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Microsoft is using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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How are you guys seeing this? I constantly hear these complaints but never see it myself.
It just pops up randomly. Went to go make a coffee and when I came back there it was. I'm in the UK so it's not just happening to US people.
I'm just so confused. I've been running Win 11 retail since launch and before that I ran Win 10 since launch. I've never seen anything like this.
On my work laptop (surface pro) I get these popups randomly. Usually it happens when I restart or after an update. On my home laptop (also surface pro), I mostly get them when I need to open Edge or another program from home that I use for work. Usually because it's not set as the default. It happened enough that on my personal home laptop (which I'm choosing not to update to windows 11), I actually edited the registry to stop it from suggesting Bing, Edge, and Windows 11. On my work laptop I can't do that (no administrator access) so I see these things all the time. Full screen popups for Windows 11 (which has compatibility issues with some of the software I use for work), switch to edge popups (usually when I open a PDF in Adobe or similar), that kind of thing. I didn't set the defaults on the work laptop. It was issued to me this way. I am using it as the company I work for has intended and at up via their IT department.
To be fair though, I've seen Google do similar in Chrome when my default browser is set to Firefox at home. I have chrome for the occasional Google service I use that may require it for added use case. But it's not the default. Gmail is good for this. I see popup ads for Google Fi (which I use) all the time. Same with drive and the YouTube premium ads are everywhere. That's also not okay but at least it's just in the browser. I don't see this nonsense Everytime I wake the computer from sleep mode.
Depends on the laws of the country with the language you picked during setup.
e.g. use UK english or German for setup and change after.
At least until they switch to detect via IP range or whatever.
Oh maybe that's it. I've also never seen any kind of popup or ad (same thing for my Samsung TVs) that I've seen people mentioning.
I had no idea why I might be spared.
I'm in the US, using English as my language. Idk, this is weird.
I'm in the US and the only time I see mention of edge is when installing windows and then again when changing my default browser, which is kinda silly but not something I bother wasting mental energy to care about when it's something that shows up once and then never again. I would love to see legislation in the US match what some of the European countries have but considering how things could be, it's of least concern to me. I paid for Windows once in my life via an OEM license I ordered from a German retailer and I've had about 16 or so computers since then and all of those have either been custom built machines, used computers, or parted together boxes so if they want to bug me about installing their browser which effectively will recoup revenue based on data from me which varies from useless to misleading and probably becomes a net negative and moves them further from their goal. Then sure, I don't mind clicking that "no thank you" button
Yeah, same.
The yes and no button do the same thing.
I assume it's just a test they're running on specific groups of people just to see how effective it is in getting people to switch. I've never had any of these types of things happen to me either, so, yeah.
Makes sense. I guess I've been a very lucky boy.
Windows acting like oldschool viruses, giving random ad pop-ups 💀
Did you install an official version? I've never seen those.