I wish people would engage with the content a bit. It's a huge claim (and scary).
This trend is not even limited to Windows.
We saw it begin years ago with Google etc gradually reducing the quality of search results. Then ChatGPT etc arrive shortly thereafter, and people are led to conclude "it works so much better than traditional search." Hard to believe these two events are unrelated.
Also, it's not like Google went on autopilot and pursued nothing in recent years. Clearly they've dedicated resources to AI, so it's not hard to believe they foresaw potential resistance to selling the concept of AI to users and took measures to funnel them into the behavior Google desired, all the while making it appear as a choice the user was making.
Google famously solved the search problem and the spam problem, and technology has only gotten more capable since then. Suggesting that blogspam etc are too difficult to defeat is a tough sell imo.
I find that very hard to believe because it implies a level of foresight that we have not observed from Google. The notion that they degraded their own search on purpose for years to funnel people to AI seems very implausible, especially since they don’t have a good model yet for replacing that ad revenue within AI, and that level of foresight would also imply that they should have beaten OpenAI to the punch instead of reacting to ChatGPT.
This would be a calculated financial bet on their part. This kind of risk taking is not limited to SV startups.
I realize companies under late stage capitalism aren't typically known for having foresight past one quarter, but that doesn't mean some of them can't have somebody optimizing for the long-term in a financial sense.
It's seems premature to rule this possibility out entirely.
It is possible that Google as an organization had enough foresight to see that search would eventually be eaten by AI chat bots and so intentionally degraded the experience of search to encourage movement in that direction. And also that Google was too dumb to actually ship their chat bot first and capitalized on their choice to sabotage search.
It seems a lot more likely that the the decline in the quality of search is due to a combination of hyper-optimization for revenue and difficulty combating large scale spam farms.
So Google ruined search so they could give their market share to ChatGPT. 4D chess. Maybe 5D even.
If you have some explanation for how doing this makes any sense at all, please share. But I think you’re basically engaging in conspiracy theory by claiming Google intentionally reduced the quality of search to drive AI adoption.
You're jumping through hoops when this really isn't that complicated or far fetched in a business sense.
It is extremely farfetched because it would provide no present or future advantage to Google to do so. If they hypothetically wanted to intentionally degrade their search, they could always do that when they are ready for the switch to AI.
It literally does though.
Furthermore, even if you reject that, in practice it could be as simple as Google funneling resources from maintaining search (which is obviously a never ending game of cat-and-mouse between forces of SEO, etc) to AI prospects, which would have the same outcome: neglect leads to degradation and dysfunction, and it makes their new venture more appealing. They obviously have enough capital to play such a game in the short-term and eat whatever loss necessary during the transition.
Google is well known by now for abandoning their products in favor of what they deem to be the Next Thing.
duckduckgo is also serving crap from some time, so no, it is not about monopolies.
Corporations don't run Windows. They run Outlook, Excel, and Teams. Windows and generic PCs (or thin clients and VDIs) is just the cheapest way to achieve that goal.
I've got to disagree. Macs are a fantastic option as long as the software needed to do actual work is available. That's the real bottleneck and it's not something Dell, Lenovo, or HP have any power over.
This myopia in tech is so baffling to me. Windows has been around over 40 years and tech people still act like it will go away “any day now” just because they don’t like it.
Corporations will continue to corporate. Active Directory is a powerful thing. SharePoint is another dependency that's hard to get rid of, even more so when it becomes the file server where all Office content is stored.
If windows were a building, they need to stop tacking on more rooms like it’s a gaudy McMansion. If they really wanna keep working on it, work to make what’s already there more beautiful. Optimise. Reduce the install size. Clean up some of the decades of tech debt. Unify the different generations of UI toolkits. Write documentation. Port security critical parts to rust, where appropriate. Refine, don’t reinvent.
Certainly not; not by a long shot. Besides, most users don't even understand the potential of software. But why bother improving it if you still make money shipping crap?
With these new age laws, these systems can legally ask for personal information, and I am sure as time goes, information required will expand.
As for Linux, seems systemd is all in on this, as for the BSDs, I doubt they will enforce these new laws.
I always identify myself as "Conan, The Barbarian" when creating account.
That's one hell of a claim.
Say Ubuntu ships with some package for identity validation bullshit. What stops anyone from repackaging it and offering it without those packages?
What would stop it is a combination of not being able to buy new hardware that will even boot the modified kernel, and not being able to get vintage hardware to connect to any public ISP etc. due to being unable to attest its validated boot chain information, signed by a required modern hardware OEM key.
So you would be stuck in some kind of underworld of vintage folks attempting mesh networking between themselves. Then, because of basic market forces/economics, there will be a dwindling amount of software that is able to run in such environments. It will become the esoteric realm of old-school hobbyists who don't need to run any commercial apps which require ABI/API features of the modern commercial OSs which require this boot chain of the modern commercial hardware, etc.
Most people will eventually just give in when that happens.
Why would they want to do that (serious question, think about it)
That's an issue I would like to see legislated! In fact, in my country there is a law that prohibits bundled purchases: it's just that the authorities are not tech savvy enough to see it when it pertains to computers and Windows.
I saw laptops selling with FreeDOS but realistically speaking I think that majority of these laptops end up with pirated Windows, so all it provides is increasing level of piracy.
Ideally laptop should provide a choice between Linux and Windows on the first boot. And easy way to buy Windows license if user chooses it.
2. You absolutely should build the computer yourself. You get a much better computer with best of class parts. And you learn something.
Compared to what?
“Plenty” doesn’t really seem like a relative term here, but a statement that there are enough options on the market if someone wants to buy a machine with Linux preinstalled.
The last 3 machines I bought (for myself and for family members) came with Windows and I immediately installed Linux on them.
I'm being slightly absurd here since you need some sort of firmware to simply start up the computer and install an operating system, but here is my point: to most people, the operating system is part of the computer. The computer is simply an expensive brick without it. On top of that, a lot of the negativity towards bundling Windows originates from Microsoft's past monopolistic practices[1]. We certainly don't hear many people criticizing the bundling of macOS or iOS on Apple products or Android/Chrome OS on Android devices or Chromebooks. (There may be people who want to load alternative operating systems on these devices, but that is different from criticizing the bundling of the OS.)
[1] Is Microsoft forcing hardware vendors to install Windows even a thing these days?
Everyone here slinging mud, while getting paid out of the SaaS pot. Would windows be a better product if it was user focused but cost $40/mo? From Microsoft's POV it would probably kill numbers.