Microsoft Is Offering Rewards Points for Using Edge Instead of Google Chrome (pcmag.com) 56
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft employs various schemes to stop Edge users from switching to Chrome, and the latest includes financial rewards for sticking with the browser. As spotted by Windows Latest, select users who search on Bing within Microsoft Edge for a link to download Google Chrome are now shown an offer to stay with the browser. It gives users 1,300 Microsoft Rewards points, which can be redeemed for gift cards (examples include Amazon, Roblox, and Spotify) or donated to one of over 2 million nonprofits.
It's come to this... (Score:5, Interesting)
They will literally *pay you* to use their browser.
It's extremely funny right at the moment, as Slashdot's sidebar that shows historical stories showed one from ... 2004, I want to say, that read "Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE" or something similar.
It would be amusing if Microsoft wasn't doing so much infuriating crap with Windows.
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And your dog will play with you because you have a pork chop tied around your neck.
Microsoft Walgreens(tm) (Score:2)
Fuck every last bit of that.
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>"I simply refuse to use an OS that leans so hard on trying to modify my behavior."
Me too. Which is one of many reasons all my machines run Linux.
And I refuse to use a browser that allows Google more control over the way the web works, works against open standards, and creates a seriously dangerous monoculture. Which is why all my machines use Firefox.
And I don't want Google having complete control over search either. Which is why all my searching is done with non-Google search pages.
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I agree with everything in your post except for that. My search engine is startpage.com, which acts as a proxy between me and Google so that it has no way of knowing who made which query.
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>"I agree with everything in your post except for that. My search engine is startpage.com, which acts as a proxy between me and Google so that it has no way of knowing who made which query."
I use both DDG and StartPage. StartPage is a non-Google search page, even though it returns Google results. So you do actually agree with everything :)
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Indeed, that's why I ditched MacOS and Ubuntu. No, I don't want iCloud, no I don't want LibreOffice, stop bothering me with mandatory blocking updates, and I can decide for myself how secure my system or password scheme is, I don't need some OSS advocate from Iowa to decide that for me.
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I don't know why they can't just put more money into making a browser that isn't crap. This would seem to be easier than trying to pay people to use a garbage browser.
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One simple thing that M$ can do is to stop with all the crap questions they ask for every first start of Edge and at the end throw up MSN.
All I want is a blank browser screen without a lot of crap that just creates information overload.
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Re: It's come to this... (Score:2)
Actually, In the ancient past at one point... after Facebook had billions, and was the new juggernaut, and before or just around the release of the iPhone... I guess 2006-ish?... Apple stock was down and FB had cash on hand. I said FB should buy Apple and give it to anyone who used Facebook
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It would be amusing if Microsoft wasn't doing so much infuriating crap with Windows.
Have a look at the numerous times Azure got hacked and the utterly ridiculous security failures by Microsoft in there. Then their clueless bumbling with Windows suddenly looks like a minor issue.
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It's kind of amazing how badly Microsoft has been failing for decades.
They were in a pretty strong position with Internet Explorer and MSN as the start page. But IE was crap and didn't get much development. MSN was so bad everyone moved to Yahoo! and then Google. They let their lead slip away, and have been trying to bribe people or trick them into coming back ever since.
No matter what they offer, even with Edge being a half decent browser, they manage to screw it up.
1300 Microsoft Reward Points? (Score:4, Interesting)
One time? And the minimum number of points you can redeem is how many tens of thousands?
I did sort of RTFA, but I wasn't about to click even more links to possibly fail to find out.
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A quick search seems to suggest that the cash equivalent of 1300 points is around $0.80, so they're not exactly breaking the bank with their offer.
There are things you can redeem for 1300 but it's mostly charitable donations and entries into sweepstakes until you hit ~1800 points.
In the UK it costs 1,860 points to get a £1.25 gift card for the Microsoft Store. That is not a typo; you can redeem a £1.25 gift card. Perfect Christmas gift for the the people in your life that don't matter to you.
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6500 points for a $5 walmart gift card, for example.
That has to be illegal, somehow! (Score:4)
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The bad thing with Edge is that on every new machine I'll have to spend time to answer a huge number of questions and waste time to ensure that the next time I start the browser get a blank page as start page.
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You can (kinda) do stuff with those points (Score:2)
I use Bing, and I get Microsoft Rewards points for that. Each month, the points I earn are automatically donated to the Wikimedia Foundation. Just sayin'.
Re: You can (kinda) do stuff with those points (Score:3)
I trust m$ sharing money... ahem 'points' ... to the Wikimedia Foundation as much as Uber sharing tips money with the drivers.
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Oh, sure they do! They give Wikimedia $1 for every million people who switch to Edge!
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Yeah, no doubt. But for all the good they do me, right?
I don't even know why they care (Score:3, Interesting)
They already direct you to their products and services in many other ways. They have bing search built right into the OS, start menu, task bar. Why do they care what browser you use to access their stuff? They should be happy not to have to update and maintain a browser and focus their resources on other things.
SAD, verysad (Score:4, Funny)
If you have to bribe....err...I mean 'reward' people to use your product....your product probably isn't good.
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And Edge isn't a bad product. It's as good as any chromium browser. I prefer it. The 365 account integration is conveni
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I use Firefox as my second (reserve) browser, and the primary is not Chrome based either.
Rewards Points are pretty useless to me anyway, I use Windows 10 (made the mistake of "upgrading" from Windows 7) maybe once a month on average, and not for browsing or email.
This smells (Score:2)
This smells of desperation.
Re: This smells (Score:2)
Because it's a desperate move.
Can I ... (Score:3)
Wait! Never mind. It turns out that I can buy an infinite number of Linux installs with them.
Shameless plug for Kagi (Score:2)
...I pay $10/month for my search results, and I'd rather pay Kagi $10/month than use Edge and Bing....and the worst part, is that I don't find Bing results to be *that* bad...certainly, no worse than Google results at this stage...but it's because Edge and Bing are just an *INCESSANT ASSAULT ON WHAT I WANT TO DO*.
"I'm searching for [thing]"
"Here are thirteen things that match pretty well with [thing] - ten based on our heuristics, three sponsored results that most closely match."
"Thanks!"
That's all I want a
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Google Maps building details is frequently out-of-date. Bing Maps frequently puts buildings on the wrong street.
Well (Score:2)
I only use Chrome on my android phone. On the PC I use Firefox related browsers, apart from watching Formula 1 where I have to use Edge, but I don't use it for anything else.
Bribery (Score:2)
It's probably not legal, but M$ has always thought they were above the law.
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>"It's probably not legal, but M$ has always thought they were above the law."
They *are* essentially above the law. As evidenced by an entire history in which nothing is really ever done to slap down their monopolistic anti-competitive behavior.
Google isn't far behind.
Suddenly... (Score:2)
The advertising side must be slowing down as more and more popped install ad blockers.
And cash... (Score:2)
Google respond (Score:2)
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Why should Google complain? They are free to do the same thing with Chrome if they want to; e.g. Play Store points for using Chrome.
To "de-license the Edge clone" they would have to change the license of Chromium from the BSD 3-Clause License, and I would bet all my money that they are not going to do that. There are - I'm guessing - hundreds of downstream projects that would be affected by a license change.
I wonder what they'd pay... (Score:1)
...to get my security-conscious workplace to allow use of Edge for browsing sites outside our own Intranet.
That's the kind of tacit endorsement I'd need to see before even considering it for personal use.
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Given that Edge is Chromium-based, I don't see what the benefit is in disallowing Edge on the Internet but allowing Chrome. Technically, it seems like a distinction without a difference. Functionally, you are just replacing one data siphon company with another. From a security perspective, if a vulnerability affects Chrome it will almost certainly affect Edge too since they share most of their code.
We only allow Edge here, which was largely my decision. Not because I love Edge - I certainly don't use it at
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When I worked for a company that restricted what browsers could be installed, we blocked everything except Edge. We were on 365, so the browser with a tight integration was preferable.
Free? (Score:1)
If they pay you, you will pay later guaranteed (Score:2)
The way offers are presented to consumers these days reminds me of a scene from the movie Beetlejuice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwV90NvsmAI
The consumer is the fly.
Why does Microsoft care? (Score:2)
Why does Microsoft care what browser you use? Why do they even make a web browser? Revised: Why do they bother taking someone else's open-source browser and rebranding it with their logo?
Eh. They could have had it better. (Score:2)
Some years ago, I was willing to *pay* to use MS software. And did, in fact. Despite them. Despite Microsoft trying its best, at every corner, to be the most obnoxious, annoying, backward clowns of software development. I paid, and kept using windows and a handful of things. But they kept pulling away, again, again, and again.
Now they'd have to pay me real money for even thinking about it. And a lot of it.
Had they just tried to make useful, non intrusive OS, with stable, non borked software around it, combi
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When selling user data gets them more money than selling Windows licences... they'll shit the bed.
Why would anybody use a bad tool? (Score:2)
I mean, it is so bad that they now try to bribe people. That is the clearest admission of failure they could give without scrapping the whole mess...
Imagine that! Acquiring free MS points (Score:2)
Be still my heart. After years of annoying, intrusive pop-ups begging me to switch (what? for free?), now they're offering points, exchangeable for free gifts to entice me. You devils! My resistance is weakening, weakening, weakening...
I didn't get the offer. (Score:2)
Which makes me wonder if maybe the offer never existed to begin with.