Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by jinst8gmi | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

jinst8gmi

"44.5 billion minutes spent by users in the Microsoft Edge browser across Windows 10 devices"

I wonder how much of that was spent downloading Firefox or Chrome?

"30% more Bing search queries per Windows 10 device versus previous versions of the OS"

I can't imagine that this is due to anything other than the OS and browser defaults?

View on HN

Have you tried changing the default search engine? It's SIGNIFICANTLY convoluted. It took me about ten minutes to figure it out and I am 100% confident my parent would be incapable of changing it. I've watched them try.

I had to install a plugin for chrome to redirect bing to chrome. Just in case I ever happen to click on the search bar in the bottom which searches the internet.

Can you turn that off? So that it only searches your local pc?

I personally turn off the actual bar because I have a lot of pinned icons and I'm already used to hitting the Windows key to type a search query anyway.

But at least as far as regular old Win-key search, you can definitely change a setting to only include local results. I tend to do it simply because I'm in the habit of typing to search local files in the Windows/Start menu and doing web searches via the browser. Web results in my Start/Win searches would just clutter up results so I've been disabling them since Win8.

Not sure if this extends to the search bar in the taskbar but I'm reasonably sure they're the same thing with a different location/interface. I'll have to enable the search bar to check for sure though.

I do think so: Search for "Cortana & Search settings" then turn off "Search online and include web results".

MS has received and paid about €561m monopoly infringement fines from EU Commission for "forgetting" again to provide the choice of browser in the first 14 months of Windows 7 [1], totalizing €2bn fines from EU. Times seem to have changed though, as no-one seems to be pursuing MS for Windows 10.

[1] Last lines of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp_v_Commission

Microsoft doesn't have the monopoly it once did with the proliferation of tablets and such. Anti-competitive behavior is fine as long as it isn't monopolistic. Every browser on iOS is a UI on top of the mobile Safari engine - the equivalent of Windows only allowing IE and browser skins - but that type of anti-competitive behavior is OK because Apple only controls 30% of the mobile devices and its users choose to buy into said anti-competitive environments.

Aren't Bing searches included when you search for local files?

Yes, so that should give you an idea of how often people are searching from the task bar.

Only if enabled. It's a tick box in the settings menu for "search" that I've disabled since it was introduced in Win8. I'm sure it's useful for some people since they typically open a browser to search more often than they search for local files (and Microsoft wants people to use their services). Still, for me, web results just get in the way of local searches and I'm used to typing in the Start/Win menu for local, not web so new installs get their options adjusted accordingly.

"30% more Bing search queries per Windows 10 device versus previous versions of the OS"

wasn't IE/Bing the default in previous versions of the OS too?

Windows 10 has it integrated into the start menu.

Ah, understood. Thanks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com