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Comment by darklycan51 | Hacker News Reader

I'll be honest, I don't have a problem with this while Google is and was allowed to insert their own on pages such as Google.com

Everyone and their mothers thinks Google is the default internet, no different than people "forced" to use windows cause they don't know what Linux is.

If so then I have no problem with Edge taking market share away from Chrome.

If you want to criticize this then ban ALL advertisement for web browsers anywhere else it is in the real world, not fair and will just maintain Google's monopoly. And based on the recent years and trends of Google completely destroying the open web, is anyone really pro Chrome domination anymore?

Firefox and other competing smaller player who depend on Google money aren't looking to compete either, it is beyond obvious, so.

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> I'll be honest, I don't have a problem with this while Google is and was allowed to insert their own on pages such as Google.com

I think that there's a big difference between a company putting ads on a page they own, and a company hijacking an app that they own. For better or worse, the expectation on the web is that wherever you browse to might try to pull all kinds of shady tricks on you, and we more or less learn to tune it out (and hopefully also to run some sort of appropriate protection). I think that the expectation, especially from a reputable software maker, is that the browser itself will not get in your way. Maybe things are moving in the direction that that's not the expectation, either, but, if so, then I think it's good to make that process as high-friction as possible.

Also, even if there's not a difference, "I'm OK with Microsoft pulling user-hostile tricks because Google does" may be a decent rebuttal of "Microsoft is worse than Google", which is not a claim I saw here, but it is not much of a rebuttal of "Microsoft is doing some shady tricks."

Eh, I used to think this, and even used Edge in linux a little.

But Edge is super junky now. Its turning into Internet Explorer all over again, as if Microsoft just can't help themselves.

Chrome is secretly junky, but at least it keeps the user facing UIs clean.

> But Edge is super junky now.

Agreed. I enjoyed it more during its earlier years, when it was just a browser, but now its becoming an annoying monstrosity, like Windows itself.

Your argument, to me, feels like this one: "Target puts a lot of pro-Target advertising inside Target stores, therefore it's fine that Walmart decided to put a lot of pro-Walmart advertising inside Target stores."

> I'll be honest, I don't have a problem with this while Google is and was allowed to insert their own on pages such as Google.com

You're going to get DV'd to hell but you're absolutely right. At the end of the day, Microsoft injecting ads for Edge when it detects you're downloading another popular browser is literally no different than Google advertising Chrome on damn near every website they run.

Google has somehow managed to maintain this image as this scrappy underdog entity and it's absolutely ridiculous the mental gymnastics some people will engage in to excuse all their anti-competitive behaviors.

Edit: I suppose it's technically different because they are injecting content into a website that wouldn't otherwise be there, and one can make the argument that a web browser should only render what is served. But also I have literally a dozen extensions that all alter content in the browser (many of which are for Google owned websites!) not the least of which is an adblocker. I have a hard time saying Microsoft adding a blurb about Edge being good to search results for Chrome or Firefox is the end of the free internet.

> Google has somehow managed to maintain this image as this scrappy underdog entity and it's absolutely ridiculous the mental gymnastics some people will engage in to excuse all their anti-competitive behaviors.

But nothing about this story is about Google, except that the nastiness that Microsoft is doing involves a Google product. What Microsoft is doing is wrong because it's wrong, not because they're doing it to a Google product, and my moral position on Google (also untrustworthy and shady) doesn't come into it.

You can definitely say it's annoying, but it isn't wrong. It's advertising, and of a category far, far less malicious than most advertising on the Internet.

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