Yes, this really is free money from Microsoft. What to know.
Microsoft has launched a new rewards program offering Chrome users “real cash value” points to switch to Edge browser[1]. When users search for “Chrome” on Bing, they receive a prompt offering 1,300 Microsoft Rewards points that can be exchanged for gift cards, including on Amazon[1:1].
The Browser Choice Alliance, representing Chrome, Opera and Vivaldi, criticizes this as Microsoft’s latest tactic to manipulate browser choice, following earlier practices like “forced resets, misleading prompts, and hidden settings”[1:2].
The market context shows why Microsoft is pursuing this strategy - Edge holds less than 9% market share compared to Chrome’s 78%[1:3]. The rewards program appears targeted specifically at Chrome users, with Windows Latest noting “we’re not seeing ads for other browsers, such as Opera, Firefox or Brave”[1:4].
@null@Zerush Well I mean it’s very good at silently downloading files from remote servers without telling you, if that’s what you mean. It does it for other people all the time.
For everyone bitching about Win 11, I agree - however - I’ve been using Win 11 LTSC IoT version which is basically a naked version of Win11 with zero bulk, bloat, or unnecessary BS. It’s for my consulting workstation. My daily driver at home is Arch. :)
I had to set up Windows 11 on a new work computer yesterday and this was exactly the purpose of Edge. It’s incredible how hard you have to fight during the setup process not to be railroaded into accepting settings that work against you and for Microsoft. By the time I was done I felt sick and angry and there was no way I’d use Microsoft’s browser after all that. And then it turned out I wasn’t done, because it had defaulted to putting all my documents and pictures in Microsoft’s cloud even though I hadn’t asked it to, so as soon as I migrated my documents I got a warning that my cloud storage was full and I should pay them more money. So I had to undo all that, but Microsoft already got to see all my documents. Infuriating from start to finish. I am very glad to use Linux on my own machines. Windows feels like a hostile environment with traps around every corner.
Sorry for the rant. I have to go back to that machine today and I guess I’m still angry.
If you have to use Windows, there are two mandatory apps with which you can turn Windows in an fast, private and submissive OS without nags and trackings, Hellzerg Optimizer and Portmaster. My tweked W11 use less than 1 GB in RAM and the GUI has nothing to do with the (horrible) original one.
There are two Windows services which are big Data hogs, slowing down the system and which you can desactivate, the hibernation service, which create temporary duplicates of every open app in a temporary file, so it open this apps after Reboot, it’s not really needed, you can put apps you use regulary simply in the Start avoiding to fill your PC with tons of temp files. Apart the Index service, which stored any change in the file system, to accelerate the search, but this in a modern PC, more if you use an SSD, don’t make much diifference, but save a lot of RAM and CPU.
For customize the UI and the Start menu, which in Win 11 is by default an absolute crap with an chunky Fisher Price design, where you can’t customize not even the Task Bar, you can use WindHawk (FOSS), it’s something like an userscript manager, which permits to change any aspect of the GUI with an click.
They got me at work. Sharepoint, which we’ve transitioned to for everything, fights you tooth and nail every time you try to use it with another browser. I fought edge out of spite for about a year, but I’m tired dog. Wish they’d pay me instead of berating me to death.
I wish my workplace was using Sharepoint… I mean we technically are.
Our intranet homepage now says, “Please access quicklinks through Microsoft Teams under Teams -> All Staff -> General” - so you click on that link, it opens Microsoft Teams, you navigate to the channel where the ‘quicklinks’ tab is, you click on the ‘quicklinks’ tab, it says the page is not supported in Microsoft Teams, you click on the tab and open the link in Edge and LOW AND BEHOLD, you get a Sharepoint page with the ‘quicklinks’. At least I’ll never die of hypothermia because this stuff keeps my blood boiling. It’s soooo stupid.
When I read things like this, I struggle to understand the economic logic behind it.
How much money does Microsoft really expect to get from more people using Edge instead of Chrome? I mean, both of them are provided free of charge anyway. Does the control over the default search engine or the advertising technology or something like that really bring them more money than these “rewards” cost?
It all seems even more ridiculous when you realize all of these browsers are just flavors of chrome and MS is pretending it doesn’t gather enough data from windows 11 telemetry.
There’s a reason why Google became one of the most valuable companies in the world. They USED to be a decent company with a decent product. But that has long since passed.
I do indeed. Many years ago, I loved google. I used all their products and everything was good. gmail was a pioneer. 1GB of storage while the other email providers were providing 10-20MB. I was in the beta for gmail, and i adored it. I had it for many years. Then enshittification happened, and that all changed. Fuck google so hard.
@aeternum I’m a workspace user and after the news the other day, about them helping ICE with facial recognition, I want out so bad. . . Looking for alternatives, and I’m a die hard Mac user, so 365 is a hard pass.
From the news. . . “This includes hosting a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants and removing community-developed apps that alerted people to ICE activity. “
I love that the browser choice alliance is made up of a single browser and they’re bitching about MS trying to push another flavor of chromium on us. This whole situation is a circle jerk.
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10 Create new user
20 set edge as default
30 profit
40 goto 10
run
10 GoSub CreateNewUser
your code looks really basic
they need data to train their AI models
deleted by creator
EDGE is an usefull app for downloading an Browser in a new Windows.
FTFY
Definitely check the signature though in case Edge decides to inject some “improved UX” into Linux.
Surely Windows has
curlbuilt in@null @Zerush Well I mean it’s very good at silently downloading files from remote servers without telling you, if that’s what you mean. It does it for other people all the time.
And ‘wget’ I believe.
cmd:
winget install Mozilla.FirefoxLove this.
For everyone bitching about Win 11, I agree - however - I’ve been using Win 11 LTSC IoT version which is basically a naked version of Win11 with zero bulk, bloat, or unnecessary BS. It’s for my consulting workstation. My daily driver at home is Arch. :)
If only us mere mortals could gain access these official non-bloated versions that do exist. 😔
Edit: I use Arch btw for my servers. 💪
You can… massgrave.dev
I mean, unless you’re a legend and memorized the Firefox latest release URL you still have to navigate to a website to get the link.
Unless you have a Graphene or Linux phone it’s probably just as bad if not worse than using Edge.
I had to set up Windows 11 on a new work computer yesterday and this was exactly the purpose of Edge. It’s incredible how hard you have to fight during the setup process not to be railroaded into accepting settings that work against you and for Microsoft. By the time I was done I felt sick and angry and there was no way I’d use Microsoft’s browser after all that. And then it turned out I wasn’t done, because it had defaulted to putting all my documents and pictures in Microsoft’s cloud even though I hadn’t asked it to, so as soon as I migrated my documents I got a warning that my cloud storage was full and I should pay them more money. So I had to undo all that, but Microsoft already got to see all my documents. Infuriating from start to finish. I am very glad to use Linux on my own machines. Windows feels like a hostile environment with traps around every corner.
Sorry for the rant. I have to go back to that machine today and I guess I’m still angry.
If you have to use Windows, there are two mandatory apps with which you can turn Windows in an fast, private and submissive OS without nags and trackings, Hellzerg Optimizer and Portmaster. My tweked W11 use less than 1 GB in RAM and the GUI has nothing to do with the (horrible) original one.
Thanks. Both of those look interesting.
There are two Windows services which are big Data hogs, slowing down the system and which you can desactivate, the hibernation service, which create temporary duplicates of every open app in a temporary file, so it open this apps after Reboot, it’s not really needed, you can put apps you use regulary simply in the Start avoiding to fill your PC with tons of temp files. Apart the Index service, which stored any change in the file system, to accelerate the search, but this in a modern PC, more if you use an SSD, don’t make much diifference, but save a lot of RAM and CPU.
For customize the UI and the Start menu, which in Win 11 is by default an absolute crap with an chunky Fisher Price design, where you can’t customize not even the Task Bar, you can use WindHawk (FOSS), it’s something like an userscript manager, which permits to change any aspect of the GUI with an click.
.
They got me at work. Sharepoint, which we’ve transitioned to for everything, fights you tooth and nail every time you try to use it with another browser. I fought edge out of spite for about a year, but I’m tired dog. Wish they’d pay me instead of berating me to death.
I wish my workplace was using Sharepoint… I mean we technically are.
Our intranet homepage now says, “Please access quicklinks through Microsoft Teams under Teams -> All Staff -> General” - so you click on that link, it opens Microsoft Teams, you navigate to the channel where the ‘quicklinks’ tab is, you click on the ‘quicklinks’ tab, it says the page is not supported in Microsoft Teams, you click on the tab and open the link in Edge and LOW AND BEHOLD, you get a Sharepoint page with the ‘quicklinks’. At least I’ll never die of hypothermia because this stuff keeps my blood boiling. It’s soooo stupid.
Oh boy, Points. I certainly enjoy the “real cash value” of Points. If only I were paid in Points instead of Money
When I read things like this, I struggle to understand the economic logic behind it.
How much money does Microsoft really expect to get from more people using Edge instead of Chrome? I mean, both of them are provided free of charge anyway. Does the control over the default search engine or the advertising technology or something like that really bring them more money than these “rewards” cost?
Because they can rob more data from you, make shareholders more happy and push in your throat more ads
They want your tracking data for AI, so bad. Also they added payments into the browser itself and they really really want you to use that.
Can someone take the points and switch back 😄
It’s about profiling the user, logging his activities and searches, certainly bring more money than these “rewards”.
It all seems even more ridiculous when you realize all of these browsers are just flavors of chrome and MS is pretending it doesn’t gather enough data from windows 11 telemetry.
That sounds like a scam. lmao
Quick google search tells me that is about a buck fifty.
Maybe if they paid me that for every minute I use their browser, I would give in.
Use a better search, googol sucks and was never any good.
Ok google sucks and people should not use it, but claiming it was never any good is just rewriting history because you dont like the present
There’s a reason why Google became one of the most valuable companies in the world. They USED to be a decent company with a decent product. But that has long since passed.
@aeternum @technology Remember “don’t be evil” ? I’m thinking that’s not the company slogan anymore.
I do indeed. Many years ago, I loved google. I used all their products and everything was good. gmail was a pioneer. 1GB of storage while the other email providers were providing 10-20MB. I was in the beta for gmail, and i adored it. I had it for many years. Then enshittification happened, and that all changed. Fuck google so hard.
@aeternum I’m a workspace user and after the news the other day, about them helping ICE with facial recognition, I want out so bad. . . Looking for alternatives, and I’m a die hard Mac user, so 365 is a hard pass.
From the news. . . “This includes hosting a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants and removing community-developed apps that alerted people to ICE activity. “
I love that the browser choice alliance is made up of a single browser and they’re bitching about MS trying to push another flavor of chromium on us. This whole situation is a circle jerk.
Not only Chromiums in this alliance, also Geckos there.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/browser-choice-alliance-launch/