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Comment by blacksmith_tb | Hacker News Reader

I'd argue MS has become less diabolical as they've become more competent (VS Code, e.g.). Google is more complex, they are certainly looking more diabolical, not quite sure about the more competent - I suppose it only matters that they are competent enough to be dangerous.

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That's because Microsoft's incentives are more aligned with ours. Better, more user-centric software == better outcomes for users, more Microsoft usage/profits.

Google, on the other hand, is fundamentally incentivized to sell ads, which requires collecting data. The more data they collect, the more money they make. As the saying goes, we are the product. No amount of hand-wringing or shaming is going to change that fundamental fact.

I think that in 100 years we're going to look back on how personal data is used the way we look at barbaric medical practices of the Dark Ages. People in general just didn't know or expect better.

> That's because Microsoft's incentives are more aligned with ours. Better, more user-centric software == better outcomes for users, more Microsoft usage/profits.

Microsoft is in the same business as Google. Search, Bing. Gmail, Outlook.com. GCP, Azure. They even operate an ad network.

Google has some bad incentives but Microsoft has all the same ones. If not, why isn't there a single button for "never send any of my personal information to Microsoft" anywhere in Windows 10?

In the meantime, Apple builds walled-garden devices with limited functionality so that users are forced to buy several devices.

It's unfortunate that every large vendor today has short-term incentives to screw users.

> Microsoft is in the same business as Google.

Microsoft and Google may have competing products, but they are in completely different businesses. Microsoft is in the business of software, Google is in the business of data. That's why there's a public Bing Search API[1], but there's no public Google Search API.

[1] https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cognitive-service...

> Microsoft and Google may have competing products, but they are in completely different businesses. Microsoft is in the business of software, Google is in the business of data.

In what way are Windows and Edge "software" but Android and Chrome are not?

> That's why there's a public Bing Search API[1], but there's no public Google Search API.

The company that is operating a data service is the one not in the data business?

> In what way are Windows and Edge "software" but Android and Chrome are not?

> The company that is operating a data service is the one not in the data business?

A company in the software business charges for the usage of its software (Windows, Bing API). A company in the data business gives the software for free, and monetizes the data it collects about its users (Android, Google).

> A company in the software business charges for the usage of its software (Windows, Bing API). A company in the data business gives the software for free, and monetizes the data it collects about its users (Android, Google).

A services API isn't software. You're not buying a copy of the code and running it on your computer. And Google offers the same category of thing (paid services), e.g. the Google Maps API or G Suite, while Microsoft offers free services equivalent to google.com and gmail.com like bing.com and outlook.com.

Meanwhile Microsoft has been giving away actual software like Windows 10 for free, along with a variety of other things like IE/Edge (including for non-Windows platforms), VS Express, the Skype software, etc.

They're direct competitors operating in largely the same markets and using the same business models.

> A services API isn't software. You're not buying a copy of the code and running it on your computer.

It's called SaaS, which stands for "Software as a service"[1].

> They're direct competitors operating in largely the same markets and using the same business models.

Google generates 84% of its revenues from ads[2], Microsoft generates 95% of its revenues from software[3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service

[2] https://martechtoday.com/google-posts-31-1b-in-total-revenue...

[3] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Investor/earnings/FY-2018-Q1...

> It's called SaaS, which stands for "Software as a service"

In other words, you're not buying a copy of the code and running it on your computer. So the provider has all your private information.

And if that's "software" then how is Google not a "software" company? All their services are that.

> Google generates 84% of its revenues from ads[2], Microsoft generates 95% of its revenues from software[3].

It's understandable that you missed this, but the distinction you're making is arbitrary. Microsoft can book ad revenue under software and service categories because the software/service is what generated the ad views. They definitely make more than 5% of their revenue from ads.

Percentages are also useless in general. If Google merged with Amazon (which has much higher revenue) then most of their revenue wouldn't be from "advertising" but how would that change their incentives at all? If anything it would be worse -- now they're providing more non-advertising services to you and have the incentive to spy on you via those services to increase their ad profitability.

What now?

https://developers.google.com/custom-search/json-api/v1/usin...

It's Google's Custom Search API, designed to increase the usage of Google, not to replace it. Bing Search API allows creating new search engines that don't send user data back to Microsoft. That's why DuckDuckGo is powered by Bing, not Google.

Except that the entire reason most sites are searchable is because of the analytics includes on every single page, everywhere.

So, literally every click you make is trickling data back to Facegoogsoft, because that’s how indexing works.

I'd argue that Microsoft is much worse, what with their utter ubiquity in corporate environments, linkedin, github and win home users. Google ruined cell phones and Microsoft ruined personal computing.

The problem is it is often difficult to decide where incompetence ends and where malicious begins. Microsoft Edge or at least EdgeHTML has a stated goal of being 100% compatible with Google Chrome. As you might guess, it isn't even close. Why? There are far too many competent people at Microsoft to say "never attribute to malice what can be described by incompetence". This isn't the kind of incompetence at Equifax.

Its sad that one has to be 100% compatible with Chrome. Is this something that someone at Microsoft really said? one should have to be compatible with the standards. If that statement is true, then it supports the claim of Google's dominance- which is unhealthy for the browser market, and users.

Maybe I didn't capture the wording perfectly. Maybe I reported what I heard and not what they said?

> any Edge-WebKit differences are bugs that we’re interested in fixing

context:

> We recommend that web developers avoid UA sniffing as much as possible; modern web platform features are nearly all detectable in easy ways. Over the past year, we’ve seen some UA-sniffing sites that have been updated to detect Microsoft Edge… only to provide it with a legacy IE11 code path. This is not the best approach, as Microsoft Edge matches ‘WebKit’ behaviors, not IE11 behaviors (any Edge-WebKit differences are bugs that we’re interested in fixing). In our experience Microsoft Edge runs best on the ‘WebKit’ code paths in these sites. Also, with the internet becoming available on a wider variety of devices, please assume unknown browsers are good – please don’t limit your site to working only on a small set of current known browsers. If you do this, your site will almost certainly break in the future.

Personally, I think operations infrastructure should take a a more hands-off approach and let people use whatever web browsers they want and focus on educating users on why and how rather than on what. However, it is not practical for a variety of reasons. I had a chance to chat with a Chrome team member. He assured me that if you are an IT department and want to deploy Chrome in your enterprise, the Chrome team is committed to stand behind you. You can start at https://enterprise.google.com/chrome/chrome-browser/ If you have custom home-grown applications that require a legacy browser, you can centrally manage lists. In practice, this means that users will just need to open Google Chrome. If they go to some address that requires a legacy browser, Chrome will automatically kick you to the legacy browser. When someone continues on the legacy browser, you can kick them back to Google Chrome and have them continue there. I think this is the better path forward especially considering that Windows 7 will end of life in 2020. While I love Mozilla Firefox, I think Chrome is your only choice when it comes to Enterprise desktop.

For web developers like me, Edge has such a small market share that it makes no sense to test for Edge. From what I understand above, I shouldn't have to test for Microsoft Edge. It shouldn't have any of the legacy stuff from MSIE. That being said, threats of mono culture aside, I think it is best for any corporation to move their web browser to Google Chrome. Your people will be more productive on Google Chrome because it is the browser they know and love.

https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2015/06/17/building-a-mo...

If you're reading this, hello from Google Cloud Summit New York!

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