this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
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Do they really think it being a Microsoft product means people trust it more?
The entire world runs on Microsoft products. They're a very highly trusted company.
In this instance, Microsoft has tried everything but pay people to use Edge, but IE burned enough bridges that they're struggling to regain market share. This flies in the face of how much trust consumers generally put in Microsoft products, and thus makes sense to ask.
Yeah, they're really struggling to get their reputation back after letting IE drag it down. I honestly never really used Edge until I started my new job last month. The system is locked to Chrome or Edge and I decided to give Edge a try since it would actually let me enable dark mode where Chrome is locked by system administrators for themes. It's actually a good browser. I just never trusted it because it was a MS browser. But I prefer Firefox to all of them but that's just a personal preference.
Plus Edge has support for vertical tabs built in natively. It's wild to me that horizontal tabs are still the default, using up valuable vertical screen space and having illegible names when you've got a certain number of tabs open, when vertical tabs are an option. So props to Edge for offering that.
I never really got into vertical tabs at all. Although I never have that many tabs open that I really need that space efficiency. I can never understand how people have more than like 8 tabs open.
I have to use edge at work and the vertixle tabs is my favourite thing about it.
I often need lots of tabs open and finding rhem is difficult ao i have an autohiding verticle tab bar and i put my tabs into groups which i name and collapse so i can see what each tab is as alot of tabs have the same title as part of my job involves the use of a service desk.
I wish other browsers had it.
I've never really needed to have many tabs open so I don't really understand that struggle. I might have it more with my new job in commercial lending where our loan origination system is a web based app so maybe I'll need to have a lot more tabs open for that. If so, I could see myself switching to vertical tabs but I've just never had a need to have more than like 10 open at a time and that's usually only when I'm shopping around and comparing products/reviews.
Except for all the Mac/iOS Android/Chrome stuff. Or NASA, the NY stock exchange, 50% of servers, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Department of Defense, Nuclear submarines etc. those run on Linux. But other than those yes, the entire world lol
Yes. Aside from them, about 5 billion other people use Microsoft products.
This isn't fanboy shit dude this is just reality.
The latest estimate of how many people that use the internet at all is around 5 billion. Where did you get that number?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Internet_usage
Android is by far the most used operating system for web use and for servers it's estimated at 77 % linux, not 50 % as stated above.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems
Windows dominated the desktop segment, you should realize that desktop use is in decline in favor of mobile usage.
I got that number by picking a random large number.
The point is it's silly to suggest that Microsoft is not the global industry standard for most businesses.
I work in international business. Windows with Outlook is the standard
I get that lots of people here have a wide array of personal problems with Microsoft, the way they do business, their software etc. Most people on the planet, however, do not share these opinions, can barely operate Microsoft Word, and just want plug n play software, which is why Microsoft is indeed a highly trusted, industry-standard, company.
No fanboying, just pointing out an inaccuratacy. And watch your language, my grandma uses the Internet smh.
I think many people don't feel they have an alternative. That's not the same as trust.
With browsers, they have a choice, despite MS's best efforts.
People don't have an alternative. Microsoft will choose for them at the next Windows update and pick auto MS Edge as the default browser again. They are solving problems...
It's worth noting that this is mainly an issue on the cheapest Windows licenses. On Pro editions and Enterprise editions you can prevent the hijacking via Group Policy, which is not available to Home licenses.
Please note that I'm not saying I'm okay with this. I'm just trying to explain why there's a bunch of people out there who don't have to deal with that mess (like myself).
Yer, they need more anti monopoly stuff against them. As do Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, etc. They are have their own thiefdoms.
Cory Doctorow's latest podcast talked about this mess : https://craphound.com/news/2023/10/23/microincentives-and-enshittification/
Everything but make Edge a good browser, you mean.
Edge is a perfectly cromulent browser that fills the average user's needs just fine and has some great additional cruft such as their vertical tabs and Collections implementation. It's not 2013 anymore. Why people still go out of their way to get Chrome of all things is an important question for Microsoft to ask. Just living off of Chrome's literal crumbs is worthwhile to Microsoft, imagine if they actually had a marketshare that reflected the two products capabilities. People obviously don't do it for safety or privacy or functionality reasons, and Microsoft will literally pay you to use Bing. They probably wonder what the fucking issue is at this point.
I don't think the entire world. Only about 5% of the people at the last three companies I've worked at had Windows machines, and most of them in accounting. And the only part of the software stack that was Windows were QA machines. Until recently I hadn't used a Windows machine for anything other than gaming since 2009.
And while they're still a surprising 48% of the server market, that's not "the entire world." Maybe it's because I'm a Mac fanboy from back in the day, but I never trusted Microsoft. And used to spell their name with a dollar sign.
Idk man I’ve worked with hundreds of companies of all shapes and sizes as a consultant and I’ve never once seen one that used non-windows workstations with the only exception being Macs used in software development. And I’m also fairly certain that the Microsoft server market share would be much, MUCH higher if you didn’t count web servers. Web servers are the only type of server I’ve seen be Linux in the majority. Most web service companies I’ve worked with even had Windows servers working behind their Linux web servers and load balancers. Like a ratio of 10-20:1
I say this as somebody who hates Microsoft with a passion and would rather work in an all-Linux shop but a non-Microsoft enterprise just sounds like a unicorn.
Then, not counting when I was freelancing, I've found three unicorns. There were so few Windows machines around it frequently became a problem where devs or support had to have someone in accounting test something.
Yeah I could see it if they were an all-Mac environment in a small office that was tiny enough to not need Active Directory. Even then Mac desktops have like 20% desktop market share so that’d still be impressive that you got a Mac environment 3 times in a row.
Linux has like 3% of the desktop market, that would be pretty close to unbelievable.
I mean…Microsoft is paying people to use Edge with Microsoft Rewards. It’s not a lot, but you can net a few cents each day with their Edge exclusive tasks.
Yes, why not? For the layman Microsoft is the name of a company that has existed for a long time and has made reliable, functional products.
Even for the non-layman, Microsoft isn't a perfect company, but it's not as if Google is any better.
From what I've read, Edge sends way more data back to Microsoft than Chrome sends to Google which is already too much.
They're just doing 1984 speak.