlike chromium) and DIFFERENT to prevent lock-in, standards hijacking, stagnation, privacy erosion, and seriously bad security issues.
Two engines are not enough.
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I think you are either intentionally or inadvertantly missing the fact that Firefox is worst right now on the most accessible and ubiquitous computers in the world - mobile phones.
The reason I am not using Firefox is because I want cross-device sync and works badly on Android. I don't mean bad as a browser per se - I mean bad as in speed, battery efficiency. So I use Chrome there and that means I use it on all my other devices as well.
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I'll never understand people who tolerate web without add-ons and then complain about "speed and efficiency". What, you think processing all the ads and tracking is free?
Reminder: Mobile Chrome does not support add-ons. Mobile Firefox does.
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There are other ways of blockind ads and tracking - DNS-based blocking etc.
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Of course. Just run something like blokada 4. That's even more energy consuming though.
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I hear ya. I don't browse much on my phone, however. Mozilla does have some work to do on mobile Firefox.
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Actually it won because it behaved just like microsoft. Pop ups, ads, all saying "Chrome is the best browser try it". That doesn't make it the best browser. That's just the marketing message.
So I have all the same objections to microsoft doing this that I had to google doing this. And I suspect that edge will slowly continue to replace chrome in laptop and desktop world as it has been for a while. Because I see a lot of people who aren't in IT, and when it comes to their newer personal laptops with win11, t
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Same attitude that Google had that led to Chrome winning browser wars. This isn't about a [company], this is about all companies. This is why regulation of anti-competitive behavior is important for health of a capitalist system.
Funny; because freedom to engage in Competitive Behavior is what Defines a Capitalist System.
At least a healthy one. . .
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>"Funny; because freedom to engage in Competitive Behavior is what Defines a Capitalist System. At least a healthy one. . ."
Until it becomes UN-competitive due to market domination through monopolistic behavior. Something we see frequently with many of the huge tech giants.
But yes, competition is what makes everything work well- it drives innovation, lowers prices, makes things efficient, responds quickly to change, responds to user/customer demands, etc.
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>"Funny; because freedom to engage in Competitive Behavior is what Defines a Capitalist System. At least a healthy one. . ."
Until it becomes UN-competitive due to market domination through monopolistic behavior. Something we see frequently with many of the huge tech giants.
But yes, competition is what makes everything work well- it drives innovation, lowers prices, makes things efficient, responds quickly to change, responds to user/customer demands, etc.
Consumers still have the final Vote. But only in a Free Market. What places like the EU are aiming-for is anything but.
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Correct. Problem is that in nature, any living being that outcompetes all of its competition no longer needs to be competitive. And so it stops being as competitive as it was when it needed to get to that supreme position.
Capitalism is simply an expression of this natural law, codified to be constrained to economic sphere rather than full spectrum of competition as it was before it was invented. As a result, we need to make sure that it stays at the competitive middle stage with regulation, so it never ente
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Capitalism is simply an expression of this natural law, codified to be constrained to economic sphere rather than full spectrum of competition as it was before it was invented. As a result, we need to make sure that it stays at the competitive middle stage with regulation, so it never enters the end game.
Except that, attempting to apply granular control to a feedback-stabilized system such as a Competitive Marketplace through the blunt-force-trauma of Ridiculous, All-Or-Nothing Government Regulation, is like attempting to Consciously maintain a regular Respiration Rate. The harder you try, the more erratic your breathing becomes.
Especially when your approach to "finesse" is ill-considered and knee-jerk Legislation that attempts to fix the whole "problem" all at once; which is what the EU does all the time.
A
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The other end of this coin is that all organisations trend toward maximum corruption over time.
This is a very real problem, and US competition watchdogs letting Microsoft, Google et al get away with a lot of very obvious monopolizing is a good example of this problem.
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This is why regulation of anti-competitive behavior is important for health of a capitalist system.
I do not know how to properly name our current economic system, but it is definitely NOT Capitalist. It uses some of the underlying concepts of Capitalism, but there is no significant competition anymore. You can tell by closely examining all of the products on offer in any given segment. You can also tell by examining the manufacturing plants where the only difference between any given products is that they get different labels and different containers after exiting the exact same manufacturing line.
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>The brands are all owned by the same subset of businesses.
You're either utterly confused about ownership structures of this much value being represented, or you're confusing minority ownership with operations. I'm not sure which. Regardless they are not manufactured in the same facilities, and there are more differences than label and unit size.
Ironically your claims are true for planned economies. So socialist and communist systems. That is where ownership is indeed common and totally controlling, resu
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Android never complains if you try to use a different browser. So clearly your example is wrong. Google don't have the same attitude or do the same things.
Maybe you were thinking of Apple? Or just going senile.
Neither macOS nor iOS complain at all if you change from Safari to an inferior Search Engine/Browser Combo like Chrome or Bing. Personally, I use a Safari/DDG Combination.
Re: I see that Microsoft hasn't really changed ... (Score:3)
On iOS, you don't even get a choice of "browser" (rendering engine), you only get a choice of "skin".
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On iOS, you don't even get a choice of "browser" (rendering engine), you only get a choice of "skin".
True (unless you live in EU); but you do get a choice of Search Engine. That's why I pointed out that use DDG for that function.
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I can't really blame them. I mean, I do blame them, but at the same time I understand why they are acting that way. Immoral? Heck yea. Aimed at tech-savvy people? Hell no.
Re: I see that Microsoft hasn't really changed ... (Score:2)
Yeah yeah, we expected this (Score:5, Funny)
This sort of thing has been happening forever, what I want to see though, is you having to argue with one of these AI chat bots as your only interface to the settings. With luck we'll have google's Gemini, or whatever it's called this week, eventually step in and automate handling Copilot's protests on your behalf, at that point I guess we'll really see which language model really is superior.
Bing (Score:5, Funny)
Bing
Is
Not
Google
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I use Bing, via a filter called DuckDuckGo. The search quality is somewhat inferior to Google's but adequate unless I'm searching for something really obscure / arcane, Google's search history for me is loaded with obscure and arcane terms.
Re:Bing (Score:5, Informative)
I use DuckDuckGo the vast majority of the time. If I do want to see what Google has, I will go to startpage.com, which is Google without the spyware. I *never* use google.com for searching, there is just no valid reason, and hasn't been for years. I removed it completely as a search option from Firefox settings, as well, so it is never accidentally triggered. On phone, I also use non-Google search.
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Thanks! :D
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Isn't this the same argument as Biden is not Trump? The only real difference is the GPT AI is clearly superior to Biden's cognitive abilities, though Trump's stupidness makes him nearly as undesirable.
For certain topics, ChatGPT is clearly superior to everyone's cognitive abilities.
Did you have a point?
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Yes I did, Biden is in massive cognitive decline. Seems like you may be as well, since you didn't get it, and it was pretty easy to figure out what I was saying, unless you kiss Brandon's feet.
I assume you either didn't watch The President's State of the Union last week; or you are from another Planet, and thus have never experienced normal human behavior. Nothing else would explain your nonsensical statements.
Ah, there it is! The use of the attempted and juvenile "Brandon" moniker tells the whole world what we need to know about your lack of cognitive abilities.
Begone, MAGAT!
If this were a date (Score:5, Funny)
Those non-consensual, forcible popups would be criminal.
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In England, if you can show that such an ad impairs the system, it violates the Computer Misuse Act, which prohibits non-consensual use of computer services to harm users.
You'd have to show actual harm, but this is Microsoft. Actual harm is quite possible. Being the OS owner would not exempt Microsoft from the provisions of the Act.
The same will apply to their forcible upgrades.
The relevant part is section 3. Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act makes it illegal to perform an unauthorised act with intent to
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Literally all of it. Microsoft, just like all other dataminers searches everything about you, head to toe. So they can serve you better ads and get better compensation from ad buyers.
Bing is decent (Score:3, Insightful)
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Rewards? Meaning if you use it you get the reward of not being constantly being told to use it?
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I got a laptop for free out of them...
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This may be true in the USA and/or Canada. But here in the South-Americas, Bing isn't great at the best of times. Google however is dropping the ball lately, so the choice is becoming here a choice between 2 evils.
Microsoft does most of the nagging lately in their OS and browser, behavior that I detest. So I keep using Google more out of spite than anything else. Via FireFox of course.
I prefer Unpopable Block-ups (Score:3)
Google search (Score:3)
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Google retains best image search. Bing is actually pretty good for general searches, though it needs to learn about your interests first. This is why DDG searches are generally noticeably worse, and Bing is just on the edge of being "good enough" for me, so DDG makes is go below that mark. Google scholar still reigns as the best search engine for scientific papers. You can also strip a lot of google tracking by using startpage for normal google, but just like with DDG and Bing you'll lose personalized searc
Re:Google search (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine being triggered so hard by "woke" that you advocate looking at Russian propaganda. Bravo, well done!
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Imagine being triggered by the warning about "Russian propaganda" so much, that you think that merely warning against it is advocating looking at it.
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What makes you think I want personalized search? In order for them to give me that, they have to learn a lot of things about them that I consider none of their business, and it doesn't stop them from feeding ads for things that are completely inappropriate, such as sending a bachelor ads for feminine hygiene products.
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>What makes you think I want personalized search?
Fact that you're human, and so your brain is heavily optimized to only spend energy thinking about things relevant to you and dismiss overwhelming majority of things in your environment that aren't. Personalized search tries to do that for search.
That's why I suggested Startpage and DDG as replacement for Google and Bing respectively for those who's preferences are so out of line with what they actually need, that they don't find any advantage in personali
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Not even close. Best Russian propaganda is on Telegram.
OS as a product vs. as a service (Score:4, Interesting)
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So... they did what everyone else was already doing. What a surprise.
Re:OS as a product vs. as a service (Score:5, Insightful)
>"So... they did what everyone else was already doing. What a surprise."
Not everyone.
Install Linux and Firefox. If you have no specific and absolute need for some MS-Windows program, then it will make life a hell of a lot nicer in so many ways. And the challenges aren't that much different from other systems. Linux systems have decent equivalents for so much stuff, and many other things are web-based now so it matters so much less. Yeah, I know, "gaming." Believe it or not, many of us don't care or use a console.
But yeah, Google spammed people for YEARS about "Use Chrome" on all their sites. Tit for tat. Although in their case, they didn't require manual dismissing of some dialog.
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Indeed. You can even use a Chromium browser on Linux. I use Vivaldi (use that as well where I still need to use Windows), and it works nicely and does not get on my nerves.
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>"Indeed. You can even use a Chromium browser on Linux."
Yep. Choice is good. But I wouldn't choose to do that. Better to avoid all chrom* and block as much of Google's influence and control as possible. Right now that means using Firefox (or perhaps Palemoon).
>"I use Vivaldi (use that as well where I still need to use Windows), and it works nicely and does not get on my nerves."
ANYTHING is better for us all than using Chrome, but Vivaldi is still "chrom*" so it is only a little better. By using i
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I am not into virtue-signalling by my browser-choice. If that works for you, fine. I just think it is stupid, like all virtue-signalling.
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>"I am not into virtue-signalling by my browser-choice."
It isn't virtue-signaling. You are LITERALLY signaling to every web server/system you visit what you are using. And that signal does matter. You might now care, but it is happening, nonetheless.
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It is virtue-signalling. Don't flatter yourself. Incidentally, you have no clue what browser-identification I have set. what. you did not know that the browser string can be changed? Such a surprise.
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That is because people who use Linux are much more harder to be turned into the product. I was talking about "as a service" change for commercial products.
After all, why go for 5% difficult-to-turn customers when you have 95% easy-to-turn customers available?
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I've never seen the described behavior in MacOS, iOS or its derivatives, Linux, BSD, or Solaris and the other old-school unixes.
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Best to exclude iOS in that list.... Apple worked very hard to force people to use its own engine. And that battle isn't over. So they didn't have to nag people to use their browser, they just forced the issue by making all other browser actually Safari. Kinda the same way that all multiplatform browsers that are not Firefox/Palemoon are Chrom*.
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And SeaMonkey is Chrome?
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>"And SeaMonkey is Chrome?"
No, but it is pretty obscure. It lacks the Quantum components, so I expect it will be far slower than Firefox and chrom*. But I have no direct experience with it.
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I don't notice it being slower then latest Firefox, though I'd guess benchmarks might say otherwise, try to stay away from Chrome.
It is more like Palemoon in not supporting all the modern web, with the latest problem being Cloudflare acting like a gatekeeper with its captchas.
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>"I don't notice it being slower then latest Firefox, though I'd guess benchmarks might say otherwise"
There is a certainly amount of "doesn't matter", for sure. Machines are just so fast now that sometimes it doesn't equate to real-world results. But there was a massive improvement in Firefox when it jumped to Quantum around ver 58 I think it was. Quite noticeable, even when discounting that it could use multi-core.
Of course, as CPUs and browsers get faster, the web sites themselves just get so much C
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MacOS and iOS are something else. There is not much to fight over in those walled gardens.
Linux-based desktop users are too smart, too stubborn or both to be worth fighting over. Also too few. The very low ROI makes them unworthy.
Linux user sees a pop-up like that, they will get mad and shun my product.
Windows users will say "oooh, shiny" and happily click the pop-up.
It's a matter of going for the low hanging fruit. I am sure that if Linux users would be easy to turn, there would have been pop-ups there too
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This is apparently what happens when MS shifted their product strategy from "Windows as a product" to "Windows as a service".
Sorry but no. Microsoft was doing this long before Windows as a service was even something they understood could exist. Additionally Google do the same thing if you browse the internet in any browser other than the one God, I mean Pichai, intended, giving you a popup telling you how much better Google would work with Google's own browser. And they aren't selling an OS.
If you want the anti-OS-as-a-service to be taken seriously you have to stop claiming it is responsible for unrelated actions.
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MS is making most of its money in the cloud these days. Not that they know how to run a cloud (they got fully compromised last year), but too many people think the cloud will finally make their IT not suck. Newsflash: It wills till suck, but now it is more expensive and your own people can do less to fis problems.
Personally, I think MS will crappify Windows enough in the next 10 years that it will die.
Chrome too... (Score:2)
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One of the reasons I have stopped doing that. Google accounts are not really useful anyways.
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But then I hardly ever need to access it.
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I haven't been nagged by Google to use Chrome in a long time.
Sure-fire way to block their "unblockable" popups. (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a 100% success rate way of blocking Microsoft's "unblockable" pop-ups that advertise their own stuff: don't use their stuff.
It is perfectly possible to use a modern computer, and not deal with Microsoft's user-surly marketing bullshit.
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Unfortunately, modern laptops come with ad-ware (Windows 11) pre-installed. Customers (of laptops) have to pay to avoid the Microsoft monopoly: Most don't value their time and sanity that much. (Also, corporations need a reason to spend more money and time teaching everyone to use non-Microsoft software.) Of course, people refusing to fight the monopoly only empowers the monopoly more. (eg. Windows linked to an account, same as Android & built-in nagging to 'buy' MS products and software from frie
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>"Unfortunately, modern laptops come with ad-ware (Windows 11) pre-installed."
Not all. But most, yes. Was looking at an HP a few days ago online that actually had the choice to include "FreeDOS" instead and knocked $150 off the actual price of the system. That is probably the exception, for sure.
>"Customers (of laptops) have to pay to avoid the Microsoft monopoly"
Not money. They just have to pay the MS tax if given no option. And, yep, and that REALLY SUCKS and should have been stopped eons ago.
A deeper question about AI's utility (Score:5, Interesting)
I, for one, see no such bounty at the end of the illusory AI rainbow. I stopped using Google as my default engine years ago in favor of less intrusive engines like DuckDuckGo, Ecosia and others like them. They are less intrusive, and the results are as good as Google results for 90% of my queries. For the other 10% I will try Google and Bing. Google Scholar is fantastic for academic queries. I don't see the need for AI. Wolfram Alpha is more useful than the AI engines because its results are more in context, and it's much faster.
Bing's mixed AI interface is so awful, I have banished it forever. I found it to be annoying and distracting, not useful in any way.
What is everybody else's experience with AI search engines? Do you find them more useful than traditional search engines? Why and why not?
Re:A deeper question about AI's utility (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. "Sunk cost panic" I would call it. Comes from mindlessly and enthusiastically jumping on an expensive hype. While current "AI" is not completely useless, it cannot do what most people think. It is essentially a somewhat better search engine. As soon as it needs to do the tiniest amount of thinking, it completely fails and may give you fantastic fabrications on top of that.
As to usefulness, for anything math, Wolfram Alpha (essentially a souped-up computer-algebra system) is the way to go. For anything else, DuckDuckGo does it just fine for me (I have mostly stopped trying Google when DDG finds nothing useful, because Geoogle usually finds nothing useful as well in that case) and if it takes a minute or two more than ChatGPT, so what. Allows me to actually think while searching. DDG does not hallucinate and I get pages where some actually intelligent person has written something.
As to ChatGPT incapabilities: Here is what I have seen and are not impressed with: Complete failure on a simple, very basic firewall configuration exercise (by some of my students), complete failure on one of my Application Security exams on anything that needed a minimal amount of insight. It would have passed that exam, but so would have DuckDuckGo or Google with some minimal work and the students are passing these just on paper with no Internet or materials. I found one thing that the MS LLM can help you do, namely lie about how crappy things are. Just ask it "How do I say [bad thing] in a positive way". It did refuse "mass murder" though, so not useful for Putin or Boeing PR.
Essentially, LLMs can be a bit better (but not groundbreaking) search on some things and a nice party-trick, but they are not in any way a revolution. I can see specially trained LLMs eventually reducing the need for low-level no-decision-power bureaucrats or nil wit customer support drastically, and that could remove a lot of jobs. But for anybody that needs to think in their job, LLMs are not a danger and not any real help either.
Given that LLMs are an end-result of about 70 years of research and that their problems cannot really be fixed in any known way (maybe in another 50 years...), I would say most of all that money being thrown at them is essentially gone.
The thing I get from this (Score:2)
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Indeed. I use Vivaldi, which is essentially chromium without the crap. Pretty good by now. I think they make their money by the pre-configured search engine, but one simple configuration at first start and you are rid of that.
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When the "Unblockable Pop-up" comes from the operating system, I suspect there is only so much they can do.
Dear Microsoft (Score:2)
Dear Microsoft,
"No."
Signed, Everyone
There is a fix for that (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Microsoft is Once Again Asking Chrome Users To Try Bing Through Unblockable Pop-ups"
Step 1: Install Linux
Step 2: Install/use Firefox/Ublock
Might not be appropriate for everyone, but I bet it would for a whole lot. And if Step 1 isn't possible, at least do Step 2.
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Since Microsoft and Google are doing their dirty deeds through Edge/Chrome, Firefox plus uBlock, stops most of the bullying. (Microsoft can still access the entire Windows OS and Windows 11 doesn't have a no-spyware edition.) Chrome is on most computers because corporations (either the employer or 'the cloud') don't want the user to have privacy. But for personal use, there is rarely an excuse for avoiding Firefox. (Some web-sites have so much spyware, that Firefox doesn't work.)
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>"Chrome is on most computers because corporations (either the employer or 'the cloud') don't want the user to have privacy. But for personal use, there is rarely an excuse for avoiding Firefox."
At my work, all the users have always used Firefox (and Netscape before that). But I might have a lot more than a little to do with that :)
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>"That has been my solution for years now. However with my last desktop it was a hassle to get past the TPM crap."
Why did you/do you have TPM on? You would only need that if you want to have MS-Windows around (I certainly don't) or want to lock down your Linux boot, which I don't find useful.
Stop it (Score:2)
Unless you want me to deliberately add bing.com to the block list on the pihole.
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Good idea. I think I will do that now. Wanted to upgrade to domain-blocking (so far I block only IPs) anyways.
This shit is why (Score:2)
You can pry Firefox from my cold dead hands slumped over a GNU/Linux desktop.
Good old MicroShit (Score:2)
Well, I guess we should thank them for occasionally reminding us that they are scum.
Firefox (Score:2)
Not having these in Firefox on Win11.
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>"Not having these in Firefox on Win11."
YET
If Firefox regains more market, you can bet you probably will.
If you care about online privacy, control, flexibility, security, performance, cost, and freedom, it is REALLY difficult to compete with Linux + Firefox + Ublock.
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I mean, okay. But facts are facts, right now the problem is Chrome, and if you really want to block the popups, there will probably be a way to do it soon if there isn't one already.
Besides Chrome sucks. If this pushes more people to use Firefox (for a time) then great, thanks MS.
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It's windows, so it's their screen real estate. You're just a user. And while first dose is free, you have to pay for the rest.
In part with your eyeballs.
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