- Users of Google Chrome on Windows 10 and 11 are reporting that they have suddenly found themselves using Microsoft Edge, with their Chrome browsing sessions appearing in Edge.
- This may be due to a bug or an accidentally clicked-through dialog box related to a feature in Edge that imports browsing data from Chrome.
- The setting, called “Import browsing data from Chrome,” continually imports data from Chrome every time Edge is launched, unlike the one-time import offered for Firefox.
- There have been concerns about Microsoft’s tactics for pushing its own browser, including notifications, pop-ups, and full-screen messages promoting Edge and Bing.
- Microsoft has become more aggressive in pushing various subscriptions and features in recent years, making a “clean” Windows install feel less so.
- It remains unclear whether the Edge data-import issue is intentional or a bug, highlighting concerns about Microsoft’s methods for promoting its own software.
The other muppet clearly mentioned those fines as an example, that fines can harm Microsoft if so desired. Of course they’d need to be scaled up given that MS is considerably more wealthy than back then.
Aside from the fact that they were being condescending in their reply, that 900 some odd million dollar fine was only a small fraction of the profits they made from doing crimes and misdemeanors.
If you can rob a house and the only penalty is that you have to give the cops some of your loot then there’s not really a reason to not rob houses.
Anybody with a lick of sense would say that if you do a crime you don’t get to keep any of the profit.
So while 900 million looks really good on paper and it really looks like you’re sticking it to the big bad Microsoft, when they made tens of billions of dollars off of those crimes it’s a giant nothing Burger.
Now that Microsoft is a 3 trillion dollar company, any fine that isn’t over a hundred billion dollars is something that they can easily ignore.
If you’re talking about these fines: it was 1.35 billion euros in total, the “900 million” number only refers to the biggest one. And there were two complicating factors:
I do agree that it’s a bit small, considering their size back then (they were already a 300B company), but the case still triggered some action from MS, forcing it to release a WMP-less version of Windows.
And, if this happened today, with Edge, I predict that the fine would be considerably larger, since MS has today ten times the market share that it had in 07, and because browsers are seen as a bigger deal than media players. Perhaps not hundreds of billions, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was 50B.
I also predict that it would be far more effective because their strategy with Edge is to push it down your throat until you don’t spit it back, so an “Edge-less version” would be actually seen as desirable by the customers.