The company had over 100B in revenue last year. By adding this sleazy anti-feature, Microsoft is sacrificing its reputation and the quality of a high-profile product for probably a few million? That's a few thousandths of one percent of their total revenue. I don't understand it.
The product manager behind this cares about having numbers to show their manager and isn't concerned about the potential reputational impact it might have on the company as a whole. Their manager likewise will be happy to report in turn to their manager that they've increased revenue by a large amount. It's peanuts to the company but could be a large increase for that particular product which is what the managers get rewarded on.
> The product manager behind this cares about having numbers to show their manager and isn't concerned about the potential reputational impact it might have on the company as a whole.
Speaking as an ex-PM at MS, just about every individual contributor PM I've met at MS cares far more about reputational impact than making some little metric go up (even if it's a revenue metric).
I get that it's easy to use the PM discipline as a whipping boy because it's a PM's face that is associated with product changes, but I've rarely seen one at MS actively push for this kind of stuff. In the overwhelming case, they argue with their management structure for a while and get dragged kicking and screaming into a decision that they think is dumb, but they're told to own it anyways.
Typically the decisions of the boneheaded variety are made much higher up the org chart by higher-level middle management in the company who don't use the products they own and are (often) pretty thoroughly unaware of what their users actually care about. These decisions suck really bad too, because they overshadow countless other great decisions made by truly excellent people in similar positions.
Of course, it's entirely possible that everyone involved in something like this thinks it's awesome right up until it gets announced/released. I've just never actually seen that before.
As somebody who has been using Microsoft stuff for years and paid through the nose for it, can you take a guess on why Microsoft is going this shitty path since Windows 8 came out?
I have issues with a LOT of stuff, but ads on the login screen, telemetry that can't be opted out of, privacy invasion, Cortana that is literally malware and the list can go on for days - which people did push for this? The janitors?
Excuse me, but your explanation is just a personal anecdote. Management approved on all this crap and bloatware, you can't realistically cop out that "ohnoes all the PMs at Microsoft I've ever known are more interested in the company's image etc and haven't been actively pushing for this stuff".
I mean, we SEE IT. How tf did all this stuff end up in the OS? Somebody stumbled and landed face first on a keyboard and this crap wrote itself?
Edit: how can upper management ask for this stuff from their underlings if they have no clue about what is happening or what the users want? I also apologise for the harsh tone, but I am so done with Microsoft products I can't help being upset.
As an ex-PM, the idea that PMs are the ones making all the decisions absolutely does not resonate. Fundamentally, of course management in general (not specifically product management) is approving these things and carries the responsibility, but in my experience (not at Microsoft) the involvement of another firm is a clue this originated with a bizdev conversation. That sounds more likely to me than a PM saying "I really want to offer loans through Edge, let me see if I can find a partner to help execute this."
Current MSFT employee... I can say that PMs often wield a lot of power over decision making than most people in the org, esp the customer-facing decisions. And while it may not have been the PM in the lowest-rung of the chain, the parent comment perfectly applies to program managers in general, often in the middle management or higher up, both of which are often disconnected with real world, in spite of their claims to otherwise.
PMs at Microsoft have enormous veto power, they cite data (or lack thereof! ;-)), direct customer interaction, conducted user studies, etc. which the dev team is usually lacking in. Of course this is only an anecdotal observation over the last 2 decades or so.
Increase in $$$s in revenues is one of the best ways to get promoted, recognized and rewarded at Msft (and not only at MSFT, I suspect that's the case at most publicly traded companies, who only care to drive up the the bottom-line, no matter the means to achieve it, as long as it is (mostly) legal).
This sounds like typical "roadmap via bizdev" to me. Bizdev strikes a partnership (in this case, with the firm making the loans), and then it gets handed to the poor PM to push it through.
I remember standing in an elevator with my manager on the way to sign a contract for a new bit of software. It would cost us 100k per year for this software. I asked my manager, “don’t we already have this product in-house, at least most of these features?” Their answer: “who cares? It’s not my money.”
I think there’s not so much an incentive problem, but more of a “hiring the wrong people” problem. People that literally don’t give a crap about anything but their next bonus or raise.
It has been established that most people are motivated by their personal short term gains, they have no real reason to care unless there's a positive incentive for them to worry about the long term consequences of their actions.
Chances are that those managers will be able to deliver their features on time, meeting all KPIs & OKRs, while accumulating a stack of technical debt for future maintainers.
I wonder how Apple keeps its sh$t together. I know they have made some mistakes in recent years that hurt Apple's reputation, but overall it's been successful at maintaining a positive brand image and consistent product attributes. Sometimes this has been through backing down on wrong decisions they made before (e.g., look at the new Macbooks and all their ports.)
I think last time Apple "pulled a Microsoft" was when Ive removed a bunch of really really useful stuff in MacBooks (e.g., the ports-gate). I can imagine some forces inside Apple went like "that's it, enough." I'm genuinely curious how management in Apple works and how it promotes ideas that are truly worth it.
In a lot of places the “product design” is just the agglomeration of AB tests conceived by a large and widely distributed army of junior PMs. There is no one person responsible for the end to end experience, no top down vision, no one who’s ever going to say no on design or conceptual integrity grounds. At most an idea can get killed for having weak or negative experiment results.
I’ve never worked at Apple, but my understanding is that they have/had gatekeepers, from Jobs himself on down, to tell you your idea isn’t part of the vision and we’re not going to do it. And a lot of workers hate that!
Also constant emails tellig you’re out of storage space trying to upsell iCloud storage space. Which, fair enough, is cheap but the emails are a bit spammish.
On the other hand, is not as if every single other company doesn’t do it, which doesn’t excuse but does explain it.
Out of iCloud Storage space or phone storage space? If it's iCloud Storage Space it would be ... weird if they didn't, since iCloud stops working (rightfully so) when you fill up the storage space.
They’ll get there in a few years. If you fire up some of their apps, like News, that have a premium Apple subscription component they try to gently upsell you. Expect that to become more aggressive as they taste more of that sweet sweet high margin service revenue.
From my outside perspective, it seems like they must have an incentive structure that allows departments/products to forgo individual revenue if they're seen to be contributing to the wider company.
It feels like they're really desperate to make their services ecosystem a thing, despite no one ever asking for it. But then services are the one area where it's possible to make shitloads of money out of thin air via recurring payments in a way that doesn't offend the users ("I'm using disk space on their servers and it needs to be paid for"). Locking people into these kinds of walled-garden services must also help somewhat with hardware sales.
Regarding the ports on macbooks, IMO it's just that Ive left and so everyone was allowed to design practical devices again, instead of admirable but impractical art pieces.
Eh.. It's not that bad really. It's their own service and it's pretty unobtrusive. I'm not saying I like it at all, but it's a lot better than microsoft's ad notifications on windows. The windows notification immediately triggers a stress reflex in me now.
I cannot find any evidence of this. The only article I found even related to this was showing a feature where if you had the Siri suggestions widget then you might see an App Clip for a store nearby. It works like this: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/62559071/how-to-add-appc...
The only other advertising system within iOS that I’m aware of is the App Store, both in recommendations and search, and of course, that Apple will advertise their own services for iCloud, Storage and so on.
Is Apple an advertising-based company? Not really. Are they marketing-driven? Absolutely. I think the difference is about user value and user impact.
Apple tends to go the Amazon route of trying to capture value from the interactions users might already do, though their iAds network from a decade ago did show an unsuccessful attempt to capture the in-app ad market.
But I can’t think of the last time I would have seen an “ad” in settings, though since App Clips appear in settings for up to 10 days once installed, I can see why some might think so.
Theres nagging to setup Apple Pay (which apple gets a cut of), and now they also push trials of Apple Music and Apple Arcade - https://postimg.cc/YM9xW5B4/
You were mostly right. I went as far as seeing a "Set up later in Wallet" button and tapped it. Now it's no longer showing an obnoxious red badge in settings. Thanks.
Yeah, but somebody in that chain up the line still cares about the reputation and has to weigh that against more local goals.
Reminds me of that Better Call Saul episode where Jimmy makes a lavish TV ad to find members for a class action lawsuit, and finds a ton more people, but does it without getting the law firm's partners' approval, and they are angry with him because they care more about the law firm's reputation than the ROI for a particular case.
Edit: With that said, I'm not convinced this is the kind of the king that would actually hurt MS's reputation outside of geek circles.
> Edit: With that said, I'm not convinced this is the kind of the king that would actually hurt MS's reputation outside of geek circles.
I kind of disagree with this, if enough geeks denounce it, this spreads like a wild fire. Geeks have the (un)fortunate role of recommending everything from a router to PC to TV to their friends and family and if disgruntled enough, they might steer them away from things they dislike, it is just human nature (and justifiably so too).
If one non-techie thing I have learned at Microsoft very early on, is it the fact that never underestimate the _minority_ geek population who can have a disproportionately large impact on general populous with their opinions!
I've been involved in a bunch of large Enterprise purchases and reputation definitely was a consideration. We typically interview other customers to find out their pros/cons and in one case travelled onsite to another customer to not only talk to them but go over their installation in person. (These were all done without a vendor representative present, and I can think of a few cases where it made the difference in deciding not to go with a vendor)
Stadia isn’t even a good idea in the first place. Even if it is the best implementation of the idea, I still have no idea how it could ever make much sense. Other players in the space, like GeForce Now, don’t exactly look appealing either.
What makes you say that? I find Stadia works really great for me as a gaming platform. I don't have any issues with lag and I like not having to have a noisy console in my living room. The only issue with it is the limited library, but that's not inherent to the basic idea.
I think the value proposition is definitely there for a "rent a gaming pc" service. Cost/library/performance are thorny problems to solve, but if I were able to ditch my Windows PC[0] for a robust solution, I could consider it. Seemingly the only way I would possibly be able to utilize a current generation Nvidia equivalent card.
[0] I use Linux, but no, Proton is not fully there. Plenty of games either do not work or have enough glitches that make it unacceptable.
But looking on global picture and far in future with satellite internet - that is easily solvable, but technical issues on running those games in Stadia are least things that people are concerned about.
My personal preferences is owning a game library, because not always I play games, that require co-op or connection, but if the future is that you are opening browser and playing game from vast library of games on TV, for wich you pay subscription fee, then Stadia is on the right track. Actually, Stadia would be only one of many services and most probably that would be combined with Microsoft gaming. Looking in retrospect, most of the things are logical from what Microsoft was doing, but the question to me is always about if this is something I want as well. Looking on how automatic updates behaves on my Windows 10, it seems that 2022 is the year, I am abandoning Windows. And Stadia here is least thing I am worried about, because I don't.
Idk, I had a good time with shadow.tech? Mostly because I use Linux and wanted to play a game that doesn't port to Windows well (Roblox, due to anticheat not getting along with Wine).
GeForce Now and Stadia didn't have the games I wanted to play so I wasn't able to use them.
Stadia is a service. Actually very few people have the luxury of being able to choose their software. When compatibility, previous knowledge or an specific feature is key, people simply can't choose.
Stadia has no backwards compatibility, established user base, or ecosystem lock-in. Gmail and Android do, so despite having many of the same issues as Stadia, they’re incredibly popular
The commercial value of software is _nothing but reputation_. Would you buy software tools from a company about to go bankrupt? You pay for software with the idea that what you're not trusting your data and operations to a technological dead end. The problem here being that nobody is paying for software anymore in an ad-revenue model, meaning that companies have much less to lose doing that kind of shit.
I guess you didn't live through the "Nobody got fired for buying IBM" era, which later became the "Nobody got fired for buying Microsoft" era that seems to be ending.
I'd argue that Teams is bigger than Slack because Microsoft pulled a fast one, exploited their monopoly, and included it "for free" with the rest of their licenses, rather than getting people to sign up de novo. The fact that it's worse in every meaningful way than the competition, yet far wider used, highlights the whole problem quite neatly.
We have to use teams because teams is free. Despite it being terrible. There was also a push for us to switch from Miro to Microsoft whiteboard. Until a senior manager actually had to use whiteboard and they realised it was terrible.
Part of it is rational, because they see lots of chaos/noise in the market while having to make too many decisions. Following the "best practices" only saves them decision-making time. Might not be the "best" in practice, but at least they don't have to examine a gazillion options that are available.
The reputation they have of being the makers of the most popular desktop operating system and most popular office productivity suite. You may not like them but most of the businesses in the world use their software. I can’t believe they think it’s worth it to harm their professional image in exchange for whatever pennies they will be making by sticking in a layaway feature into their browser.
They don't care about reputation. Nearly every Windows user hates Windows, everyone knows that Windows it's a bad operating system, still it is the operating system that everyone uses for the fact that comes installed on every computer that you purchase and most people doesn't even know than an alternative exists.
I don't hate Windows 10. Neither does my extended family, nor peer group - who all use Windows. We always disable the telemetry stuff though and it works just fantastic.
Most people don't even think about their operating system. HN is so far from the general public in terms of preference and mindshare and it is important to remember that.
They'll still be the most popular of both of those things. I think what the parent commenter is getting at is that Microsoft already had a reputation for being greedy and forcing unwanted features onto users. It would be more accurate to say this jeopardizes their ongoing
attempt to rehabilitate their image.
I’m not forced anymore because I work at a nice company, but in several jobs I had before: yes. I was forced to use a specific OS, and a specific browser. It is still extremely common in enterprise.
And before you say I “should have changed jobs“: not everyone is a developer who can easily job-hop like me, though.
No, but the question was about Microsoft’s reputation. Whether I use the pay over time feature or not, Microsoft are hurting their reputation as a software maker and therefore their revenue from their paid products by signaling their willingness to insert irrelevant features into their software.
> Microsoft are hurting their reputation as a software maker and therefore their revenue from their paid products by signaling their willingness to insert irrelevant features into their software.
If you're not aware, the latest Office also has LinkedIn integration. Pretty much what I'd class as an irrelevant feature. This is nothing new.
For sure. I'm old enough that Microsoft's reputation is that of an exploitative, dirty-dealing, would-be monopolist. They appeared to get better after the DOJ and a number of competitors knocked them from their dominant position. But I've always suspected that was a change forced by circumstance, not some sort of deep inner improvement.
Meanwhile nearly every corp on earth supplies their employees with windows laptops. So besides being shitty moneygrabbers, there's no way you can avoid them.
IMO Microsoft is actively working to make computing more horrible.
Counterpoint: HUGE disclamer: I'm windows fangirl, and I really love the new Microsoft edge. I have it on my laptop, tablet and cellphone, and I even had it on Linux the last time I gave a chance to Linux.
Like you, at first I thought some features were sleazy, like the coupon. But after using it a bit, I like it: whenever I'm going to buy something on Amazon or somewhere else, I having a big popup telling me it's cheaper on this alternative store OR that I forgot to clip a coupon on amazon is REALLY helpful! It's like shopping.google.com right inside your browser, on a push basis.
It's really hard to make a product that's satisfactory to everybody. You may hate the coupon feature - but I love it. I'm not a big fan of debt to finance consumption, BUT maybe there's a student out there who needs that to splurge on cheap hardware during blackfriday and make a profit by parting it out on ebay?
Also, a feature that's just "meh" can be safely ignored, like the various things Word can do: no, you don't have to display every toolbar if you don't use them.
If the feature is worse than "meh", say if it goes to far, Edge can become a source to made a free software browser, like Chrome became chromium for people who value their freedom and privacy.
And considering all the naughty changes Google has been adding (ex: to make it harder to do ad blocking), maybe that's for the better: I'd rather have Microsoft employees fix the codebase and backport features from upstream, than volunteers: this frees the volunteers so they can concentrate on the more important (and easy stuff), and leave the boring stuff to Microsoft.
Is it more complicated to have chrome -> chromium -> edge -> edgium -> something you will be able to use?
Yes.
But so what? As long as it works, I don't care much.
I urge everyone not to ignore to ignore or dismiss this viewpoint as I do not believe it is an outlier. Without going into the issues associated with 'cheaper' solutions ( that might easily end up not being so cheap once you check the fine print; return restrictions and so on ), privacy implications of MS monitoring your shopping patterns and veiled advertising resulting from MS selling user space to highest bidder, we need to be able to address those and indicate to regular users that there is a real potential for harm that could result from this ( and they will have no recourse when that harm happens ).
So Microsoft is tracking all your checkouts? Why would you want that? And it’s not push, it’s pull because there is no way to store all data locally and keep it updated.
> If you use gmail or outlook or just forward your emails there, I've got bad news for you :)
That's why you shouldn't use those either if you care about privacy. You should use fastmail, zoho or some other service where you are the customer, not the product.
> We all pay more when coupons (cough cough affiliate codes) are automatically applied. It's not surprising that you like the appearance of saving money, your experience isn't special.
You need to think at the system level, and with the time dimension added.
Let's see how it would go down if I followed your advice:
- I use coupons, like everyone else: I then save money
- I take a moral grand stand and refuse to use them: I waste money
- magically (meaning I don't think it'll ever happen), people are inspired by my moral grand stand and almost everybody stops using coupons: everybody saves money
- someone doesn't care about morals, and start using coupon again: they save money
- they post about this "one weird trick", other people decide to join in, they try and realize it helps them save money, I do the same, and we're back to square 1.
And from that point on, more people will be using coupons until almost everybody again uses coupons.
You can't win a fight against the shared preferences of everyone else in the world.
If you think you can, great! Then the best tool is to use politics to legally forbid coupons. If it's such a great idea, you'll certainly have no problem finding a wide popular support for that?
If it's not so popular, then what do you think gives you the right to impose your preferences on the majority?
It may seem better to take this grand stand, but to me, it's pointless: you are just wasting money to feel good, with no chance to do anything else in a larger picture, but feel special or more enlightened.
I personally don't worry about coupons, I worry about how sites can use data about me to dynamically adjust prices to "what I'll pay", instead of giving the same price to everybody. From my understanding sites like Amazon have even been caught doing these practices before. And we already know places like Airline companies do this.
The problem is when sites like Amazon require accounts, there is not much to do to get around being tracked and having dynamic pricing come into play. At least with airlines you can VPN and use private browsing to try and avoid this practice.
There are already solutions: use tor to do price discovery, or report prices or find communities centered around prices like reddit.com/r/buildapcsales
Oh for sure, I even use services like camelcamelcamel on Amazon to ensure I am getting a good price. It's unfortunate that we have to rely on third party services just to get more fair consumer standards.
There's a huge difference between doing some discovery and using a vendor's own coupon codes versus affiliate codes automatically applied by a browser addon masquerading as a virtuous aid. This distinction seems to be have been lost on you. When you use affiliate codes that didn't actually earn your conversion, you are screwing over the company while rewarding corruption.
I don't understand it either. I can't fathom how none of the people working on this had the conscience to pull the emergency brakes before it's shipped? How was this product idea validated? Where's the data-driven decision making everyone is preaching about?
Not even conscience but foresight to see political or even regulatory issues with something that, if implemented the wrong way, could amount to predatory lending.
Sure, and some of it in the form of predatory lending financial instruments, some of which are regulated. And a company on the scale of MS entering into any new market will draw a lot of scrutiny. One in the business of lending money, even just through a tightly-integrated partnership, is going to draw even more. That's a lot to gamble on a browser initiative before Edge has the market share to throw its weight around.
I'm sure MS would love-- and is hoping-- to collect rents on purchases users might make anywhere, but this seems a very clumsy attempts. Possibly driven, as others have noted, by short-term incentives by product managers rather than anything more strategic.
"Microsoft is sacrificing its reputation" their rep has been a mixed bag (and I'm being kind, but I'm quite biased, having worked for SUN and VA Linux among other places) and they always seem to seek trashy new ways to squeeze a few million here and there, if users say nothing.
This is not new at all for them. There have been advertisements in Windows 10 for ridiculous games, and way back in Windows XP, Media Player would advertise the most ridiculous things including some paid online radio from South America (I guess it depended on the region -- today it just advertises Bing).
I’ve been generally happy with my switch to Edge, but am not a huge fan of this. However, I think you may be overestimating how much a non-technical person would dislike a feature like this. If anything, many would likely be happy to have layaway at their fingertips for all of their purchases.
Don't know about Amazon since they are irrelevant in my country but Klarna has gotten a lot of heat for this here in Sweden. Maybe the American market does not care but there are markets where pay day loans will hurt your reputation a lot.
These are not pay day loans. It is unsecured debt the same as a credit card. For a more specific example, this to me is no different than a Department store (e.g., Macy’s, Target, Sears, etc.) asking if you want to sign up for their store card when checking out. This isn’t new, at least in the US. It is just taking place via a new medium (it’s really not, but it’s new for Microsoft at least).
layaway is just stupid. if you can afford to make a monthly payment and get it in six months you can save the money for six months and collect the interest. living pay check to pay check doesn't enter into it. if you cant afford it you can't afford it.
As I noted in an adjacent comment, there is a $4 flat fee, and it is reasonable to assume the lender has expenses to pay, such as payroll and profit seeking investors, so there must be a cost to using their financing.
Regardless of what the marketing says, nothing is ever “free”. Typically, these types of small time lending operations for retail purchases with no collateral depend on people without impulse control control and poor cash flow management buying things they should not and then collecting a slow drip of money from some portion of them who will not be able to pay it off for a long time.
Not that I think it should be illegal, but it is generally considered to be a bottom feeder business, one that the esteemed people who work at Microsoft might be above. But apparently, they are not, and hence it is on Hacker News as a controversy.
I was curious how it compared to a credit card, since if you wanted a 4 payment over 6 week plan you could simply use a credit card and make an immediate payment of 1/4th to your card, and then 3 more payments of that amount over the next 6 weeks.
A quick internet search says that the average US credit card currently has an interest rate of 16%.
Paying off your credit card on the aforementioned schedule at that interest rate, assuming a monthly billing cycle that starts right before your purchase, you'll pay under $4 in interest if the purchase was under $487. If the purchase is over that, Zip is cheaper.
If your purchase comes in the middle of a billing cycle, the breakeven is $811.
(Both of those are assuming that you have nothing else on that card, so that the billing cycle in which you pay off the 4th payment will end with a 0 balance, and so there will be no interest for that cycle).
(Also I'm assuming you aren't using a rewards card. I'm using a card with 5% cash back on online purchases, making it quite a bit harder for Zip to beat the card).
Interestingly, I just noticed a Zip Pay option here on a UK retailer's site, and in this case there doesn't appear to be any flat fee involved; the 4 payments add up to exactly the standard retail price of the product. I guess this probably varies depending on local credit-issuing regulations.
(Checking the T&Cs shows that they do have a steep fee for any missed/late payments, in addition to whatever cut they're taking from the merchant. But it looks like here, the few weeks of credit really would be "free" to the customer provided payments are made on time. Not that I'd consider using them; my cashflow isn't so constrained that I need the service -- and if it was, I'd be more concerned about the risk of being late with a payment and getting stung for extra fees.)
> it is reasonable to assume the lender has expenses to pay, such as payroll and profit seeking investors, so there must be a cost to using their financing.
>Regardless of what the marketing says, nothing is ever “free”
In a world of low-interest rates, plentiful venture capital, and penetration pricing, things are often better than free.
Sometimes, but I do not see how it is possible in this case. That type of thing is done temporarily to gain a monopoly via network effects and then establish pricing power. If you cannot achieve that, then it is giving away money.
As well as the $4 fee mentioned, Zip and co also charge the merchant - in my country, 30 cents per transaction and 4-6% commission. Late payment interest is probably just gravy.
With schemes like these, all customers ultimately end up paying for this regardless if you use the service or not as merchants will have to add the costs to their prices.
> shoppers break their purchases into equal installment payments, often interest-free, which can allow shoppers to get their purchase upfront, instead of having to wait until it’s paid in full.
From the commenter JennaScout on the same page:
> Looks like you neglected to mention the $4 flat fee in the article?
>On a $35 purchase, that's 11% of the purchase cost spread over one month. Annualized, that's an astounding 250% APY. Even the most predatory credit cards top out at around 40% APY.
>All you've done is just baked predatory loans into your browser. Honestly, you should be ashamed.
Sure they do. Get a credit card with 0% interest on purchases and pay the balance before the interest free offer period expires. In many cases these cards to not charge any fee associated with the purchase.
I understand that the credit card company will still make a profit in many cases – even when they don't manage to collect any interest or fees. But the loan is free from the cardholder's point of view.
Depends what the interest rate is. In my 25 adult years of living in the US, I have seen no “buy now, pay later” scheme for small purchases with no collateral that results in the costs for the financing being less than the gains from investing.
The only one that works is the 2%+ credit card rewards, and that is because people who are not paying with credit cards that earn rewards subsidize those who do because merchants do not offer a lower price for the non rewards payment methods.
For the folks taking payday loans this is even worse. The whole feature is designed to make you spent more than you can afford, especially preying on the more desperate as opposed to the ones who could just afford the thing they where buying. Essentially this is just a micro-loan that gets prohibitively expensive when you miss a payment, which you are obviously more prone to when you have issues paying back regular loans already. Actually, it's exactly like a payday loan works and abusing the same people.
No, my argument is essentially "poor people who struggle with conventional loans will use this and get themselfes in even deeper trouble out of desperation". This is not going against the people that use such features, it's going against the most valuable conglomarate on earth that incorporated it into their webbrowser.
Agreed. Corporate know this can make money, and they do it. Managing your expenses is not their job,…which is, yeah, probably true. But there are things called social responsibility, too.
I can see it happened with numerous service (at least in my country) that give users loan via an app, without usual paperworks. But many of said people are the one that have problem with their money management or lack financial literacy in the first place, and this add even more debt to theirs.
Giant corporation prey on ignorance of already struggling people. Ruthless, when you think about it.
Not everyone here is rich, but the demographics certainly skew in that direction.
The deeply out of touch comments here demonstrate that, even if this feature isn't appealing to HN users, it is appealing to a very wide range of people whom you are unlikely to see on HN.
While I generally agree with your sentiment, you are making a wild guess on how much revenue this brings/is projected to bring, and then you base your entire argument around it.
The fact that Edge lags behind in desktop browser share is absurd. Looking at some charts online it appears to have 1/5 the usage of Chrome. That’s crazy. 80% of people are finding, installing, and using Chrome when a default is provided by the OS.
On the other hand, the continuous own-goals like this leave me unsurprised. It’s like Microsoft wants to create a bad browser.
The reason might be because ten years ago we all went home to our moms and pops and told them we had finally found a perfect browser for them that was much safer and leaner and better in every way and even though the switch from IE to Chrome was hard on them, they went along. Now they are masters of their browser and will not listen to us proclaiming that "well, I was wrong to put you on Chrome, but this time I really have found the bestest browser".
Also, there's a lack of benign browsers in the market. Even team FF tries to make your mom buy things she doesn't really want or need, with their Firefox Suggest feature.
Chrome is still the best, by far. No ads and random anti-patterns I don't want in the interface (looking at you Firefox), no MS shenanigans (10x worse than FF), it just gets out of the way and does its job. Bonus it runs DRM (I don't like it but necessary evil), casts to Chromecast, Google is still the best search engine, etc...
chrome does have anti-patterns, they're just far more insidious. like being logged into google meaning also being logged into the browser. they continuous refusal to block 3rd party cookies in any way, due to also being an advertisement company that massively benefits from them
IMO it's going to get pushed back even further. Their FLoC and other tracking-but-not tech is getting pushback, and they're not going to sacrifice revenue for privacy.
they pushed it back to allow for more time to figure out new ways to do targeted advertisement, because everyone hated their FLoC system. this is once again, google acting in its own interest as an advertisement company.
Google can't win? Their idea of removing third party cookies was on the condition everybody would accept FLoC, so Google still makes money while everybody else doesn't. Yes, it's an antitrust concern.
You spread misinformation. Any ad company can use FLoC.
Let me be very explicit for you: privacy advocates say 3rd party cookies are bad b/c they allow tracking yet the eu blocks google from removing them b/c they think it might hurt their own ad tracking companies.
> No ads and random anti-patterns I don't want in the interface
This is slightly ironic, since Chrome exists solely so that Google can more effectively sell ads on every page you visit and track everything you do. I guess sites themselves aren’t technically part of the browser UI though.
> Chrome exists solely so that Google can more effectively sell ads on every page you visit and track everything you do.
No Chrome exists because Google didn't have a desktop OS at the time and they needed a platform. They developed things like V8 to make the browser a better platform for things like Maps.
And FF is an example of a browser that exists solely to sell ads. Mozilla has no other revenue stream. That's why they shove ads into your start screen.
At least Google has some non-ad revenue. Diverse, useful products. And I can trust that my data will only be used to match ads to me via algorithm, they're not going to sell my actual data, unlike most other players out there. And there's no ads in the Google products I pay for. MS puts ads in paid products, Samsung puts ads in paid products, most OEMs actually. Google keeps the ads on their webpages, they don't creep into things you pay for.
I am sorry to wake you up, but the existence of Google revenue is based on what it knows about you. Of course they don’t sell your data, because they are big enough to use that data all by themselves, giving them competitive advantage.
You praise them that everything works when you pay for Google, but that is every evil companys dream; make user hostile anti-patterns for free users and get them happy paying customers. The whole Youtube in these days is one the worst websites in the web, because of the systematic addition of user-hostile features for free users. Do you really want to support service like that?
What it comes to FF, there are no really other options to get some revenue from the browser. At least they are now trying with the VPN.
> I am sorry to wake you up, but the existence of Google revenue is based on what it knows about you. Of course they don’t sell your data, because they are big enough to use that data all by themselves, giving them competitive advantage.
And? Thats far better than what most companies do. Credit card companies for example. There's a whole slew of 'traditional' companies that sell products and STILL sell your information.
I'd rather they have my data and allow me to use it for useful things (contextual search, maps, etc...) and use it to match me ads to make money versus companies like MS that would make me pay for their products, still shove ads in my face, then try to lock me into more products with a bunch of dark patterns, etc...
> The whole Youtube in these days is one the worst websites in the web, because of the systematic addition of user-hostile features for free users. Do you really want to support service like that?
Youtube enables creators in a way nothing before it did. It literally created a new type of publishing. As for ads on free Youtube, it's still far less than all the commercials that permeated cable TV since its inception.
Google is far less hostile to users and creators, free or paid, than cable companies and traditional media companies were for decades.
My trust in Chrome dropped a lot when they started implementing things like Native Client allowlisted to only work on google.com subdomains (giving Google properties a competitive advantage that nobody else had) and Dartium (an internal-politics-focused attempt to kill JS), proposing WebBundles as an attempt to push AMP into the browser, using UA sniffing to roll out Google+ features only to Chrome even when Firefox worked on them, conveniently breaking Google properties in non-Chrome browsers, etc. Hanlon's razor applies to some of this, but regardless of intentions it's all very convenient for them.
> using UA sniffing to roll out Google+ features only to Chrome even when Firefox worked on them, conveniently breaking Google properties in non-Chrome browsers, etc.
You reminded me of when they broke Microsoft Edge[0] by adding an empty (useless) div over the video element. IIRC that ruined its hardware acceleration, too.
uBlock Origin is great. It's installed on every machine I use, and for good reason. AdGuard is pretty cool, too, but they're more of a commercial effort.
Honestly, I don't think this rings true anymore. Google's search quality has significantly dropped. I was astonished when someone brought up Google: there were four(!) ads in the SERP, disguised as organic results.
The actual results, the organic ones, are very similar to DuckDuckGo[0] too. I've been using DDG for a long while now. Great search engine.
FF puts ads in the page you start on. There's no ads on Chrome when you open a new tab, the default page when it starts up, etc... No ads in the UI. And when you pay for things, no ads. No ads in my Gmail, on my Youtube (yes I pay for Premium), etc... Versus other companies that'll put ads in paid products (MS, Samsung, others).
Firefox's new tab page mechanism seems to recommend very suspicious insurance schemes too. Do they vet what they advertise? Actually, as an off-topic thing, how would you even advertise on FF?
Edge used to do this while having all the Chrome QoL features that make it better than Safari. Now they're eating away at that cause they're idiots. The Windows 11 era of Windows sucks
I really don't get it. I switched to Edge on Mac a while ago because it was more compatible than Safari but less bloaty than Chrome.
But I don't think they have anywhere near enough market share yet to start milking it. There is _nothing_ keeping me tied to Edge, and I haven't even really started recommending it to people yet.
Chrome is a terrifying window into the internet. To say it is the “best” is a bankrupt technical praise with no regards of privacy or the fact that Google knows more about you than you do. It has a monopoly on this.
Let’s not become more dystopian. Google is one of those evil companies that hardly get bad press on HN along with TikTok.
On paper this makes it even weirder, you would think the company that made its money from advertising would have done this - not the company that made its money letting people write VBA and macros
It feels like a very "enterprisey" way of thinking. Where business deals and partnerships take precedence over user experience. I'm reminded of how the Java installer bundled (or still bundles?) an Ask toolbar for some reason.
It seemed such a counterproductive way to popularise a platform, as it immediately shredded their credibility, to seem the same level as that of some random company peddling malware.
>I would be amazed if we were talking Firefox, but Google pushes Chrome down your throat pretty hard.
Exactly. IIRC, every time you use Google, Gmail or Youtube, from any non-Chrome browser, you get ads like "Everything works better on Chrome, wanna try it?" shoved in your face every step of the way.
So no surprise Chrome owns the web when Google owns the most visited websites in the world.
IIRC Google intentionally had a weird non-standard <div> placed in Youtube that would break rendering under old non-chromium Edge to hurt user experience and to force Edge users to Chrome which AFAIK was the straw that broke the camel's back and forced Microsoft to throw in the towel and move new Edge onto Chromium as it is today.
> IIRC Google intentionally had a weird non-standard <div> placed in Youtube that would break rendering under old non-chromium Edge to hurt user experience and to force Edge users to Chrome which AFAIK was the straw that broke the camel's back and forced Microsoft to throw in the towel and move new Edge onto Chromium as it is today.
Yeah, you're right, they did do that[0]. Just posted about this in another comment.
A lot of developers dunk on Google for Chrome pushing people to sign in to their Google account for sync.
For elderly non-tech folks like my Dad's close friend, signing into Chrome Profile/Sync (whatever it's now called) is like "signing into the internet". "I can check my e-mail, browse the internet". He doesn't remember a single password, except for Google and Facebook. He doesn't know "what passwords do".
If any other browser opens up for whatever reason (sometimes PDF files open in Edge), he's totally at sea.
Chrome itself benefits from being pushed by Google properties, including it being the only ad on the Google homepage. Back in the day it took off in popularity after being bundled with Flash Player.
It looks good on paper but we both know a large amount of that is due to the dark patterns Microsoft employs in Windows to force people into using Edge[0][1].
How could a website work with Chrome and not Edge? Just user agent sniffing ignoring the Chrome and specifically choosing not to work with Edge? I can't imagine that's common at all.
Sadly it is common for products made outside Silicon Valley. I even had a website once say that my Chrome version had to be between A and B, and wouldn't accept a Chrome version greater than B.
Shooting yourself in the foot would be a correct characterization. Would be fun to see a video of the meeting when they decided this was a great idea.
It almost signals a change in leadership that took place at the Edge team few months back, and a new product direction that Microsoft may regret in the future.
> I received email from two people who told me that Microsoft Edge enabled synching without warning or consent, which means that Microsoft sucked up all of their bookmarks.
This just happened to me last week. Microsoft Edge turned on syncing without my permission, with options including passwords and payment methods turned on.
I only used it for logging into Microsoft products but I don't even think I want to do that anymore, due to the loss of trust.
They also have their coupon thing [1] which is an anti-consumer feature. If I wanted them scanning my shopping carts I can get an addon. I assume they're building a profile on me with that data.
I honestly thought Edge would be able to take market share from Chrome because it was pretty good for a while if you were willing to log in to your MS account on all your devices. I like the syncing. The QR code scanning to get something onto my phone is handy.
I thought MS was going to make a less creepy version of Edge. Now it seems like the opposite. They're going to build a 90s style toolbar infected monstrosity on top of Chromium. For shame!
Microsoft needs to do everything they can to promote Edge in order to capture market share.
Edge and Microsoft have nowhere near the browser share needed to pull this behavior. And this differentiator is a detractor for me rather than a useful feature.
But then again this wasn't built for the end-users, this is clearly revenue base. Just another reason to not use Edge.
They're riding the line of unfairly non-competitive behaviour again. They haven't learnt. Seems they just got better as an organisation at hiding their malignancy behind a facade of propriety.
It might be different legally, but it's the same scummy behavior that I'd like to see punished. Maybe it's time for updated laws so having two or three global competitors isn't considered ok.
But how much money can they possibly be making from a deal like this? It surely is a blip on MS’ radar. That’s what so confusing about dumb moves like this while Edge is still trying to gain market share.
They don't need any promotion. They'll just achieve domination through bundling edge with windows and making it impossible to switch.
I used to have a more positive version of microsoft up until the point they started flexing their evil muscles to push low quality products into technically unsophisticated users. Edge+Bing+Office+Windows feeding on each other is the greatest example right now.
Gladly we acted as quickly as possible where I worked to leave github when they announced the msft acquisition, so at least my part is covered.
As if Windows itself is free. I mean it technically is, you can use it just fine without activation, but isn't the cost of these licenses supposed to pay for everything?
The release a new Chromium-based browser, Edge - and it's well received, people actually like it as an alternative to Chrome. Sure, it has a very long way to go in terms of market share, but it's on a solid footing.
And now they seem determined to give it a bad name - I can imagine corporations not wanting software like this in their networks, and mandating Chrome instead...
Their major competitors have the smart strategy: Skim a small amount off the top quietly and forever (Apple, Google, and Facebook). The perfect rent-seekers. Microsoft doesn't want to put in the hard work/time/cost to create a comparable skimming operation, so they take ugly shortcuts like this.
For one specific example, the Windows Store is trash. It has been trash for years. The visual refresh in Windows 11 hasn't fixed what is wrong with it (e.g. majority scam apps, difficult to locate stuff, difficult to evaluate the legitimacy/low trust). Microsoft needs to work hard/spend resources/put in the time to improve the experience, and then it will be a revenue generator, but why do that when you can do lazy stuff like this?
Microsoft could be selling paid upgrades that add legitimately value to Windows that sell themselves, but again that requires actual hard work.
Maybe because nobody needs it. People are used to buying Windows software from elsewhere. I am in this category as well. When I need software I look by searching I have no desire to ever visit those stores.
It can be really nice to have an official way to download and install software in one click. For a few years after the windows store was released, I used to look there first for software but I was always disappointed. They never managed to make it good enough that anything I wanted would be published there.
>"It can be really nice to have an official way..."
Windows store started with only being able to serve UWP applications that were really constrained in what they could do. I just laughed when my competitors went that way as they'd lost some rather important features.
As a person I just hate an "official ways" as in my opinion they are detrimental to customers but to each their own.
It could be really awesome. Imagine if you could take a plain APPX package [1] and publish it on your website. That could be set up to integrate with the whole store platform so users could optionally get the benefit of auto-updates and optionally log in and make in app purchases.
There's so much low hanging fruit when it comes to improving the user experience on Windows that I can't even understand what Microsoft is trying to do.
> The visual refresh in Windows 11 hasn't fixed what is wrong with it
They made it even worse. In the old store, it was possible to install stuff like python or powershell without an account. With the new one, it insists on Microsoft account.
Microsoft has never had a primary focus on retail consumers.
The tools available on enterprise Windows platforms are vast compared to what an individual user can control on their standalone machine.
These intrusive new Edge features have not appeared on my corporate desktop that is joined to Active Directory, and they likely never will.
For individual consumers that prefer Chrome, it is likely time to install and learn a new operating system.
Google could take some action to stop this. There could be a legal approach involving antitrust, but Google has its own problems with that issue at the moment, and action would likely have to be coordinated with Mozilla.
Alternately, Google could force technologies into Chromium that compromise Microsoft, but are not sufficiently hostile to prompt a fork.
I have thought that a tight binding of Go into Chromium, similar to Mozilla's actions with Rust, might make the entire market rethink C# and the .NET CLR.
Kotlin can also be deployed at the JavaScript layer, and that would be an interesting platform to force-feed to Edge.
Google has likely already had extensive internal discussions on transforming Chromium into a poison pill for Windows.
It would and to certain extent it does especially with startups etc. Where they dropped the ball is not being serious about the enterprise support. There are other reasons as well like attaching Google's name to the product there by making it non-serious (as in free/personal vs enterprisey/serious) due to Gmail being associated with personal email. If they are serious they should have gone with a separate brand with competent support.
Despite all the above reasons, the main reason for the current zero competition is because for all enterprises,using azure AD is a natural progression from their much abused on-prem AD which has been linked as the primary mechanism for user auth across all kinds of products (MS and non MS). To be honest, MS doesn't have to do anything now. Just sit back and collect the money (and once in a while acquire things that have potential to become enterprisey like the GitHub).
Where I work, Office is being used less & less in favor of Google docs, so I'm not sure what the future holds. MS bundling OS/Office licenses more agressively I'm guessing will be one factor.
As a side note, this increased use of Docs is unfortunately out of sync with security policy where I work. Certain types of data are only allowed to be shared through an encrypted portal that auto-deletes the file... Unless you put that data in a Google Sheet and hit the "share" button.
Google bounces incoming mail on mailboxes that are locked for "suspicious" activity or logins. I've had it happen a few times as a result of a false positive and it's horrible. It's obvious no one at Google ever sits down and asks "will this be good for our users?"
I have a free 50 user legacy account with Google Workspace and I only use it for personal stuff. I don't trust it for business.
It makes sense if you are an amoral product manager at a large company with monopolistic tendencies.
The way I see it, there are two basic economic activities: value creation and money extraction. Classic open source is totally the former. Ditto the sort of artist painting murals in the alleys of San Francisco. [1]
Most things end up with some of both. E.g., all the entrepreneurs on HN who have a good idea and make a product. Value creation is where they start, but they need to pay the bills, so they then turn to monetization.
But for some people, they start with cash extraction. Their first question looking at anything is, "How do I get money from this?" Value creation is done grudgingly if at all. So when they see something like a browser, they think, "Wow, look at all the money flowing through this. How do I deflect a portion of that money into my pockets?" Whether it harms the user or the ecosystem is irrelevant to them except to the extent there will be blowback that harms the cash extraction.
To me that's the ethics of a parasite and it's revolting. But to a disturbing number of people, that's just good sense.
Bad product management. You can bet the team is like "WTF are you doing asking for this?!", and they're like "we need to hit or OKRs and I need an impactful $$$ win to get my promotion, deal with it".
Edge is incredible in terms of UI (vertical tabs and collections are incredible), but I switched from Chrome because it was less bloaty and spyish. It's quickly becoming worse than Chrome here, it's like they're doing everything they can to make me switch to Vivaldi or Brave
Both Vivaldi and Brave have their advantages, but I had switched away from them. Vivaldi was too slow at times and some keyboard shortcuts in some apps (Google Docs, etc.) didn't work. Brave doesn't support Netflix and some other streaming services (for a noble reason, I believe, but - in the end, it just didn't work).
I used to love and use Opera back in 2000's. These days, I can't find a single browser that has all I want, so I ended up using multiple ones all the time.
The world revolves on the Internet, and all browsers are absolute crap, for one reason or the other. As software engineers, we should be ashamed it's got to this point.
The thing that saddens me the most is what Mozilla has become. Now the choice is who we get spied from, or Safari which is available only if you're willing to be tied to Apple's walled garden.
If only Brave could pull their head out of the crypto ass and release a decent, crypto free and paid version of their browser. But crypto pays more, like spying pays more, so we're left with shitty software running the world.
Brave definitely supports Netflix. It just asks if you want to enable DRM first. It's an option, like in Firefox, but it shouldn't be hard to enable at all. It asks you when needed.
I apologize, last time I tried there wasn't yet this simple popup dialog Brave shows now, and I had issues making Netflix work in Brave some ~1.5 years ago.
There was this (mis)conception a while ago about FF's speed compared to Chrome. Also, its UI looked a bit outdated (not that you couldn't skin it) compared to Chrome, Opera, etc. But with the recent changes in the past 2-3 years, FF has proven once again to be superior in almost all aspects. It even looks and feels more modern than Chrome. Couple that with the way the redesigned the mobile app (esp. on Android) and you get users like me who ditch Chrome on all platforms and start using FF again.
I've used Windows and Linux interchangeably since 2005, but for the past year I was very happy with Windows 10 and the new Chromium-based Edge. I was able to turn off or remove all the distracting elements, and it was clean and fast. Then I got a new laptop recently and decided, for various reasons, to use Linux again as my host operating system, but it was honestly not easy to justify because my old Windows 10 install was so good. Now, from everything I've seen about Windows 11 (haven't tried it yet myself, admittedly) and things like this about Edge, I'm feeling like I escaped the Microsoft ecosystem just in time!
Bloatware is a far too benign term for this. The browser should treat financial transactions like the post office treats a letter - never mess with the contents, just move it where it needs to go. This is a major breach of trust. It pisses me off and I don't even use Edge (or Chrome, or Windows) unless I have to, which is rare.
Analog world analogy: Post office inserting advertisements for financing into sealed private letters.
Yeah I don't have an anti Microsoft sentiment like the loud posters in these threads and I'm actually interested in chrome alternatives for cross platform browser (chrome battery usage is abysmal) but this shit makes me permanently ignore Edge. Bundling 3rs party commercial extensions in the browser - no thanks.
edge isn't a real chrome alternative from a technological standpoint. it's the same thing reskinned. the only browsers that are still a true alternative at this point are firefox and safari
Edge does tend to have far better battery usage, however. Just because it shares the same base does not mean there have not been optimisations along the way.
Microsoft Edge’s Zip payments integration is already available in the Canary and Dev channels, and it will roll out to everyone in the stable release of Microsoft Edge 96
Edge 96 released to Stable channel two days ago.
My prediction is blowback to this quintessentially stupid product decision will result in it getting pulled within the next few weeks and the firing or transition to a different unit of whatever moron approved this PR disaster.
Their north star should be taking market share back from Google, not getting sidetracked with these piddling income schemes or anything else. It is worth so much more to them in the long run to break Chrome’s monopoly than anything in my short term. So if privacy is what people want, give it to them now and figure out monetization after you’ve beaten Chrome.
Well they have been a bit more restricted in terms of privacy exploitation though their usual telemetry is there of course. MS just love telemetry :( So much they won't allow us a choice in the matter.
But they have been pushing it a bit as a more privacy centric version of Chrome right?
Tbh I never really saw the point in it especially after they moved to chromium. It's not much better at privacy than Chrome. It doesn't work any better because it's really just Chrome. It doesn't add any features Chrome doesn't have except for O365 users that get some integration there. So why are we supposed to love it? I thought it was more interesting when they made their own engine.
I still find it a weird value proposition as a user. I use it for work but privately Firefox does me just fine.
Jesus Christ! Even for M$, this is beyond the pale - combining pseudo-monopoly power, dark UX patterns, and high-interest credit. What's next, will airlines start dropping adverts for payday loans when their flight path goes over a poor neighborhood?
It seems like we are in the "extending credit to broke people is so lucrative that regular non-finance companies are getting in on it" stage of the current bubble.
To be fair, if implemented correctly (read "as an opt-in"), that would have been a pretty useful feature. The browser already allows you to setup credit/debit card as payment options. Having an option to setup other payment providers sounds like a natural extension of that. The main issue is how they did it: as a forced feature screaming at your face, instead of something you have to setup yourself. On the flip side, I can see how difficult it would be discoverability of the feature if they just stashed it in a menu somewhere. Neither extreme is perfect. I would have erred on the side of not annoying most users.
The fact that the payments are interest free makes it clear that they make their money by people failing to make their payments on time and paying a presumably high (and certainly unstated in that box) penalty rate. In other words, the goal is to direct vulnerable people at a predatory loan shark. That's hardly a useful feature, no matter how it's implemented.
"Interest-free" is at best misleading and arguably an outright lie. There is a $4 fee to take out the loan.
While a flat fee is not interest in the strictest terms, if they were using APR, which is the standard way of talking about interest rates for consumer loans, it would be a non-zero rate.
To make it even worse it's only interest free if the payments are made on time. I'm sure the business model expects a certain amount of people to miss a payment and end up owing credit card level interest amounts, on top of the initial fee.
I've been on the precipice of dumping Edge based on their constant re-enabling of the shopping popups, this might be the shove from behind that makes me jump.
Very telling of the financial state of the average American. Everyone is hawking interest-free monthly payments, usually through Klarna (which Microsoft Store partnered with, making this especially strange). Great tool if used responsibly, but given companies advertising increasingly expensive crap and how most Americans can't save $1,000, you know this will just increase the class of the permanently-indebted
It all depends on what these interest free payments are competing with. If it is credit cards, you could tell the story that consumers see through the ruse of credit cards and are looking for a better deal.
I feel like every browser but maybe Chrome has tried to shove some kind of bloatware into their product. For example, Firefox has tried for ages to cram Pocket down peoples throats and people seem fine with that. I don't agree with any of this bloat, but it seems like people are okay with some of this kind of bloat as long as it's only from certain companies.
I'm putting together a new laptop for my very elderly father-in-law - he basically just wants it for card games and e-mail. He doesn't even web browse.
I was planning an S-mode windows laptop for security reasons - Windows Marketplace only.
But first I looked into it and was shocked that they've replaced Solitaire, Hearts, and Minesweeper with freemium products that are bloated with ads and have a monthly or yearly fee to get rid of the ads. And of course, how many ads have horrifying notices like "your computer is being hacked!!!!" ? Perfect for an elderly and forgetful luddite.
And because of the onerous signing to submit to the marketplace, even common open-source software isn't there.
This is a massive step back by Microsoft - he just wants his old Solitaire and Hearts and to play some Sudoku, but they killed those and replaced them with freemium subscription products and the rest of the Windows Marketplace is similar.
So this is tangentially-related to the article, but my point: very disappointed to see MS jumping on the modern business model for software.
Everybody treats this news like something out of thin air. Microsoft Edge has been "enhancing" e-commerce transactions for a while now: coupons, cashback, and price histograms. I actually like those features although their usefulness is mostly marginal. When Edge ensures me that I'm buying it at the lowest price, it's reassuring and welcome, but the coupon experience is 99% "we've tried all possible coupons and sorry, nothing worked". I don't even know what's up with the cashback thing.
Anyway, Edge has been integrating these features for a while, they've been welcomed or at least haven't been an issue. Now, they added another feature which seems like a minor extension to what's already there, and I can understand why the team didn't think it wasn't as big a deal as it was discussed here.
I like Edge, I think it's the only candidate that can surpass Chrome at some point, and I want the team to be positively responsive to the criticism here. Fingers crossed.
Apples market share is further increasing. The mismanagement of Microsoft is detrimental to the computing market. Someone needs to be grabbing control of Microsoft and giving it a singular vision. Fire those that undermine it. Less employees, Less marketing, more engineering. Heart disease will kill this company in the long term.
Wow I am shocked this is remotely legal. I don’t understand why the government isn’t doing something. They got in trouble for so much less for what they pulled in the 90s with IE.
I felt the same about the new math solver[1] they've added. Sure it's useful but it doesn't belong in a web browser's base install, this is what extensions are for. Same with Zip pay, if you want to use it, you go and install the extension.
These buy now pay later companies are going gangbusters. How do they all survive when they essentially do the same thing? Isn't it becoming a commodity? What's to stop Citi or any other traditional bank from adding this feature to their arsenal?
Like telehealth being relatively easy to spin up today with tools like Wheel and Twilio - are the margins in this here game the moves? Are these pay later companies _owned_ by incumbent banks and just rebrands?
Or is it just sign of the times in todays startup space?
Banks can't replicate these services because they are regulated and would be prohibited from lending to some of the customers based on their credit history.
If you can't afford to pay $35-1,000 upfront, the rest of your financial situation would be pretty grim.
These companies are trying to dodge regulation claiming they're "self regulating", if they don't succeed in pushing that narrative then the party's over.
Advertising payment processors is ok behaviour by Microsoft but attempting to make Windows actually respect the users default browser choice is "improper" behaviour by Mozilla[0][1].
I'm on the fence on this one. I don't like how the feature is pushed "in your face" like that. And at the same time, I trust Microsoft more than the average nowadays company to be respectful of privacy and my data - albeit the average is low and this is a low standard to achieve.
If you don't make money out of selling your customer's data, then you need to find ways to actually collect money from them. The how it's been done is disgusting, but I think I'm aligned with the why.
Thinking of where possibly MS would get revenue streams from Windows it seems pretty clear they have to do something. Realistically how home users buy Windows for full retail price?
I'm guessing EU aren't going to like this. Microsoft might not be the primary browser vendor anymore but this still is similar to stuff they've already been sued for. Also I figure that such a focus on retail shopping might annoy their enterprise customers. Like what are their employees going to do all day. If you ask Microsoft it's spending their ssalary (and getting into debt),not doing their job.
I agree with everything the author said, except for If you don’t want a browser that encourages unnecessary purchases, I recommend Firefox which made me nearly piss myself laughing. Mozilla can't go a month without shilling some new garbage on the Update or New Tab screen.
It's a marketing half-truth. "You'll pay a fixed fee instead of interest." is the real truth, the "zero interest" is to trick people to think there is nothing else to pay. I know people will turn their noses up and say "trick people, that's unpossible" but it really is a trick, very popular in marketing terms, using psychology against people to separate their money from them.
Typical supoptimization that is probably suggested by some management consultant that has been hired by some department by an incompetent manager that him/herself is struggling (due to incompetence).
Please lobby your software provider to release Linux builds.
I only use Windows because some software do not exist and don't work on Linux.
If not for that I would have run Linux long time ago.
I don’t grasp the allure of Buy Now Pay Later. Isn’t that precisely what credit cards provide? Are they pushing more charges to the retailer and less interest charges to the consumer?
It’s popular with young people who can’t get or don’t want credit cards (just look at the marketing for Klarna to see the target market). Customers and merchants like it for the same reason - it allows a transaction to happen that otherwise wouldn’t. Merchant gets their money, customer gets their product and pays no fees if they repay on schedule.
Obviously if you can’t afford an item without this type of system then the probability that you miss a payment is high, and then these companies make their profit.
Every single instance of this type of thing that I’ve looked at has had a fee for using their services, either a flat amount or a percentage of the transaction cost, so that even if they’re interest-free (and don’t they announce that loudly!) they’re not cost-free.
> Are they pushing more charges to the retailer and less interest charges to the consumer?
This is my understanding of how the “no-interest” BNPL offers work. You can buy a Peloton bike and finance it through Affirm for 0% interest. The only way that scheme works for Affirm is if Peloton pays a kickback to Affirm for handling the financing.
I just read through their latest 10Q and it confirmed what I assumed:
“From merchants, we earn a fee when we help them convert a sale and facilitate a transaction. While merchant fees depend on the individual arrangement between us and each merchant and vary based on the terms of the product offering, we generally earn larger merchant fees on 0% APR financing products. For the three months ended September 30, 2021 and 2020, 0% APR financing represented 43% and 46%, respectively, of total GMV facilitated through our platform.”
They also buy and service some of the loans they make.
Ideally you could just wait until you saved money to buy your smart bike.
The issue here is at least with a credit card I'm motivated to pay off the debt ASAP, and shop on total price vs what the payments are.
Super smart bike for 99$ a month sounds better than Smart bike for 2500$.
I recall as a teenager I went to a Rent a Center and they pitched a 50$ a week laptop. For like 24 weeks. Absolutely idiotic, I saved 400$ and brought one cash.
This type of thing preys upon the fiscally illiterate. You should NEVER use this junk. Keep one or two credit cards and pay them off ASAP.
Presumably, people who use Buy Now Pay Later do not qualify for credit cards. Hence the extremely high effective interest rates (referred to as some type of “fee” instead of interest).
i use firefox. been using this since 2004 i think. never was i forced to "abandon" it, it worked for me. I can't say the same about how IE/Edge is handling stuff.
Why? i get the whole "cooperation" with businesses and financial institutions who see this as "free real estate" but i am not sure how to take it. eh.
Not enough people seems to be aware that even if you remove Edge, Microsoft will force you to open certain web links in their own browser, even going as far as to prevent Mozilla/Firefox for brute-force solving the problem.
Apparently their next version will be ready for desktop use, they just need to add some super basic features (pin-to-top?) to their WM and they're there. Next year could finally be the year they're ready for Windows to be good on desktops!
It’s just a piece of software they’re trying to monetize. Not sure Microsoft would make more money if usage were higher without doing things like this. I agree that it’s annoying, I use and like the browser.
If I'm not willing to pay for a browser, why should I be surprised when the free software tries to make money? Yeah, it's not ideal and I'll turn the feature off if it makes it public. But I'm choosing to use a free browser instead of paying for it.. So I can't blame a company for trying to monetize it.
If you use Edge, I suppose you already paid for Windows, didn't you?
Will similar "features" appear also in Notepad, Calculator, Character Map, etc.? Because, technically, you didn't pay for them either, they are just free application that got installed with Windows.
Okay, maybe it is not as bad as I make it sound. Perhaps it would be nice if anytime you display a unicode character in Character Map, it offered you an option to buy a t-shirt with this character printed...
And a "Search Bing in Sidebar" context menu option when selecting text.
And the default Chromium keyboard shortcut for searching selected text with your default search engine has been hardcoded to open Bing.
And the new tab page searchbar takes an extra step to have it not search Bing when you have configured a different default search engine.
And recently they added a neat search button in browser console events. Unfortunately it only does Bing, and news articles about Amazon worker strikes are not helpful when debugging web worker errors....
There's a lot of good stuff happening with this browser, but I'm definitely getting close to my breaking point.
There's nothing good happening on edge. The only thing happening are those sorts of things.
It's also funny how for example they still manage to get basic things wrong, like a smooth and instantaneous gui, good design (made to improve user experience, rather than cross-selling), etc.
Freecell has ads in it now, and tries to push a subscription service. Microsoft is really doing themselves a dirty by trying to nickel-and-dime its customers with stuff like this.
The problem is, there is no paid browser you can pay for at the moment, so you don’t really have any choice in the matter.
If some current/former Mozilla devs fork Firefox and start a new paid browser, I would gladly give money to them. ($5 per month subscription would probably be the sweet spot for such a paid browser program.)
I don't use these services, but it's hard to see this as anything but a value judgement against "buy now pay later" schemes. If we set that aside, and (for the sake of argument) recognize this service as value-adding for many users, it does seem to be in line with the rest of that feature (the option hooks into Chromium's autofill/payments integration, so you'd usually see saved credit cards here).
In fact I don't really see what the difference is between this and a credit card (where you do pay later, after all, hence "credit"). Is it that it shows even before you've signed up for Zip? So it's equivalent to asking if you want to sign up for a new credit card. I guess that's somewhat annoying. And being unable to disable it is also annoying, but equivalent to the exact same schemes I see baked into the merchant site all over the web.
Does anyone know why Zip isn't already implemented as a credit card with delayed interest rates?
The value judgement is because they target the people that can't afford it by making them think they can.
This kind of scheme works fine if you're good at managing finances. You can plan ahead and set the money for the repayments aside. Though if you are good at it, I wouldn't see why you'd bother.
Unfortunately, the kind of people that need this kind of scheme to buy stuff, are generally really bad at managing their finances. Otherwise they would have had buffer savings and could buy the thing just out of pocket. In the end it brings them only deeper into the debt hole.
The only thing I'd take a loan (mortgage) for is a house, personally. Even my cars I paid all in cash (my most expensive one was a 2200 euro Volvo and it served me well for many years :)
Personally I think ethically it's similar to the tobacco industry. They're exploiting a weakness of some people. Sure, they could resist it but some people are just not capable of doing so.
I think HN drastically underestimates how many average folks would actually enjoy having an easy to use interest free payment option. Not everyone lives in the valley and makes 6+ figures. With Christmas right around the corner I'm betting a ton of folks will welcome the option to spread their bills over 6 payments for free.
I don't know about other countries, but at least the UK has a very large website/community dedicated to household financials, bills and so on, called Money Saving Expert. It's more than likely that such services would be mentioned, if your country has a corresponding site.
The business model of companies like this is preying on people that don't pay on time. How are you defending such a scummy practice? It's preying on poor people that don't know better. I've seen family and friends get fucked by these companies.
The "thanks to us, they can now afford Christmas" excuse is what the sociopathic executive of a loan shark company uses to justify its existence.
I'm trying to put myself in the headspace of thinking Mozilla is more morally bankrupt than Microsoft but I'm really struggling with it. I suppose that some people believe this means Microsoft marketing has done a good job of rehabilitating their image over the last 10 years.
My guess is that there's a fair amount of politics behind such a statement.
The kind of politics that has to do with SJWs, Eich, etc rather than any purely technical engineering decisions.
You are quite perceptive. Yes, I find the ousting of Eich to be extremely distasteful. I haven't used a Mozilla product since. Can't speak on the SJW thing though, I have no "anti-SJW" feelings in general, esp. as it relates to Mozilla.
Do you know some magic formula that would have enabled Mozilla to halt Chrome's "unchecked rise", given the behemoth that was pushing it?
Despite having only a fraction of Google's resources, Mozilla continues to develop a competitive browser that provides a realistic alternative to Chrome. But it has never had access to the sort of channels and budget that Google used to promote its browser.
(Of course Mozilla has made its share of mistakes. That's an inevitable part of attempting to do anything in this world. But "morally bankrupt" is not a description I recognise.)
I was mostly referring to Cliqz, but I don't like Pocket being forced in the browser itself. And all the "recommended from pocket" content on the home page.
Yes, you can disable it but why not make it a preinstalled extension that can be removed entirely.
>On 6 October 2017, Mozilla announced a test where approximately 1% of users downloading Firefox in Germany would receive a version with Cliqz software included. The feature provided recommendations directly in the browser's search field. Recommendations included news, weather, sports, and other websites and were based on the user's browsing history and activities. The press release noted that "Users who receive a version of Firefox with Cliqz will have their browsing activity sent to Cliqz servers, including the URLs of pages they visit," and that "Cliqz uses several techniques to attempt to remove sensitive information from this browsing data before it is sent from Firefox."
