I just got this popup while playing New vegas. I don’t even use chrome, i’ve switched to firefox. How can this be allowed? Also, this is Win10

  • andallthat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    301·
    11 months ago

    I’m not even remotely a legal expert and I don’t know what type of popup that is but I think the anti-competitive piece is “could Google use the same technique to push the user to switch to google search on Edge or not?”.

    If this was an ad from a web page OP had opened or from the game and if clicking “Yes” only directed the user to a site with instructions on how to switch default search engine on Chrome, then yes, obnoxious but probably fair. Google could strike a deal with the game developers to push their search engine to Edge users or buy an ad. Someone writing a new browser or search engine will probably have considerably less money than Google but could reasonably do something similar to try and gain market share.

    On the other hand, if that popup comes from Windows itself and especially if clicking “Yes” directly changes Chrome’s settings, then this is Microsoft using their ubiquitous (on desktops) OS to nudge more users to switch a competitor’s browser to their own search engine. Google, or even less a new competitor. would probably not have the same type of OS-level access to switch the settings of a different browser.

    • sfgifz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      52·
      11 months ago

      Google already does this - and has been for years - use Google Search or Gmail on a non-Google browser and it will “suggest” you use Chrome

    • Dudewitbow@lemmy.mlEnglish
      34·
      11 months ago

      Less on edge, but google goes father actually. Google pays Mozilla to make google search the default aearch engine. You could argue thats worse then creating a notification to switch (but doesnt actually do it yet till you allow it to)

      • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        11 months ago

        Disagree. OS pop-ups are at a much more basic system level than going to a specific site and then it might prompt a pop-up.

        • Dudewitbow@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          In the case of firefox, its not going to a specific site, it would be that way when installed. Its like saying mocrosoft should just outright overwrite the default search engine on amy browser without asking you vs asking you via popup, unless youre saying that the former is better.

          • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            Not at all. The difference here is that Google agreed that with Mozilla themselves. They don’t overwrite the browser settings when you open Google. I agree with the sentiment that Google should have less influence and alternative search engines should get more space, but Mozilla itself, Google’s competitor, is who agreed to have their search engine as the default.

            It also comes to mind that Microsoft, again, insists on asking you to change to Bing on Edge every update, even if you already picked a different search engine.

      • andallthat@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        I can see many many examples of how bad Microsoft and Google can be. However this one I honestly don’t understand: how’s Google supporting Mozilla’s competing product anti- competitive? Are they forcing Mozilla to do things they don’t want in return?

        I am a Firefox uaer and on every install on a new machine (or phone) I switch the default search engine to duckduckgo. But for good or for bad Google is the search engine most people use (and would use on FF too even if it wasn’t the default). I don’t think Google needs to force Firefox 3%-ish market share to use their search engine.