Hacker News Reader

Comment by junaru | Hacker News Reader

How is this Microsoft fault? Google presumably made their browser go around the usual interface for changing default browser( via some sneaky api manipulation?). Microsoft patched it to require more than a single click.

The only reason Edge or whatever Microsoft is pushing these days didn't trigger the issue is because their browser didn't make the API call on every new window event and not because of some sinister plan to increase their market share.

Back in the day trying to do things as silently as possible was reserved for malware.

View on HN

According to the article this does not seem to be the case:

> Gizmodo was able to replicate the problem. In fact, we were able to circumvent the issue just by changing the name of the Chrome app on a Windows desktop. It seems that Microsoft threw up the roadblock specifically for Chrome, the main competitor to its Edge browser.

> Mozilla’s Firefox has its own one-click default button, which worked just fine throughout the ordeal.

so no, this doesn't appear to be about an app using a backdoor API, it's specifically targeted at Chrome.

Both can be true, though. In this case, Chrome does, in fact, try to work around the standard OS API to register default apps (because it opens a screen where the user is then supposed to actually pick things instead of one-click "it just works"):

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/refs/heads/...

Breaking it for everything would be one thing, but in this case, the update only impacted the application when it was named Chrome.exe. Changing the name or doing the same thing with Firefox still worked the way it had with Chrome. This would point to a deliberate action on Microsoft's part to stifle one particular competitor.

Sorry you're getting downvoted.

A little dive in the original feature would reveal a bunch of unfortunate time-bombs of behaviors taking dependencies on _write time to the registry_, adding arbitrary retry loops to overcome time resolution, and circumventing the standard path in the platform.

https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/37...

The conspiracy theory is wild, and seems to be based largely on the changing of the name, but if you read the patch, it's dependent on the file.

The comments on the review that were rejected by the author could easily be the conditions that changed and a plausible cause.

The whole thing smells like sensationalist FUD, particularly given the content of this patch.

> dependencies on _write time to the registry_, adding arbitrary retry loops to overcome time resolution

For what it's worth, around this time Microsoft's own API (which will only set Edge as default) messed this up occasionally if you ran it on the edge of a minute. When I implemented the equivalent feature for Firefox I checked the time, only one retry instead of Chrome's 5 and it's still not perfect, though my approach doesn't write the potentially out of date values first. That was already sufficiently stable that I couldn't make it fail.

The design seems pretty wild, I have much sympathy for you implementers

Chrome does not automatically set itself as the default browser.

Lately HN reminds me of Slashdot. Everything in the universe is MS' fault. Chrome is an adware. It tried to use a bug in Windows to sneakily install itself as the default browser. MS is looking out for its users and suddenly MS is the evil guy.

> MS is looking out for its users

Yes, installing Candy Crush and a version of solitaire filled with IAP or filling the start menu with MSN news cruft is really looking out for its users. The only entities that Microsoft gives half a shit about is their shareholders.

So far, I've seen nothing in these comments promoting Chrome, or Google more generally. They (Google and Microsoft) are both the tech equivalent of boogeyman, but this article focuses on specific anticompetitive behaviour from Microsoft. I think it's safe to generalize and say that nobody here thinks Google a saint.

Not suddenly the evil guy, historically.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com