Windows 10 informs Chrome and Firefox users that Edge is ‘safer’ | Hacker News Reader

Windows 10 informs Chrome and Firefox users that Edge is ‘safer’

venturebeat.com

62 pointscpncrunch94 comments

Hypocrisy at its finest.

Few months ago I installed Windows 10 and decided to try Edge. Here's how Google responded to that:

1) Every time I went to google.com, I was presented with a notice that I should install Chrome and that I should set Google.com as my search engine

2) Google sent an email to my Gmail account telling me that I should install Chrome and use it instead.

3) Every time I went on Youtube.com, I was again pestered with notices that I should install Chrome.

And if you're a Firefox user, you've probably noticed "set your search engine to Google" every time you search on their site. But being an Edge user is 10x worse.

Google is THE WORST offender when it comes to pushing their own services.

EDIT: Here's the email that Google sent me... just found it: https://i.imgur.com/aTChPib.png

Wait, how is this hypocrisy? Google isn't the author of this article.

You could make the point that this is standard industry behavior, and Microsoft deciding to market their browser this way isn't anything new or noteworthy.

Well, perhaps people would not consider this as annoying if Microsoft advertised Edge for people who visit e.g. microsoft.com with another browser.

Having a monopolistic position on the desktop market and using that is a different ball game.

I don't know, doing stuff like sending someone an email to switch browsers seems just as intrusive.

The hypocrisy comes from the broader 'internet enthusiast' groupthink that says anything Edge or IE must be worse and that MS is horrible for doing this, but in the same breath they give far less criticism to Google for doing this with Chrome.

Whether you agree with that view or not, it's understandable that the OP feels there's an element of hypocrisy not from Google but from the internet community as to how they view these companies' efforts to spruik their products.

This story led me back to test edge after a long wait for them to fix a million things.

It seems they fixed a million things, and I got me a new default browser.

Not sure how long it will last.

But I've been on bing since the last time I got downvoted for complaining about google search. at least trying to copy the search link for http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/help doesn't result in: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

Edge will be a fine browser. It's fast and light. It's missing too many features to be the choice of power users but it's fine for regular users.

I use Linux so my real choices are Chromium and Firefox so I don't use Edge.

Vivaldi browser?

Although thats still bugged to i believe.

It's fun. I remember times, when Google Chrome was in beta and it was just a little more than webkit frame with tabs. Only distinguishing thing was speed, better security model and nice look. So I switched from Firefox to Chrome, because I didn't really need all that power. So now Edge has the same impression.

Actually I'm not sure if Google Chrome will stay leading browser for much more. I already use Safari instead of Chrome, because it's enough for my needs. If Edge would be good enough, why install Chrome?

I have found that, while I do encounter the occasional bug on Edge, the battery life / ram improvements more than make up for it on my windows environment, compared to ff/chrome. (If you're plugged in all day, or have 32 gb ram, then not likely a difference maker, but I have two 8gb laptops that combined get >12 battery hours of use / day so it makes a measurable difference).

I don't think you know what hypocrisy means. You're going to Google properties proactively. A user shouldn't have to put up with this crap on an OS they purchased.

How is this any different than Google whining at me that I should really make them my primary search engine in the browser because they are better than any alternative. There are literally billions of dollars at stake here, he who controls the gateway to the Internet, controls the universe (with apologies to F. Herbert).

Mostly that people have, for years, default-assumed Google was a public good, and Microsoft was an inherent evil. It's really not different at all, each company is utilizing their most prevalent platform to push their other product.

Probably because some people actually paid for the OS and still have to see this dumb shit.

We might not all pay Microsoft, but we all pay the costs

FTA: "We’re already used to Google’s search engine pushing Chrome, Yahoo linking to Firefox, and Bing recommending Edge. This year, Microsoft has upped the ante in the browser war with Windows 10."

One could make the argument that making the push from the OS is a different level than from the website.

I think it's a poor argument. The difference between OS, application, and web-level content is blurring more and more each year. We have web apps built into OSes, OSes built on top of web browsers, etc.

Google Search is more of a monopoly than Microsoft Windows.

There's less of a lock-in effect though. The only thing stopping you from using a different search engine is that you're more comfortable with Google, it provides better (catered to you) results, etc.. That is, competitive advantage.

When people leave Google Search (and they will, nothing lasts forever), they'll leave fast.

That may be true of Google search, but Gmail? Or Google Accou ts, for that matter? Almost certainly not. It's far easier to switch from Windows to a Mac or Chromebooks or even Linux than it is to switch from Google and its associated services.

Further, because of mobile, there are significantly greater number of Google users than there are Windows users.

I guess I am annoyed because as someone who uses Firefox as their primary browser, it always frustrated me that there was t more outrage at Google pushing people away from Firefox. But the moment MS started doing it, it became an outrage.

The account would be by far the hardest thing for me to walk away from. Email is federated and I can export the mail out of Gmail without too much hassle. I don't because I like the interface they provide (for now). Calendar, same deal. I'm there for the convenience, not because another calendar application wouldn't work for me.

Accounts would be the hard part because that's my phone login, and there's no standard account service I could migrate to that would give me a functional replacement.

The real thing keeping me on the Google platform is the convenience of having these things tied together. But that's not exactly a strong lock for me. I can and do hop services while sacrificing convenience. This might be a stronger hold on others but it's still not Microsoft's you-can't-do-work-in-any-organization level of hold between Office, Windows, Exchange, etc..

Google has lock in, it's just less obvious. Other search engines might not be as good because they don't have access to my search history* and email data for instance.

* This has actually been annoying for me lately. The results favor the things I've already clicked on which is often exactly not what I'm after.

Have you tried these search engines? These are proxy to Google's or other's results. You will not feel lock in with this for sure because it is bare bone.

https://www.startpage.com/

https://duckduckgo.com/

http://ixquick.com/

https://searx.me/

I'm not saying there's no lock-in, just that it's not as rigid or strong. Better search results (for you) is exactly the kind of reason you want to be using one search engine over another. If another search engine started providing better results, you'd be able to swap, and the only effect would be the psychological disorientation from the change interface (I struggle to use DuckDuckGo because my eyes scan the wrong part of the screen while trying to take in the results).

In the example you mentioned, I think that there actually is a difference.

1) You use Firefox, and Microsoft tells you that you should use IE instead. 2) You use Google Search, and Google tells you that you should use Google Search more often.

The first is similar to Google somehow placing notes in Bing Search that Google search is better, the second is similar to Microsoft telling IE users that IE is better than Firefox in [this metric].

I think 1) is ethically more questionable than 2).

> You use Google Search, and Google tells you that you should use Google Search more often.

Actually when you use google search, google tells you that you should use Chrome. The exact popup says:

    Google works better with Chrome
    Yes, get Chrome now

Same 'notice' with Gmail. Inbox refuses to load in Edge, not sure about Firefox or Opera

Works fine in Firefox.

"Google works better with Chrome" is the same as any other page's "this site designed for Netscape Navigator" button, a perfectly acceptable practice for the last couple decades. Your operating system popping up a warning that "Microsoft Edge is safer than Firefox" is an entirely different ballgame.

I would love to replace the Google Now on Android with something else. Till then I think I dont blame MS here.

"Tu quoque" is not a very strong argument, and this distracts from one problem by bringing up an unrelated one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Let's see how the EU Android trial will finish and hope for the best.

That's one of the main reasons I installed Cyanogenmod. To get rid of Google Now and finally remove tgat annoying text input from my desktop.

You can just disable Google Now in the Google settings, and install a different launcher like Nova Launcher, if you want to get rid of Google Now entirely. Modding your phone is not necessary for this.

Every single time I login into Gmail with Edge I am presented with a banner to switch to Chrome. I dismiss it, next time it's still there. I've seen this banner many many times. You would think that eventually they would give up.

If I login with Firefox, no such banner (I think because it would cause an uproar within the dev comunity).

I used to see it with Firefox every time.

The psychological burden of having to mentally validate my choice of browser every time I used Google was a factor made me switch away from Google, so maybe they've stoppped doing it now?

Google tries to insist that I should use Chrome on my old Surface RT. Only problem is, that isn't a product that exists...

So because Google sucks, that makes it okay for Microsoft to suck too? And because billions are at stake for these companies, it's somehow okay to screw over the public?

Sorry - I must have missed something - who exactly is getting screwed over here?

It's slightly different because Google has not had a court find that they abused their monopoly position to push their own browser and crush competition.

I am not suggesting that this current action violates the terms of Microsoft's settlement, only that there's relevant historical context here.

To be clear, I think both companies' whining is tacky and annoying.

Almost twenty years ago. And while Google hasn't yet been ruled against (outside of Russia), they're under investigation for "tying", the same anticompetitive practice Microsoft was found abusing, in almost every major first world nation.

And while Google bundles it's browser, like Microsoft did, it also bundles almost twenty applications now, which in most cases cannot be removed by the user.

So, yeah, twenty years ago, Microsoft did some bad things, but Google is doing much worse right now.

https://www.ft.com/content/3f290294-0627-11e6-9b51-0fb5e6570...

I agree that Google has not had a court find them an abusive monopolist, but I would add "yet." As someone who watched the Microsoft case start out in the tech press, then move to the mainstream press, and then finally become indictments the similarity to the process with Google is pretty interesting. If you follow the dollars, you can see how much money Google is paying for search traffic which squeezes out organic growth of competitors and were it not for Microsoft's warchest of cash probably would have killed off Bing before it became operationally profitable. And they use that search engine dominance to push the browser of their design which favors their products? That feels very much like Microsoft using their dominance in the OS space to push their browser which favored their products and technologies.

It's different because Edge is emphatically not more safe.

The difference here is that this might be actually "true" advertisement, Edge has atm better protection against social engineering attacks, and since MSFT moved to run it in an isolated VM which in effect acts as a sandbox it's also better protects the user against browser exploits.

I have been using Windows since 3.1. I've never been this annoyed. Windows 10 caused data loss (don't even get me started), privacy issues, constant nagging about their products and too many hours spent trying to change defaults (only to see them being reset seemingly at random).

It's an amazing, stable and usable (except, you know...) operating system which for no logical reason, tries to alienate its users.

If this is greed on Microsoft's part, then I'm really sad to see such great engineering used to do such evil. If this is a popular operating system adapting to its average user, I'm extremely sad about this deep incompetence of the average user.

Probably both.

Agreed. I would much rather pay for windows and have that be the product than it be free and I be the product.

Windows is still a paid product, it's not free. Windows 10 is merely a free software update for existing users of Windows.

While windows 10 now cost money, there is no question that the pricing model of this OS is vastly different from previous iterations. The presence of telemetry without a clear way to turn it off on most versions is a privacy invasion sold under the guise of performance enhancement and used for the purpose of profit.

> tries to alienate its users.

That's the unwanted or ignored outcome for their newest strategy.

MS shift is from developing and charging you $200 for greatly working operating system (and making this way $1B a year) to giving you the system practically free (hello Apple) and having you operate in one giant magnifying glass, where every move of your mouse and ever letter you type is send to MS to later digest and somewhat make decisions on what you want from life in terms of ability to advertise stuff back at you, whether from Bing that you use or in some way selling signals you send them to third parties so they serve you more "relevant" content making $1B plus a few more $Bs!

Conspiracy theory?? With fully working W10, from other than internet source load to your desktop photos of Ferraris, or simply name few photos "Ferrari". You will quickly see, within days how the ads being targeted to you on this computer are somewhat related to racing cars, luxury cars, etc.

I made up my mind already. Windows 7 with uninstalled telemetry crap is my last standing Windows. I just got new laptop and its got enough Windows 7 drivers to install clean copy. But moving forward I will have to be forced to go into Linux... at least glad my work doesn't require any sophisticated tools that work only on specific platform.

More and more typical tools work just about everywhere... I really appreciate Cordova and Electron in that regard, putting thoughts of bloat aside. Not much ties me to windows, and even .Net is more portable than ever.

I'm curious: is Edge actually more secure than Chrome?

Certainly with Chrome I've noticed a large number of malicious sites don't trigger any warnings from Chrome at all, so Chrome certainly has a lot more work to do.

At least going by the recent Pwn2Own competitions, the answer seems to be no. We'll see how they fare at the next ones.

The AppGuard virtualization thing or whatever they are calling it better come as an API for other apps soon as well, and I hope Microsoft won't just keep it for its own products. I could see serious anti-competitive issues with that (important OS feature being kept from competitors so Microsoft can aid its own products).

I also don't understand why they are making that feature part of "Windows Defender". It doesn't make any sense to do that, except for "brand unification". I think it should be kept separate.

AppGuard is interesting, but it's kind of "cheating". That's not to say it's a bad thing, better security is a win, but it might come with some significant downsides to battery and performance, and most likely will not be a "general purpose" security mechanism for the masses (at least right now they are only showing it off as something a corporate network admin can enable for some sites).

Then again, this is all speculation. They could prove me horribly wrong and wipe the damn floor with the competition!

AppGuard was disabled in the latest Pwn2Own AFAIK, so were a few other Windows security measures.

This is semi-humorous and semi-serious. If so few users actually use edge then hackers won't bother trying to target it. I suspect that most people use Chrome over Edge, and the use of Edge is very small. Could this be true?

Example story: http://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-usage-continues-to-r...

"It blocks 21% more socially engineered malware".

What does that even mean? That it blocks malware links from social engineering attacks? Seems like really confusing wording.

It sounds like a deliberately specific statistic for the purposes of inflating the statistic.

Like there's almost no malware or fishy apps for Windows Phone since nobody bothers targeting an ecosystem with 2% market share?

"What does that even mean?"

For example, that they actually compared the number of the malware sites they can block and counted more of them?

Probably a number made-up by their marketing department. Or very carefully cherry-picked.

Sounds good. It's not 30 because that would imply "a third" and it's not 10 which would just look low.

Instead it's the middle +1.

If I'd write a story about somebody who has to make up one, this would be it ;)

Hopefully Microsoft included this Edge dependent intrusive and unwanted advertising into this statistic. No?

It means it doesn't block the rest of 79% social engineered "tips" from Microsoft.

I wonder if the EU will investigate this as they did with IE and the European Union Microsoft competition case[0].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

I take issue primarily with the "safer" claim. Chrome employs the most security mitigations of any browser on the market.

An article from mid 2016 about grading software security like car security quantifies this nicely. Edge wasn't in the comparison, but I look forward to future research on that:

https://theintercept.com/2016/07/29/a-famed-hacker-is-gradin...

I think the warning that Chrome is battery drain is pretty fair, because it's absolutely terrible. Edge is pretty secure but I don't feel using Chrome or Firefox is unsafe. I'm more afraid about my privacy using Chrome. But you shouldn't have Windows 10 telling users about how important their privacy is to Microsoft, or should it? ;)

Operating systems shouldn't have ads inside them. They should serve one master, the user.

This is why this is quite different from Google advertising their products on their websites.

Huh? You could also make the case that a website should serve one master, the visitor.

I don't see the difference.

The perception is probably one of ownership - e.g. you think you own the "machine" you're using (and, by extension, its OS) but not the web site you're consuming.

From that viewpoint, you don't expect websites to be acting in "your" best interest, necessarily, since they're not "yours" - but you do expect "your" machine to doso, or at least not actively act against it.

Given how the Web (especially Google's services!) is used for pretty much everything nowadays, I don't see any meaningful difference between an operating system that displays ads and a website that displays ads. Care to elucidate?

The way things are isn't the way they have to be, or should be.

To get an understanding of where I'm coming from, try this http://www.loper-os.org/?p=284

These claims by MS are not false. Recently MS has equipped Edge with hardware-based container. This is a plus point in comparison to any other browser out there.

Source:

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/09/26/new-w...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/3124225/security/heres-how-mi...

https://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-aims-to-gets-tough-on-se...

http://www.itworldcanada.com/article/microsoft-touts-contain...

I wonder if chrome, if set to startup with windows, could show a similar looking "tip" when you launch IE or Edge.

https://www.cvedetails.com/product/32367/Microsoft-Edge.html...

http://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?v...

And before you jump about the RCE, MSFT has a very broad definition for what counts as code execution, most importantly they count any browser systemic XSS as RCE while Google classifies it as an XSS, same goes with any type of memory corruption MSFT classifies it as RCE while Google classifies it as DOS unless there is a fully proven POC.

Most of these vulnerabilities were also reported by MSFT and unlike Google MSFT submits CVE's for it's internally disclosed vulnerabilities while Google doesn't.

Can you please cite a source that states that Google does not submit CVE's for their own internally found vulnerabilities?

If Android is any indication Google certainly submits CVE's for their internally found vulnerabilities.

Yet another reasons to blocks automated updates on Windows. Lets see how Edge becomes 'safer' in that situation.

Downvotes are nice, but is there any other solution? I want just security updates without new extra functionality.

MS is unpredictable and I do not trust them. One day it might decide to put ads on wallpaper or something.

Sadly the only choice for that is the LTSB edition, not eligible for end-user purchase. Personally I justified its install with my machine being eligible for free 10 update and ending with less features (which I don't need). It receives a cumulative security update once per month and no junk.

It's a closed source OS, you really have two options:

1. Apply security updates, so you are not vulnerable to easily solvable security risks.

2. Don't use Windows 10.

Disabling automatic updates isn't really a viable solution, and I will convey downvotes to people who advocate it.

> Disabling automatic updates isn't really a viable solution, and I will convey downvotes to people who advocate it.

As they switch to a cumulative update model, will you wildly down-vote people who think that breaking their system with 1 update out of 10 is somehow reasonable ? Or that excluding that update but installing others would make more sense, then:

a) leaving everything out for that month,

b) having an unusable system.

Morons like you who accept and even enforce this kind of "my way of the highway" attitude to the others are the reason MS can get away with it.

If anyone audits the settings page under update they can find an option to defer upgrade. More people need to know about it.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/instantanswers/20a98a29-...

I find cumulative updates irritating, and I've complained about it loudly to anyone who will listen. Disabling automatic updates is STILL not a viable solution.

There is an option to defer upgrade in Windows 10 Pro.

> Some Windows 10 editions let you defer upgrades to your PC. When you defer upgrades, new Windows features won’t be downloaded or installed for several months. Deferring upgrades doesn’t affect security updates. Note that deferring upgrades will prevent you from getting the latest Windows features as soon as they’re available.

From:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/instantanswers/20a98a29-...

http://www.howtogeek.com/223083/what-does-“defer-upgrades”-i...

http://superuser.com/questions/923186/how-can-i-defer-update...

defering upgrades is not really an solution, unless 'several months' is like 5 years. I need control over my system.

Chrome has this thing called ublock though, that's enough not to take edge seriously

Please do not browse the web without uBlock Origin. It's like a condom for your browser.

> It's like a condom for your browser.

When you're penetrating the inter-tubes you should be protected.

Or uMatrix for anyone willing to have quite a bit more control and insight in what's going on at the expense of some convenience.

But... https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#microsoft-edge

"Early development version"

How would you compare it to Privacy Badger?

uBlock is designed to block ads. People like me won't use uBlock, because blocking ads is for jerks. (Go ahead, downvote it. It won't change my mind. Ad blocking destroys the open web, by putting content producers out of business. If you think it's just about obtrusive ads, check out Troy Hunt's recent experience: https://www.troyhunt.com/ad-blockers-are-part-of-the-problem...)

Privacy Badger's goal is to block tracking cookies and similar tools. Ads can, by obeying "do not track" instructions and similar, avoid being blocked by Privacy Badger, and so while some ads do end up getting caught in Privacy Badger, many do not. Privacy Badger is about protecting your privacy, not preventing advertising.

Note that I've contacted the EFF regarding Privacy Badger on Edge, and they said they were working on it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com