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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

I still fail to understand Microsofts obsession with getting people to use Edge. Apples developers and ships Safari, but if you don't use it who cares, you're still on a mac running macOS (iPhone is a slightly different story).

Shipping a good and fast browser with Windows is perfectly fine, many will use it, some won't. Why do Microsoft care? The users are still running Windows. If anything this seems to undermine the value Microsoft place on Windows as a platform. Why not focus on making Windows better and if users want to use Windows to run Firefox or Chrome that's their choice.

I really don't see what value pushing Edge has to Microsoft. Are they just pining for the good old days of IE dominance? They dropped their own browser engine, so they obviously don't want to spend that much money on browser development, so why spend any at all?

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Because currently they can well track everything you do on your computer,[0] but tracking all your activities on the web is still a bit tricky if you don't use non-MS browser.

[0] Of course they say it's all anonymyzed (at least if you are in Europe...) and no specific info is added to your profile, they are just interested in general trends etc., not individuals - but the fact remains you have little choice here.

Unfortunately the truth. The money isn't in creating the best browser they can, it's in what they can siphon from their users. And how they can pry upon impulsive and impoverished shoppers: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/11/micro...

Meanwhile Apple has no problem also prying about impulsive and impoverished shoppers by offering both a credit card they forced Goldman to issue based on lower standards (which they have lost another $1 billion on this year) AND now offering BNPL too.

It's almost like big corporations love to "exploit markets" wrapped in layers of feel good marketing.

>a credit card they forced Goldman to issue

Poor old Goldman Sachs, the victim yet again.

I'll get back to you when the Apple credit card appears in Safari.

This meme org chart never gets less accurate throughout the years

https://www.globalnerdy.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/201...

> Why do Microsoft care?

Since the spyware and add presenting malware in Windows is apparently insufficient they also want to get your data via bing and web browser usage and present you adds in those regions as well.

I get that ads represent a pretty good chunk of money for Microsoft, but not it terms of percentages. I really do question the long term viability in creating shittier versions of you core products in order to boost one of the smallest parts of you business. Of course that might be why Microsoft have billions of dollars and I don't.

Because the browser is the gateway to things like search. And thats the gateway to a lot of things.

Millions of developer hours and hundreds of millions of dollars spent developing hugely complex software just so that the omnibox's default target is bing.com instead of google.com

A strange species.

The amount of extra “services” that MS tried to push through Edge is insane. Coupons, shopping, chat, etc. its just another revenue stream

Do you see why Google is pushing Chrome so aggressively? If so, that's the same reason. Microsoft, besides selling Windows, is also an advertising provider.

Ads are like 98% of Google revenue, but only around 5% of Microsofts. Microsoft could practically kill Google if they joined Apples privacy crusade.

That's probably what I don't get, why is Microsoft even trying to be in the ad business? Sure there's money to be made, but there's also money in used cars. They are inherently a software company, while Google is a adtech company who happens to build software to support that business at a huge scale.

There's a reason both Apple and Microsoft have ad networks; its because if they had ones the size of Google they'd double their revenue.

Apple loves to tout its privacy but it's their own APIs that apps used to track you ...

https://www.statista.com/statistics/234529/comparison-of-app...

Consumers have signaled that they don't care enough about privacy/user tracking or ads enough to do much more than whine and continue using the software. So there is no real reason to not grab up the extra revenue.

As more stuff moves to the web and into Chrome, it's getting out of control of Microsoft. Someday if that continues something like a Chromebook will become equivalent or better than a Windows computer. I think they want at least a bit of ownership of the web and some type of alternative somehow. Like how Steam/Valve supports Linux as protection against Microsoft.

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