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!
Then in a span of two days this plus https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2021/11/is-microsoft-...
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.