I've been trying Edge lately because I wanted to see if its "efficiency mode" would produce any noticeable difference in the battery life I experienced on my laptop.
They've really made it almost impossible to use as a privacy-respecting browser that lets you pick your search engine. There are a very large number of "on by default" settings that I had to change to turn of things like "Microsoft Rewards" and "creator recommendations."
The default search engine selection in buried in the settings under "address bar search." Even after you change that there is still an un-changeable page that comes up on new tabs that searches with Bing / Copilot, and other various ways to trigger a search that use Microsoft's search engine no matter what.
Also, whatever search engine you use, Edge will send your seaches to MS unless you turn off another "on by default" option.
And then, assuming you've managed to set everything up how you want it, MS will hit you with prompts after various updates to do things like return your default search to Bing.
I would genuinely hate to be an engineer working on the edge team. It feels like building a decent browser comes entirely secondary to moving the needle on marketing and growth targets.
Not the only situation where it seems your Windows-running computer is basically held hostage by MBAs wanting to boost Bing’s numbers.
I was going to push back on this, but on second thought I realized you are correct. Microsoft has a reputation, to put it mildly. A reputation that is well known to every software engineer on the planet, and indeed to many laymen.
Everyone who even applies there knows exactly what they are getting into. The application itself is an "ethics test", so to speak.
Xbox team has some good eggs at least. They didn’t need to make certain x360 titles forwards compatible, you can’t even get the disks new anymore, but they did it anyway.
Certain, as in those that are likely to sell, not all. These days the hardware is basically commodity and the time of innovating on CPU arch and hardware is over (remember the PS3 Cell CPU and the PS2 Emotion Engine?). You're getting commodity PCs in a unique form-factor and walled-garden support.
MS might be making a move to break the garden with GamePass, but only because they want people in GamePass's walled garden so they start renting games from MS instead of buying them from competitors. For over a decade they have failed to compete with Sony and Nintendo on quality first-party gaming.
I wonder if devs on the Edge team gets some kind of sadistic pleasure out of ruining Edge. It used to be good for a sweet, short few months, but it's beyond saving now. There's no way the devs behind the Edge UX still believe they're improving the browser.
I can imagine getting sort of a thrill out of suggesting something stupid like "let's steal ALL OF CHROME'S BROWSING HISTORY, then CLOSE CHROME, and OPEN EDGE and see if the user doesn't notice!" because _surely_ upper management would never sign off on that, but the day after you find out they still did. What other crazy shit can you think of? At work you roleplay as some kind of evil warlock, put all of your life's frustrations into the "switch to Edge or we'll murder your dog" screens, and go home with a big sack of cash to watch Netflix on your Macbook.
I don't work for microsoft, but I and everyone else knows that that is the kind of shit you'll be working on (who suggested it is irrelevant) long before you'd even do an interview with them.
Microsoft employees are certified assholes, and they know it.
He’s saying that developers are simply given a list of tasks to implement and their decision making authority stops after “how do i implement this ticket”
The role “product manager” is what makes the product decisions like we’re describing.
I know. I'm saying they already knew those kinds of decisions would be made long before they even got the job. Which is why I said it is irrelevant who makes the decision.
The devs are just as guilty as the assholes who made those decisions, because Microsoft has been making those kinds of decisions for decades.
These devs can't even hide behind the "just following orders" excuse, because as I've already said multiple times, they knew long before they got the job, that that is the kind of stuff they would be working on.
I got moved into a 'growth' department in one job and that was enough for me to put my feelers out and tender my resignation. All the work in the pipeline was about pulling the rug under from customers, increasing prices, and not adding value but removing it from general availability and paywalling it. It just felt wrong with me and what was important to me at the time.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the settings "accidentally" get reversed after the browser updates, since it's been known to happen with Windows settings...
I do think that happened to me at least once. I was happily using Kagi as my default search engine, and then after a restart suddenly I was using Bing.
I went through the same process you did and tried to make edge work for me and failed. I don't want to be constantly fighting my browser to respect my choices. That being said, the following is incorrect:
> Even after you change that there is still an un-changeable page that comes up on new tabs that searches with Bing / Copilot, and other various ways to trigger a search that use Microsoft's search engine no matter what.
If you change the search engine to something other than Bing, a second setting appears that controls the new tab search.
This is obviously a dark pattern to trick users (why would you want the new tab search engine to not respect your choice by default?), but the option exists.
They've really made it almost impossible to use as a privacy-respecting browser that lets you pick your search engine. There are a very large number of "on by default" settings that I had to change to turn of things like "Microsoft Rewards" and "creator recommendations."
The default search engine selection in buried in the settings under "address bar search." Even after you change that there is still an un-changeable page that comes up on new tabs that searches with Bing / Copilot, and other various ways to trigger a search that use Microsoft's search engine no matter what.
Also, whatever search engine you use, Edge will send your seaches to MS unless you turn off another "on by default" option.
And then, assuming you've managed to set everything up how you want it, MS will hit you with prompts after various updates to do things like return your default search to Bing.
Together, it all really feels egregious.