Upgrades of Windows 10 reset the default browser to Microsoft's new Edge browser, and this has caused Mozilla CEO Chris Beard to issue an open letter to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella:
[T]he update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Microsoft wants them to have.
[...] We appreciate that it's still technically possible to preserve people's previous settings and defaults, but the design of the whole upgrade experience and the default settings APIs have been changed to make this less obvious and more difficult. It now takes more than twice the number of mouse clicks, scrolling through content and some technical sophistication for people to reassert the choices they had previously made in earlier versions of Windows. It's confusing, hard to navigate and easy to get lost.
Firefox's market share continues to drop by varying degrees according to analysis by Martin Brinkmann of ghacks.net.
takyon: Microsoft reports that 14 million users took the plunge and installed Windows 10 yesterday. Microsoft has stated it wants Windows 10 on 1 billion devices within the next 3 years.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @11:44AM
Funny seing that one coming out of a mozilla rep.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @04:43PM
More irony:
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by ledow on Friday July 31 2015, @11:52AM
Is that 14 million people TRIED it, or 14 million people downloaded it, or 14 million people ticked the little box to say they wanted to download it at some point in the next year? Those answers give very different impressions of what this actually means.
I installed Windows 10 last year. We were giving the developer previews etc. to the kids in the school I work in to see if they could break it.
Pretty much, it's okay, but I need to wait for at least a year after release before I touch it. I can't afford to have display drivers crashing and start menus losing programs just because I rolled it out because it was an "RTM" version.
Because I work in schools, that means next September at the earliest. They should have fixed most of the junk by then. If not, we're on 8 already, so we're okay for a good number of years yet.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Friday July 31 2015, @12:56PM
Well I downloaded it three times (different versions and such) and installed it into a VM.
It will never touch my current machine until all it's stable and someone has written a hack to remove all the phone-home crap.
I have a Microsoft account, but I will never enter it as my Windows log on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @06:21PM
I was told Win 10 cannot be used in a VM, or a Win7 or 8 VM cannot be upgraded to 10. Is this true?
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday August 03 2015, @09:59AM
It can be used in a VM, as for an upgrade I don't know
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @03:10PM
I break windows 10 several times a day just by using. It is not going on my main pc.
(Score: 2) by Francis on Friday July 31 2015, @03:53PM
When I reboot in Virtualbox or change anything at all at that level, it reverts me to Windows 7. I think that might be a sign that I'm not supposed to be using 10. Not that I want to be using 10, just that it's free and there's a small number of programs I use that are Windows only and don't have a Linux alternative.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @12:24PM
The choice is to dump Mozilla for all of the stupid things they have done. A once great browser was turned into a marketing machine, with a lousy interface. I dumped Mozilla, and am not going back.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday July 31 2015, @12:40PM
Yes I think lots of people, especially techies, chose Firefox because it wasn't like the other browsers. Then they made it just like the other browsers. Now they wonder why they're losing market share. If a product has little to distinguish itself from the competition, then, given a set of needs, the choice of which product to adopt becomes much less clear cut. In the TFA's case I guess apathy wins out and the default browser is accepted.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by acid andy on Friday July 31 2015, @12:49PM
I just want to add that I think this minimalism and similarity in the look of recent browser versions - the fact that Chrome, IE 10+ and Australis looked very similar, to the point that even their logos were hidden, might be intentional.
Look at how many pieces of software come bundled with a browser. If your average Joe just sees it as THE browser, with no real brand recognition, they might not even notice that it was replaced by a competitor's offering. I think they're trying to make the browser almost invisible so users don't think about it at all. It's just the internet.
"rancid randy has a dialogue with herself[...] Somebody help him!" -- Anonymous Coward.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday July 31 2015, @05:38PM
Look at how many pieces of software come bundled with a browser. If your average Joe just sees it as THE browser, with no real brand recognition, they might not even notice that it was replaced by a competitor's offering. I think they're trying to make the browser almost invisible so users don't think about it at all. It's just the internet.
This is unfortunately the case. At work, IT requested all to switch to Firefox to cut down on malware infections. Getting some users to voluntarily click something besides the blue E was like pulling teeth. That was and had always been the internet for some people and they were not going to change without a struggle. I got the last holdout to switch by eliminating the IE shortcut from his desktop, then using the IE icon for Firefox. It worked, and I never heard a complaint about it. I guess he just thought it was one of those changes that happen occasionally and went with it. Either that or he never noticed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @07:46PM
Just do what I did and set the Firefox shortcut to use the IE icon.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @07:49PM
Man, I should have kept reading before posting that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2015, @06:58AM
A friend of mine had that problem with his stepfather: he wouldn't use Firefox because it was confusing and just didn't work like IE. So my friend broke out paint, turned the Firefox logo blue, and the problems all went away.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @12:45PM
Actually this is technically Microsoft choosing for the users to ditch Firefox.
Not that I'm arguing that there are people ditching Firefox regardless.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday July 31 2015, @03:57PM
People are going to be irritated when the number of malware related incidents increase drastically and not realize why.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @01:41PM
To be fair. I upgrade to win 10. I was bored and figured 'what the hell I will break my computer'.
It took it about 3 times for it to finally 'stick' as the default browser. Even though it was the default BEFORE I upgraded....
I dont use my browser for much more than a bit of youtube and some funny pics and the occasional rant. So what it is, does not matter much to me. I could use IE but I like the adblock features in firefox. Which gives you 95% of the speed up you are looking for anyway.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Friday July 31 2015, @12:26PM
Note to clueless Mozilla CEO: Get the plank out of your own eye before you worry about the mote in MS's eye.
Firefox has been on a steady downward spiral and is about to crash into the cliffs of Dover. You need to level off your own flight and get some altitude before you worry about anyone else. Firefox has had its UI ruined completely in recent years by one bone-headed decision after another. People were rejecting what you did to your browser long before Windows 10. You're not listening to your core users. When you ignore the people who made you what you are, then things have gone wrong and it's time for some soul searching.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Friday July 31 2015, @12:43PM
This is how applying for jobs is called nowaday?
Gosh, we've evolved some length past the "leveraging synergies", haven't we?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @01:00PM
This is how applying for jobs is called nowaday?
I've heard tales of large internet companies harvesting the souls of their employees and customers alike. So I guess "soul searching" is recruitment and marketing at the same time.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Friday July 31 2015, @03:30PM
I don't understand what all the hate about Firefox is about, honestly. I installed Vimperator to map vi's keys onto the interface and now the browser behaves exactly as it ought to.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday July 31 2015, @06:21PM
Note to clueless Mozilla CEO: Get the plank out of your own eye before you worry about the mote in MS's eye.
Generally I would consider the Anti-Trust conviction to be the plank, and UI changes you disagree with the be the mote. But hey, to each his own...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @12:46PM
The SJW Brendon Eich witch hunt (as well as the bloat and overall stabbing the user in the eye with privacy-destroying partnerships with shady third parties) has killed it for me, and as far as I can tell, for many others.
Mozilla has lost it.
Too bad, too.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @02:04PM
>The SJW
Stopped reading right here. Could you please argue without a witch hunt of your own?
(Score: 3, Touché) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Friday July 31 2015, @03:35PM
Stopped reading right here. Could you please argue without a witch hunt of your own?
How'd you know about the witch hunt, then? :)
(Score: 1) by timbojones on Friday July 31 2015, @05:57PM
Because use of the term SJW intrinsically implies a witch hunt, no additional context required.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday July 31 2015, @07:48PM
Here's what the term SJW means to me. It means a bigoted hypocrite who makes accusations of sexism and racism that themselves are rooted in sexism and racism. That implies that we can determine whether somebody is engaging in acts that an SJW would. SJWs also go about things proactively, meaning they are the ones on the crusade, although we seem to have a reactionary knee-jerk opposito-SJW element as well on a crusade of their own. Witch hunt vs. witch hunt!
So, on the other board a popular riposte to somebody accusing somebody else of being an SJW was to ask, “Was Dr. Martian Luther King, Jr. an SJW?” (or somesuch implying the parent poster is a racist). Well, was he an SJW? Did he make accusations of racism against whites for no other reason than they were white? I don't think so (unless you would prove me wrong, then we can revise the definition I'm using here). No, he wanted people of all skin colors to be equal. Therefore, Dr. Martian Luther King, Jr. was not, in fact, an SJW.
Granted, the way SJW was used further up the thread does not match my definition and more falls under the opposito-SJW camp. What was his name, Brendan Eich? Ok, it was. To review, in order for Brendan Eich's detractors to be SJWs would require that they make a bigoted accusation, such as, for example, Brendan Eich is heterosexual and therefore homophobic because all heterosexuals are homophobic. (Another form is to accuse a heterosexual individual of having heterosexual privilege. One may observe that heterosexual privilege does exist, but it's a logical contortion to blame an individual, as individuals gain their various gender/race/sexual orientation/etc privileges from the attitudes of others, not their own attitudes.)
I didn't follow the drama, so you'll need to help me out and tell me if that's the case.
I did, however, switch away from Firefox, but only because of the prospect that it might have included revenue-generating ads in the near future. I have no problem using a product a homophobe was involved in creating, as long as he does not obtain financial gain and/or is not furthering homophobic legislation or activism (preaching, etc). In hindsight, however, I would have eventually switched away from Firefox sooner or later because Chrome's developer tools are superior and Midori is fast, lightweight, and is finally becoming somewhat mature.
Now, the term SJW does not sit completely well with me either, because it's too confusing and vague (hence the Dr. King thing). The term SJB has been offered (social justice bully) which might work, but it would need a lot more usage in the written out form before it may become a recognizable acronym.
Therefore, we should deprecate the term SJW in favor of more precise terms like hypocrite, sexist, racist, bigot, gender lunatic, or race lunatic.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday July 31 2015, @10:29PM
A Social Justice Warrior feigns outrage to gain social standing. Often their intolerance of the offender is more hateful and damaging than the originating action or comment.
To go back to the point of this thread, no, I don't believe any sizable number of users dropped Mozilla Firefox because of Brendan Eich's politics nor started using it when he left.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday July 31 2015, @10:55PM
Hmm… demagogue?
1: a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power
2: a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times
Hard to call the hordes of SJWs on Twitter leaders. Ok, let's check etymology to see if we can hack this word.
Greek dēmagōgos, from dēmos people (perhaps akin to Greek daiesthai to divide) + agōgos leading, from agein to lead.
Ah, crap, it's straight from Greek. I was hoping there'd be a Latin link in there somewhere, and I seem to have misplaced my copy of the OED to double-check Merriam-Webster's version above. I'm out of my depth here.
I'll think about it some more. Oh, and I left out SIW/SIJW (Social (Injustice|InJustice) Warrior) as one of the proposed alternatives so adding it here to be thorough. (I'm pretty sure SIW ⇒ SJW, ¬(SIW ⇒ opposito-SJW), but please correct if I need to move the ¬ over to the former from the latter.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @03:02PM
I for one don't care about anything Mozilla-internal. I care about the browser they deliver. And that browser has gone downhill since approximately when they started their new version numbering.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday July 31 2015, @12:50PM
This world is gonna end, civilization smoulders already. Savages, I tell ya!
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday July 31 2015, @01:22PM
Shut the fuck up until you assign some manpower and funds to Servo (I know you can afford it if the bloat and bad design being tacked on constantly is any indication) before saying parody levels of hypocritical things about Microsoft's "Internet experience". Because I assure you Edge is not your primary concern at the moment. It's literally every other browser and company that smells Mozilla's blood in the water.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snospar on Friday July 31 2015, @01:29PM
Wow, a lot of hate for Mozilla in these comments... I'll buck the trend and say I think he has a good point. If I've chosen Firefox as my default browser, and in particular if I've selected it at the install of Windows (an option mandated by the European antitrust case) then I don't want Microsoft foisting their own (largely untested) browser on me during an OS up date.
Speaking of the European Antitrust ruling (I hope I'm remembering that correctly), this is bound to raise red flags for them all over again.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by NickFortune on Friday July 31 2015, @01:39PM
All very true. I think the problem is that there are more people furious with Mozilla than there are with Microsoft.
...
Did you ever write a sentence and then have difficulty believing you'd written it? Oh Mozilla, what have you done to yourselves?
(Score: 2) by etherscythe on Friday July 31 2015, @05:36PM
I don't know that people are really that upset with Mozilla, numbers wise. However, Microsoft being Microsoft is old news, whereas Mozilla's troubles are of more recent origin. I'm still mad that my Nexus 7 cannot play Flash video because some bozo dev thought he was going to disable it to improve my browsing experience. Most places have changed to Youtube, but a few places still use Flash, and I'm still holding onto an older Pale Moon build because of it.
Run that one again for a second: they disabled Flash video on my (good at the time of release) Tegra 2 hardware with, as far as I can tell, no manual override whatsoever. Yes, it lagged a little if I switch to full-screen, but last I checked I paid money for the thing and that makes it mine, to run however I wish.
To say nothing of the loss of Status Bar and other functionality they killed after v3.6. Mozilla was popular because it solved the problems Microsoft introduced. Mozilla stepped up and contributed to bringing around Internet standards and open formats. Firefox was the people's champion, but they've sold out and become part of the problem, and I bet to a lot of geeks that feels a lot more like treachery than Microsoft being true to its own nature from the beginning. And so the uber-geeks find new browsers to recommend to their less-clued friends, relatives, and clients.
"Fake News: anything reported outside of my own personally chosen echo chamber"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by NickFortune on Tuesday August 11 2015, @12:49PM
I don't know. According to some estimates of Firefox' best usage, they've managed to drop from 45% market share to below 15%. I'd call that a fairly significant number.
Granted, it's hard to know what proportion of that number were angry at Moz' design decisions. I'm guessing MozCorp estimate the proportion as being really, really low. On the other hand, MozCorp's attempts to staunch the flow of departing users haven't exactly been overwhelmingly successful, so they may be misreading the situation.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday July 31 2015, @01:50PM
I vaguely remember that the requirement for MS to provide a choice of browsers lapsed a few months ago. I could be wrong, but I seem to think that EU sanction is now lifted.
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday July 31 2015, @10:05PM
I wouldn't call it hate, but a community-endorsement of poetic justice.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zafiro17 on Friday July 31 2015, @03:15PM
I have certainly stepped into a time machine and traveled backwards to about 2003, because this is the move that got the US DOJ to take action against an alleged monopolist. Then they decided to ease up and only Europe had the balls to actually do something about it. Then time went on and Microsoft did basically the same damned thing, and everyone here uses it as an opportunity to bash Firefox.
What Microsoft did isn't right, no matter how happy and pleased they are with their new browser. Yes, Firefox is a steaming pile of fail at the moment. But the Firefox guys have a point. (they need to fix their own fucking browser, but they've got a point).
Three cheers for Soylent, that lets me compose my rants using profanity. Can't say that for other sites (that I know of)!
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday July 31 2015, @03:43PM
I have certainly stepped into a time machine and traveled backwards to about 2003,
The difference this time round is that there are huge numbers of phones, tablets, Macs and other devices being used to browse the web, and adherence to public standards is vital for anybody publishing on the web. Even Microsoft's current browsers are significantly more standards compliant than they were back in the day (when IE was also the dominant browser on Mac). Microsoft might be able to claw back some market share on browsers for Windows, but it is less likely that we'll backslide to the position where the whole web was built around IEs quirks.
Also, from an anti-trust point of view, technology has moved on and I think its easier to claim that http clients, HTML rendering and JavaScript are core operating system features rather than optional applications. Its also pretty typical now for new devices to come with powerful application suites (c.f. the good old days of minimal utilities like Notepad & Paint). Also, the web browser and its components are possibly the main security 'attack surface' which is Apple's justification for blocking true third-party browsers from iPhone/iPad.
We'll never know how much of IEs market share decline was down to the EU mandated browser choice screen, and how much was due to the complacent, standard-flouting, omnishambolic malware gateway that passed for Internet Explorer at the time.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday July 31 2015, @07:38PM
I think now the difference is Microsoft is lacking absolute dominance in browsers and desktops. In 2003 their market shares for both were higher than today.
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(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday July 31 2015, @03:19PM
This just shows that MS has NOT changed, and is still f'ing people over because they can.
They are a company who will do whatever it takes to win, despite saying they have changed.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @04:36PM
"This just shows that the corporate world has NOT changed, and is still f'ing people over because they can."
FTFY
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday August 01 2015, @09:21PM
Snap a screenshot of the resulting page then drop a dime to the Wall Street Journal.
I'll send you my bill in the mail.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by skullz on Friday July 31 2015, @03:27PM
I think you are protesting too much, Mozilla. Yes, the preferences got reset. But guess what, I fire up Firefox (which was migrated beautifully, btw) and the "do you love me as a default browser? do you wanna be my valentine?" popup comes up again. Just like the first install. The problem I see it as not all applications that Windows 8.1 supported may be supported by Windows 10 and you could set anything as a default. What happens when your default Win 7/8 program doesn't run on Win 10? Why make a special rule for Firefox when a few taps fixes everything and the user has control?
Resetting your preferences when you do a *major* OS update is not nearly the same thing as the browser wars of the 2000's which resulted in lawsuits. Having MS actively hinder Netscape was a pain. Having non-MS applications randomly crash because of "secret sauce" in the APIs was damaging. Re-selecting my default program is not.
Oh, and Mozilla? The only reason I use Firefox is because it's not Chrome. If MS Edge gets an ad blocker you are in serious trouble.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AndyTheAbsurd on Friday July 31 2015, @05:21PM
Pale Moon [palemoon.org] isn't Chrome either - and it even doesn't LOOK like it's Chrome. It forked from Firefox in the pre-Australis (i.e. pre-"we want Firefox to be just like Chrome") days, is under active development, gets regular security updates, and has a development team that actually listens to the user base.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 03 2015, @03:16AM
doesn't the guy or team make money from your search results, though?
somewhere on their website, perhaps privacy section, might say this, but I don't recall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @07:45PM
Has been stuck on "We're validating Windows 10 for your PC" for 2 days, tried the download ISO and got a missing driver for the CD/DVD drive error. Typical MS shitware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 31 2015, @09:28PM
How to fix...
1- Open regedit
2- Locate the registry key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\OSUpgrade]
It should exist, but if not, create it.
3- Create a new DWORD (32-bit) Value with Name = "AllowOSUpgrade” (without the quotes), and set the Value = 0x00000001. (Note: double click on the DWORD you just created and change the 0 to 1, then press OK. The value displayed next to the DWORD should now be 0x00000001)
4- Close regedit.
5- Open Windows Update, check for updates. It should work now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2015, @07:02AM
God, that's worse than having to use the command line.
Once Microsoft get away from the need to do this crap, then their products will be ready for the desktop.