I really, really hate the Edge news feed, which is also built into the Windows 10 "News and Interests" taskbar widget, and there's no way to disable the news feed without also getting rid of the weather. It's so distracting.
One day I spent hours going through and blocking each individual news provider from the feed, hoping eventually I'd reach the bottom of the pile and there would be nothing left. It's never ending though.
Are there good third party weather widgets that can live on the taskbar?
Slightly off Topic, but I'm on Windows 10 Professional - latest version/updates and I've never been offered the News and Interests taskbar widget. Perhaps because Location is greyed out/disabled (though of course my desktop does not have a GPS...) but I suspect most people don't have location/GPS in their PC. Not that I miss it.
Even on my Legion 5 laptop, nothing, though my wife's Legion Y540 does have it. I suspect there's something funky that has it blocked on my Microsoft Account, but I can't imagine what.
location is taken from your internet service provider; an ISP can generate revenue by selling updates to their IP->location data. As far as I can tell this is traded commonly for revenue, plus govt security people get a place at the table with reviewing sensitive locations and filtering. This all happens without your knowledge.
I've never seen the notification integration for Edge/Chrome used for anything legitimate, only ever scams. Its not unusual for me to sit down on someones computer and get bombarded with tech support/antivirus scams.
And Chrome and Edge makes turning it off non-trivial. Its an AWFUL feature that seems to have been destined for misuse from day one.
When the Windows 11 beta showed up with the ads and distractions built in, I finally switched my last computer to a KDE Linux.
Love the Windows UI, but their commitment to putting ads in the OS means the OS is no longer the product. Their users are the product. We all know how this ends.
This feature however is a Google feature. They built it into Chrome and then from there it was made available in Microsoft Edge which runs on Chromium. So while MS made the GUI choices that made it difficult they were really just following the lead that Google set down in Chrome.
I ask myself the same question with regards to their Klarna partnership in Edge.
Are Microsoft really so hurt for cash they're willing to sacrifice their userbase for a few bucks? It seems crazy they'd stake their reputation like this, especially considering their corporate focus.
Are Microsoft really so hurt for cash they're willing to sacrifice their userbase for a few bucks?
Microsoft isn't, but somewhere within Microsoft there is probably team who's KPI for the year is "increase Edge ad revenue by $N million". This team is completely removed from the "make Edge a great browser" team.
Horrendous rates, non-clear fees, everything packed in a nice UI that leads clueless folks right into a trap.
It's a scam scheme for financially illiterate people IMO. The fact that it's added into a default browser in a most popular OS in the world adds insult to the injury.
Wait, I've used Klarna (not via Edge) and I've never paid any interest rates or fees. You just select Klarna as payment method and then you have 45 days to settle the bill.
I've even been overdue on a bill (I forgot about it) and they just sent me an email asking to pay, still no fees.
Of course if I had continued to neglect the bill, fees might have started kicking in at some point, but that's no different from any other postpaid service.
Their pay over time thing seems to be 0-29.99% which seems in line with credit cards?
I mean, sure, I guess making it easy for people who make bad financial choices isn't great... but it's also easy for people who are making good financial choices.
> they're willing to sacrifice their userbase for a few bucks
Is there even a single corporation on earth that won't eventually do this? All it takes for this to happen is some executive or manager deciding they want a bonus. Shareholders demand perpetual growth and by god they're gonna deliver it.
I'd say it should be illegal to profitably harm people like this but everybody knows these people always get away with everything anyway. They already break existing laws and get a slap on the wrist at best.
A few years ago I got really into the daily challenges in Windows 10 solitaire. It had leaderboards and of course, advertisements. I generally browse with an ad blocker so I was shocked by what I saw inside the unfiltered Windows app.
About 95% of the ads were Taboola / Outbrain garbage designed to lead senior citizens into scams. Usually the ads are framed like they're stories from a news site. Secrets your doctor doesn't want you to know, (D or R) politicians just signed a bill that will let you save money refinancing your mortgage, your computer might have virus!!!!!1!
All these ads are there to prey on vulnerable people. I don't know how Microsoft, Taboola, Outbrain, etc. get away with it.
Microsoft clearly cares about their brand, and cares _a lot_ about making MS Edge a success. They're evidently willing to spend about 10 billion dollars on it or so at least (given that their relentless pushing it is risking the EU slapping them down for this at the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and the risk of that happening is at least 10%. They've done it before, and since then the EU has become more annoyed at such practices, especially from USA companies), that's some easy math.
So, either Taboola's dump truck had more than 10 billion dollars in it, or whomever made this call is an idiot, and the management above them is asleep at the wheel (seems like occam's answer here), or I'm missing something.
I don't know. I get the feeling the no one at Microsoft cares about Microsoft. The Office team obviously cares deeply about Office, the Edge team about Edge, the XBox team about the Xbox, the Visual Studio team about Visual Studio and so on, but no one actually cares about Microsoft. No one is making decisions with a holistic view about what is good for the company as a whole.
The people who made this decision are only answerable to their team and hitting their targets. They don't care about the effects it has on other parts of the company, and don't have incentives to either.
Is that really so obvious? Granted, I just use Windows and no other Microsoft products, but the way they are treating Windows, it does not seem to me that they actually care about their brand, they care about maximizing profits, since they have been introducing more and more ads into their OS.
> Microsoft clearly cares about their brand, and cares _a lot_ about making MS Edge a success
I think there's a decent number of people working on Edge that want it to be a success, but Microsoft's "put more ads in it department" clearly gets the final say on all decisions.
I hope that it is a big dump truck. Because I only use their OS because work makes me, and I used to work at Microsoft along with MSFT stock contributing mightily to our financial security. Now when I see this shit pop up on my screen, it just makes me sad. And furthers my resolve to not use their stuff, even if my wife does still work there.
Thing is, despite some particularly bad UI decisions of late, the base OS seems pretty solid these days. But then they slap this annoying UI on the top of it, and now with malware. It's like the company, as an individual, just can't help itself. Scorpions, frogs, and a river crossing, or summat.
As a current Microsoft employee, I agree the Edge content screens don’t fit well with our values. Given the tiny revenue generated it seems like a bad investment. Raising it as a values issue in the positive “I thought Microsoft would be better than this” way seems likely to have the most effect if enough people do it.
This is about poor design and unethical decisions. MS can keep its values to itself.
> in the positive “I thought Microsoft would be better than this” way seems likely to have the most effect if enough people do it.
But how many is enough? And whom do I approach with this "positive" feedback so that the feedback is not routed to /dev/null? I'm pretty sure that MS receives a ton of feedback on this and similar topics and ignores it.
This is ridiculous. People hate how Edge is bloated nowadays and it’s a fact. You know it, we know it. But MS does nothing to fix that. Instead it pushes forward and adds new shit into the web browser.
* What's "Microsoft Rewards" in MS Edge? An award for those users who share the most amount of telemetry with MS?
* And a "Math solver" in a web browser?
* Games menu?
* FOUR unskippable screens to opt out of some useless features?
All this needs to be in a web browser?
Oh and I almost forgot. Please add support for Flash games into the web browser, add BonziBuddy and bring back my favourite AOL toolbar from IE. I'm missing all this (no).
MS's only job was to create a fast and clean Chromium-based web browser. It failed again.
MS has a lot of jobs, and it won’t ever be great at all of them at the same time. It does have some core values these days which are pretty strongly held (from my limited perspective at the fringe)
My suggestion is that when it fails at a job you care about, instead of dismissing the company as a whole you raise the gap between that particular bit of execution and the espoused values of the company.
That’s how I would raise it internally, because it respects the job people are doing while also suggesting a path for improvement.
I've been screaming about this for years. Maybe Malwarebytes will get them to listen. The fact that Microsoft delivers malware directly to people's default home screens for money is insane. And it's been happening since the original Edge launched.
And yes, in case you're curious, this is a Section 230 problem: As long as we grant platforms default immunity, there is no business risk to Microsoft to offset the profits gained. If the choice to include Taboola included the ability to be sued for damages, Microsoft would be more hesitant to do business with them.
Can we really not draw a distinction between an internet service provider passing messages between users, and a tech company receiving money from a content company to show their ads to users who didn't ask for them? The latter seems much more like an activity that should create a liability than the former.
That's the core problem with Section 230: It was passed by fools who didn't consider that profit enters into things. Advertising is, ultimately, just speech. So what happened was they passed a law worried about users posting offensive forum/blog comments, but it is used to protect companies that serve malicious ads (Google, Microsoft, being absolutely top offenders) for profit, but claim no responsibility because they didn't write the ads.
Any content served to a platform in exchange for any sort of revenue, the platform should be liable for the content of.
Note that there's no meaningful distinction between a "tech company" and an "internet service provider". Google operates Fi and Fiber, Comcast operates email and streaming video services, it's just service providers ultimately, and Section 230 is a giant gaping immunity hole for holding any of them responsible for business decisions they're well aware is malicious.
Of course we can - an ISP is paid for by the customer, whereas Microsoft in this case is paid by the advertiser. As soon as you are paid by the entity producing the content you are no longer a "dumb pipe", and are de-facto curating that content.
It’s crazy that a company like Microsoft can’t screen the ads they show properly. For this kind of ads, there must be a very high security standard. Maybe even sandbox/disable some features on the websites they link to.
I think people who use Windows don't even realize how the OS slowly get more distracting over time, making people used to all this.
I am always amazed on how passively and non annoyed people click away all these virus scanner and whatever popups popping up whatever you are doing.
Sure I may be biased, I get aggressions when YouTube forces a second ad. And my brain was turned upside down when I realized smart TVs introduced smart ads that may take 20% of the screen, whenever and people still don't seem to care.
I am so glad I live behind a pihole in a Linux only network, without 'normal' TV. I am sure I see at least 95% less ads than my average peers.
My switch to macOS coincided with Windows 8 starting to gain traction and most people still used 7 or even XP. My expectations are thus stuck where they were with Windows 7, which is the last version I used a my main OS.
Now imagine the horror every time I have to do something on modern Windows. There was a period when I worked on a cross-platform library, which I sometimes had to build and test on Windows. It took me quite much effort to get my Windows 10 VM into an annoyance-free configuration — that included uninstalling stuff like Microsoft Store and Edge, too. And that's me, a guy who knows what he's doing, most of the time.
There are two things that blow my mind: how much user-hostile most of mainstream software products have become, and how much people are willing to tolerate that. "That's just what computers are like."
And yes, I do know some people who still use Windows 7. And I also wonder if it's possible to run Windows 7 userspace on top of the Windows 10 kernel.
The last time I actually used Windows without just experimenting or building in a VM was also 7. For the very same reasons.
I was a Linux user as long as I understand computers, so doing the switch from Windows to MacOS for work gave me no relief either. Still a locked down OS with weird quirks. But something they really did right is building a distraction free working environment. Literally the one thing I want from a working computer.
> how much user-hostile most of mainstream software products have become, and how much people are willing to tolerate that
Yeah. Software isn't about us users anymore. It's about corporations, their needs, their profits, their rights, their platforms, their everything. We're just incidental. It's getting worse every year and it feels like there's no end in sight.
Stallman warned everyone about this and very few people cared. Free software exists to combat this but there's increasingly no point since the hardware itself is becoming hostile. What's the point of free software if we can't run it?
I just feel so hopeless about all this. Computers had such potential. To see them reduced to advertising appliances is just sad.
I used to love 7 back in the day but Windows 11 is a much more polished and far superior experience for entertainment, productivity and development with WSL2 than 7 was and better than 10 is.
Other than rose tinted nostalgia I can't imagine going back to a dated, insecure and inferior OS.
Last time I checked, Windows 11's UI is as ruined by the existence of touchscreens as it's ever been since 8. There are also ads in the taskbar. There are also all the Edge shenanigans. There are also updates that know better than you do what you want (that "sane configuration" for that Windows 10 VM actually included disabling all update-related services).
Windows 7 was the last properly-desktop version of Windows.
Does Apple also ruin the UI on macOS? Yes, absolutely. But they still don't do it that much, and they actually officially acknowledge that someone might have reasons to stay on an old version — they provide security updates for 2 additional years for all old versions. They also understand that people use computers to get jobs done and thus are not to be interrupted with sudden "let's cross this one out of your list" modals.
In an ideal world though, an OS doesn't need updating at all and has zero vulnerabilities. But I guess just hold the f up and stop with your endless feature creep and focus all your engineering on fixing your shit is too much to ask from the modern IT industry ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It really depends how you operate Windows. Almost every misbehavior has a way to turn it off, it's just a matter of finding it. Also, people need to use Firefox. With Firefox's tracking prevention, at this point my Pihole barely gets a workout. I reimplemented it recently on my network and it barely did anything, I am already controlling most of it at the PC or browser level.
I don't think that counts if you either need questionable third party tools (usually also coming with ads) or extensive knowledge of the operating system to switch of this 'misbehaviour'. My mum is not able to operate Windows without ad and in-os-spam issues.
Pi-Hole is only good for what it does. You have full control (and overview) what your network is requesting and can block everything you don't need. The way I use it it takes time to operate. Like blocking most of whatever IoT devices are doing works like charm. Or whatever my smartTV was sending every other hour for no reason.
It doesn't block ads that are served on the same domains as the content, obviously. (Youtube, Twitch, ...) Only the client can filter those.
I would, if Firefox would stop deteriorating. They are down to miniscule marketshare and continue redesigning their GUI, disabling features, preventing ad-blocking, launching pointless annoying services. Firefox of 2014 was a far better product than Firefox of 2022.
While I too mourn how Firefox has fared, it's still leaps and bounds better than using Chrome. Edge is maybe an acceptable alternative to Firefox, at least regarding tracking prevention, but you then have to deal with bull$&@? like what this post is about.
I have not had that experience, generally I don’t see ads thanks to adblockers, and the platform just works and supports almost 100% of all apps. It is also fast, and I’m sure Linux could be faster but I feel it’s lacking features and support for most games and software that I use (making it easy to see why it could run faster).
If anything pops up on my screen that I didn't explicitly consent to for that time (i.e. reminder, downtime notifications) I consider that an ad. Software asking for an update while I didn't explicitly open it = same shit.
In other words every distraction that tries to get my attention that I haven't asked for is something I consider very very annoying.
> I think people who use Windows don't even realize how the OS slowly get more distracting over time, making people used to all this.
I for one realize. But i am forced to use it by my employer. And the fact that MS seems to be the only platform where CAD/CAE programs run, does not help either.
I don't know what corporate IT is doing but they seem not to be bothered.
> I think people who use Windows don't even realize how the OS slowly get more distracting over time, making people used to all this. I am always amazed on how passively and non annoyed people click away all these virus scanner and whatever popups popping up whatever you are doing.
Personally I'm more amazed that there are people this actually happens to.
I run Windows 11. I've also got an M1 Air and a Linux box so am not blind to the alternatives or particularly biased. And I have to say that's not my experience at all.
I'll admit that upon installation I removed the start menu apps Microsoft seemed to think I'd want, and I run uBlock Origin in the browser. Other than it's an out-of-the-box install of 11 Pro and I see no adverts, no irritating cross-selling, nothing getting in my way. Windows just works and lets me get on with things.
What is it people do that gets their machines into such a state? Or am I just more careful than most without even realising? Either way as long you're sensible Windows is totally fine.
I think people care a lot more than we think. They just assume they have no choice in the matter. I install uBlock Origin on every browser I get my hands on and every single time people start commenting on how the web has inexplicably improved. "Everything is so much nicer now, I can't even explain why." The approval is universal and people are a lot happier when they don't have to mentally process advertiser noise.
A better world without advertising is perfectly possible. People have simply been conditioned to accept this reality. There needs to be new ways of thinking about advertising. I consider it a form of violence, mind rape.
These issues are why I’ve paid the pain to migrate myself onto Linux. I’m still not half as productive as I am on my company windows machine but I see far fewer adds day to day
Did you ever use Windows Phone? Personally I consider it the high water mark of phone UIs and my Nokia Lumia is still one of my favourite phones I've owned. Unfortunately the app ecosystem was never there, greatly limiting what you could actually do with the phone.
Still expecting [not really but...] that Microsoft releases a new Windows Phone with Android app support via WSL2.
Not that I'd buy it -- but would bring competition to Google.
MS should at least update its documentation for admins (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-...) and give a clear instruction on how to disable all the "extra features" and choose safe settings. If I use GPO to disable four first run "splash screens", Edge uses unwanted default settings. I want to disable splash screens AND configure safe defaults. Docs mention "some of these other policies", but the list seems to be incomplete.
In the windows phone 8 days News was actually a better app than the alternatives. It’s really sad to see what they’ve done to Windows the last few years
> It’s really sad to see what they’ve done to Windows the last few years
At work, the Windows computer takes over 5 seconds to launch the calculator app. Once upon a time, the calculator appeared on screen pretty much instantly. On decades older hardware. It's now faster to just type whatever I want to calculate into a search engine.
One day I spent hours going through and blocking each individual news provider from the feed, hoping eventually I'd reach the bottom of the pile and there would be nothing left. It's never ending though.
Are there good third party weather widgets that can live on the taskbar?