Microsoft has already made it more difficult to switch default browsers in Windows 11, and now the company is going a step further by blocking apps like EdgeDeflector. Third-party apps like EdgeDeflector and even Firefox have offered workarounds to Microsoft forcing people to use Edge in Start menu search results, even if their default browser is not Edge.
Microsoft has been forcing Windows 10 and Windows 11 users into Edge and its Bing search engine in the Start menu search results, and now with the new Widgets panel in Windows 11. It’s a frustrating part of Windows that doesn’t respect your default browser choice. EdgeDeflector lets you bypass these restrictions, and open Start menu search results in your default browser of choice.
Clearly, this should be illegal.
Thom Holwerda,
Man this has so many similarities to their previous antitrust case. Same sort of tactics, they were guilty and warned to stop blocking competition, however they were never really punished for it. Imposing restrictions that remove consumer choice is terrible for the free market regardless of who’s doing it. They know the government is unlikely to prosecute, and if they do it’s unlikely to be consequential. For monopolistic corporations, antitrust is a mere cost of doing business. When fines are paltry compared to the value of inflicting damage to completion, they’re worth every penny.
It’s doubtful congress will get out of it’s logjam any time soon, but if representatives don’t fix this soon, then the impact on competition will be permanent. The amount in penalties years into the future (if any at all) will never be enough to rebuild the competition.
Alfman,
I think that ship has already sailed.
If one looks at the timeline, the antitrust action against Microsoft started when they were not “protected”, i.e.: were not spending lobbying money in Washington, and pretty much ended when they ramped up.
I could not find any peer reviewed research on this so far, but I believe there is an inverse correlation between companies spending money on government, and government doing adverse actions on them. However on this matter, I would put the blame on the government, since they seem to somehow demand this.
Look at the largest lobbiers: pharmaceuticals, healthcare, insurance, tech, utilities, business associations.
https://www.investopedia.com/investing/which-industry-spends-most-lobbying-antm-so/
Let’s take the simplest one. Utilities are literally monopolies in certain regions, but they are almost never shown any scrutiny. Only after several years of huge fires costing billions of dollars and significant loss of life, PG&E in California received what could be considered a “slip on the wrist”.
Yet, banning lobbying is not the solution: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/043015/why-lobbying-legal-and-important-us.asp . I would expect the onus responsibility to be on the politicians, and transitively on the public. If you know your senator “being the pocket of xyz”, and still vote for them, then you are also voting to support xyz, and cannot complain if they were to receive special treatment.
Anyway, this turned out to be a long rant. Sorry.
sukru,
Yeah, maybe you’re right. At the very least I’d like to see the competitive provisions of the last antitrust case to be reapplied to today’s microsoft, but we may not even get that. Turning down lobbying money is political suicide 🙁
I think that warrants a broader discussion. Conceptually lobbying allows the wealthy to buy disproportionate representation, and this seems to be observable in practice too. It’s been twisted into the 1st amendment, but the primary doctrine for Democracy is that people vote, and not their money. Still, I admit it’s hard to argue people shouldn’t be allowed to spend their money how they want to. But I need to emphasize the word “people”.
Corporations themselves shouldn’t be represented in a government that’s supposed to exist for the people. The founders saw to it that the church and state needed to be separate so that the church would not abuse it’s power. It was a good call, but if they had a crystal ball they would have seen how corporations ultimately replace churches as the world’s dominant entities. I think the founders would have surely separated corporations and state under the same premise. Corporations should not be allowed to lobby at all. Congress shouldn’t have any responsibility to corporate interests whatsoever. Corporations should benefit (or not) only to the extent that it benefits constituents. Corporations should be seen as a means of serving the constituents and never an authority in and of themselves. Of course corporations play an important logistical role but thanks to the asymmetry of wealth our system of governmental representation has been flipped upside down. Corporate interests are being prioritized over living people, which is pretty abhorrent.
No worries.
I am extremely worried about our democracy and how fragile it is right now. The nouveau GOP in particular seems to be determined to push authoritarianism using every trick in the book. Because of all the gimmicks in the US election process, the party with the moral high ground playing fair is at a substantial disadvantage come election day, even if they have a majority of votes.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/16/politics/redistricting-what-matters/index.html
“The founders saw to it that the church and state needed to be separate so that the church would not abuse it’s power.”
That’s a bit of a misnomer. Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist church about a “wall of separation between church and state.” It was about keeping government out of the church, not necessarily vice versa. The early Congress *prayed* inside the very same building where they legislated.
So, I’m not sure the founders would have had a problem with corporations lobbying. Though, I do imagine they would want reasonable limits in order to ensure separation of powers and diffusing power broadly among all people.
FWIW, I look at it from this vantage point… We all have varying world views that inform our decisions. We all deem certain actions as good and others as bad. We want the good ones to remain and the bad ones minimized or removed. To varying degrees, we want the govt. able to step in to ensure this. In order for the govt. to do so, we need a way to inform them of our desires & push to see our desires fulfilled. That goes for religion, business, etc.
I get the impression that the founders would want all to have a say, including individuals and groups (whether a church, business, civic group, etc). But, they wouldn’t want bribes to be able to sway the decision. SO, perhaps the solution is not about eliminating the power of one group entirely to petition the govt. Rather, the decision is in ensuring full transparency such that any congress person who receives money/possessions beyond a certain threshold, must report it in a timely fashion or face consequences sufficient to deter the behavior.
cacheline,
I agree that transparency is key. Banning all lobbying will have lots of collateral damage, not to mention making *illegal* lobbying the norm, further hurting any hopes of public knowledge on issues.
Yet, sites like OpenSecrets did not become mainstream. Nor the media would list donors of politicians, unless it is from the *opposition*. Given our information bubbles, one is very unlikely to see how the candidates *they are supposed to support* are funded.
Take EV tax credits for example. *Everyone* is talking about one senator’s objection, but there is little discourse on who is supporting it and why: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/11/electric-vehicle-companies-increased-their-lobbying-spending-infrastructure-spending/ (just an example, don’t need to go into specifics).
While I agree with you that it’s scummy of Microsoft. This time, Google has control of the web rather than Microsoft’s IE dominance of the past. it’s hard to argue Microsoft has a monopoly position now in browsers. Even edge is chromium.
It’s still Microsoft (ab)using their dominant position on the desktop OS market to bolster an unrelated product. This is anticompetitive behavior.
Say about Google what you will, but they built a better mousetrap and people flocked to it. Microsoft feels threatened so they dusted off their old “cutting off the oxygen supply” strategy. If it will work this time like the previous time remains to be seen.
cacheline,
That’s valid. I think it kind of went both ways. It was also about people’s right not to be compelled into supporting religions they disagree with.
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/885/establishment-clause-separation-of-church-and-state
I think a lot of the governmental problems we have today stem from groups exploiting the legal gaps that the founders hadn’t anticipated. Unlike the founders, we have the benefit of hindsight, but since we don’t have the luxury of writing a constitution the value of this hindsight is kind of lost. We can’t really blame them because they didn’t know what would happen and they did their best to anticipate it. I think if they had better knowledge of the abusers and the abuses that are happening today, we would be better protected from them in the constitution.
I agree reporting is important, but I don’t think it’s close to sufficient and many types of campaign contributions are already public. IMHO the bigger problem is that the revolving door and lobbying efforts enable corporations to buy their way into law. Honestly I think this kind of corruption is irreparable now. It’s here, and it’s not going away.
From the outset I don’t think there’s a compelling reason to give corporations representation over real people. We should recognize that corporations sometimes do serve public interests, but when they don’t the governments should be under no obligation or pressure to serve them. The public needs ought to have explicit priority over corporate ones. If a corporation manages to convince the people to agree with a corporate policy, then that’s good, the policy can be win-win. But if corporations use their influence and power to do an end run around the people in order to get their policies through, that’s a win-lose. To me that’s inherently detrimental to any democracy who’s existence is supposed to be for the people.
Are we fighting here for Firefox ? Practically ? I understand deeper consequences but isn’t the war already lost (for now) ?
Firefox is just one of those blocked. Edge Deflector was redirecting links to the system’s default web browser so it could be Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Vivaldi or whatever browser you prefer.
It may well be lost, sadly. I enjoy Edge on macOS, if for nothing else than the touch bar allows me to scroll through videos / ads faster. But, I do have concerns about a single codebase (Chromium) dictating the entirety of how we view websites globally. I do wish/hope that more rendering engines come along to change that before long.
levi,
Not just firefox, there are many browsers forks that different people choose. MS edge itself is a fork of chromium, which has liberal licensing allowing proprietary software to be built from it. MS edge is an effectively proprietary browser. So in my opinion restricting browsers on windows is not merely an assault to firefox, but an assault to open source browsers in general including the FOSS chromium browser on which Edge was based.
A couple people have suggested the war may already be lost. I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a single solid line that we’ll know when we cross it. It’s more like a gradual yet persistent erosion of owner control and rights over time.
The answer to this is to simply to not use Windows. I haven’t used Windows at home since 2000. I realize that sometimes you have no choice such as at work where you’re given a Windows laptop to use. I was fortunate enough to be a Linux OS developer and therefore all of my work was done on a Linux desktop machine and even all of my reports were done in Open Office and transfereed to my WIndows laptop for meetings. If you have the option of not using Windows then take it. I don’t buy the argument that Linux is too difficult to use. If anything, I found the Windows desktop menuing system a hindrance. I like to program microcontollers such as STM32s, ESP32, Arduinos, etc; no drivers need to be installed on Linux Mint. If you just keep feeding the beast, you have to live with it. Yes, there are programs that only run on Windows. Why is that?
One more step in the “Xbox-ification” of Windows.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my Xbox, and it is a nice machine to play games on. However I want my desktop to be customizable. The issue is we might have passed the tipping point where Windows OS is no longer more valuable than your personal data.
We can list many other examples, like gaming going “free to play”, TVs receiving online ads, WhatsApp dropping yearly fee, where the main “product” loses to the “pivot”.
People search the web through the start menu?
The first thing I block when installing linux mint. So annoying.
I have no idea how to stop that on W10. So untransparant.
Well, everyone who searches in the start menu searches the web. There’s no option to turn it off.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/16/enterprise_software_solutions_tells_school/
Being “cross-platform” with .NET doesn’t protect you from sharks exploiting loopholes in the law and giving backhanders to corrupt politicians on the make. I mention this as Microsoft utterly destroying companies who were among X-Box launch title developers and Canonical getting into bed with Microsoft’s WSL seems a bit odd. We all know sharp practice and collusion when we see it.
I’ve made my opinions known on these kinds of things in the past and reading about Microsoft forcing Edge on users is something I read about the other week. It’s just one more abuse in a pattern of abuse I saw which justifies a divorce from Microsoft. I’m now all in on Linux preferring cross platform applications, and open standards.
Isn’t this the same as what Apple is doing for years on iOS?
(And I strongly abject to)
“Thou shall not use anything but Safari as a web browser!”
Only this is more public?
Only that people using Macs actually choose it and its closed ecosystem. Most Windows users didn’t (ie. at work). Hence the harm is stronger. Microsoft choose to enforce Windows everywhere, now they should face the consequences. Especially if they are tightening the screw on us.
Kochise,
IMHO platforms impeding the owner’s ability to use alternative software is bad for competition regardless of the hardware one buys. This is exactly the kind of abuse that should be stopped from dominant corporations.
I think very few people that buy an Apple product realise that lot’s of options possible on other platforms aren’t available on Apple and even less people know that every browser on iOS is just a skinned version of the underperforming and castrated web browser called Safari. What you don’t know, you don’t miss..
Like people under dictatorship never heard about democracy? It’s not just a myth, people should try to switch for a change someday.
Wondercool,
This type of control over competitors is what all of them are going for. The challenge is doing it in a way they won’t get punished. They want these kinds of anti-competitive restrictions to become the new norm such that both governments and consumers will just accept it. Anti-competitive restrictions are the norm for IOS owners and the government hasn’t put a stop to it, microsoft wants the same for windows :-/
It’s been testing the waters with app restricted editions of windows for years and now they must feel it’s a good time to pick up their game by pushing restrictions to more owners. Sure there will be outrage, but conceivably the day may come when this is the status quo for most consumers, their choices having been made by the monopolists.
Serf the internet.
Boom-tish.
Unfortunately, you are right. Like forced telemetry and Teams being forced upon us. Or the rise of monthly subscriptions.
It’s a pity my company still thinks Microsoft is a necessity
IT IS ILLEGAL. From MS’s previous anti-trust trial, we know that OS and browser markets are considered to be separate. Microsoft previously lost because of a very simple principle: using a monopoly in one market to promote a monopoly in another market is anti-trust. Microsoft still has a monopoly on the desktop OS market. They are behaving anti-competitively by changing the behavior of that product to promote a new monopoly in another market. No new laws need to be passed. We just need a justice department that is willing to wake up and enforce the ones we already have.
@jasutton yup, exactly that. A lot of people have been thinking MS has changed for the better… but they keep doing shady shit. Also, web browsers should 100% be open source as open as the web.
@jasutton
One small note is the way the US and Europe define a monopoly is different. In practice the US tends to go by a strict definition whereas Europe tends more to define it as abuse of market position. (I’m using the phrase “in practice” to shorten a lot of discussion about definitions and the law as written.) However, this is changing. There have been signs from US regulators they have seen the success the EU has had with prosecutions and the popularity of some policies and have started to have a shift of emphasis and greater willingness to pursue similar policy.
Not every American is an idiot and there is a sizable constituency in the US for more European style policies such as universal healthcare, better consumer rights, and so on.
Microsoft is trying hard to completely disgust people and to force them to switch to Linux.
Microsoft knows Linux cannot really compete but for geek guys. Otherwise the switch would already have been done long ago.
Just when you think Microsoft has taken a step forward, they tell you hold their beer and they take two steps back. What is this the 90s? It is like force feeding IE into people’s throat again and now I read that they have some buy now pay later option built into Edge (insider testing).