FTC vs. ATVI+MSFT, in perspective

It appears that Lina Khan is serious about putting the brakes on tech industry mergers. Much to the surprise of many, many pundits and LawTubers, the FTC is suing to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard King (ABK).

The consensus of opinion seems to be coalescing around the idea that the FTC's case is weak. This consensus essentially takes Microsoft's position at face value:

1. that Microsoft Gaming is a much, much smaller player in the video games industry than either PlayStation (owned by Sony) or Nintendo;
2. that Microsoft have no presence in mobile gaming at all, unlike ABK, or any of ABK's major competitors in the mobile space, like Tencent or NetEase;
3. that Microsoft's control of ABK will have no competitive impact on the industry, since they're going to leave Call of Duty (CoD) available on competing platforms, including both Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's Switch, for ten years.

If you assume that this argument is 100% true, then Sony appear to be freaked out over the deal for essentially no reason at all, and the FTC's objections to the deal appear to be entirely political. At best, the collective thinking goes, suing to block the deal is effectively a bargaining ploy: the entire process of resolving the suit could prolong the process of getting the deal done for months or years, and cost Microsoft hundreds of millions of additional dollars in penalties (per the deal) and legal fees. Faced with this prospect, Microsoft might be more amenable to the types of concessions the FTC might ask for.

I'm going to be the contrarian in the room, though, and point out that the FTC might be looking at a bigger picture than just this deal between Microsoft Gaming and ABK. Real talk here: taken as an independent entity, Microsoft Gaming, third-place purveyor of money-losing consoles and the games that people can play on them, probably don't have 68.7 billion US dollars to spend buying ABK or anyone else. This deal is only possible because Microsoft Gaming isn't an independent entity; it's only possible because Microsoft Gaming is merely the gaming division of a much, much larger entity.

Microsoft Gaming isn't buying ABK. Microsoft Corporation is buying ABK. And, viewed through that longer lens, the picture looks a lot different.

Microsoft proves they've learned nothing, start testing full-page ads for Microsoft Edge to roll out in Windows 10

I am surprised only that people are surprised.

As reported by Windows Latest:

In production builds, Microsoft is A/B testing a new ‘feature’ that is designed to nag users with fullscreen window-less Microsoft Edge recommendations in the OOBE screen.

The nag will appear when users set up their PC, sign in to their system after applying updates, or when they click on a new ad banner within the Settings.

[...]

In the Settings app, there’s a new banner that appears to be rolling out to non-Insiders [...] the advert appears across the top of the Settings app window, just above the settings options. The banner states that you can “get even more out of Windows” and it surprisingly launches the OOBE (out of the box experience) screen [where] there’s a new page titled “Use recommended browser settings” that advises users to restore the Microsoft Edge and pin the browser to the desktop and taskbar.

[...] If you try to skip the setup, the pop-up will appear again in future.

Unfortunately, you cannot permanently disable these recommendations in Windows 10.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Windows is malware, and Microsoft should absolutely be facing antitrust action of their own for this shit. Microsoft controls over 80%, and nearly 90%, of the desktop/laptop OS market at a time when COVID-19 has pushed demand for desktop/laptop PCs to heights they haven't enjoyed for nearly ten years, and they've clearly decided to abuse that gatekeeper position to push their own products in the most anti-competitive, anti-consumer manner possible. 

I'm looking for the EU, at least, to bring action against Microsoft for this latest over-reach, but the US Department of Justice should also be scrutinizing the Redmond firm for this sort of behaviour, which was rampant during the Windows 10 rollout, and clearly isn't going to stop anytime soon.

For more details, along with screen shots, click through to Windows Latest's article.

Big Tech anti-trust actions finally aim at correct target

Given the actively evil toxicity of Facebook, and the overtly anti-competitive tactics which Amazon was using to wreak havoc on the entire retail sector of the developed world, it seemed odd to me that so much focus was on "don't be evil" Google. 

It's not that Google weren't also abusing their monopoly position to do anticompetitive things, because it certainly looks like they were and still are, it's just that of all the problematic, amoral Big Tech firms, Google just wouldn't have been high on my priority list, if I were calling the antitrust shots. Even Apple, whose stance against right-to-repair and obsession with trapping consumers on their "ecosystem" for all time are more problematic to my mind than Google giving Android licenses away for free, would have been pretty far down on my antitrust hit list.

Well, apparently someone in the EU has woken up to reality, because they're finally starting to move against the real Big Tech problem children. From HuffPost:

LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators have filed antitrust charges against Amazon, accusing the e-commerce giant of using data to gain an unfair advantage over merchants using its platform.

The EU’s executive commission, the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer, said Tuesday that the charges have been sent to the company.

The commission said it takes issue with Amazon’s systematic use of non-public business data to avoid “the normal risks of competition and to leverage its dominance” for e-commerce services in France and Germany, the company’s two biggest markets in the EU.

[...]

Amazon faces a possible fine of up to 10% of its annual worldwide revenue, which could amount to billions of dollars. The company rejected the accusations.

Better late than never, I guess.

The EU, for their part, claim to have been working on this antritrust case since 2018, in which case I just have to say, OMFG, get a handle on that bureaucracy, folks! And Amazon, naturally, "disagree with the preliminary assertions of the European Commission," which it pretty standard boilerplate for this sort of thing, and should surprise almost nobody. Odds are not in Amazon's favour, though; the EU typically don't bring antitrust actions unless they can prevail, which is the typical outcome, so look for Amazon to face big fines and strong restrictions in the not-too-distant future.

Whether this is a sign of emboldened officials around the world finally find the stones to reign in all of the Big Tech firms remains to be seen of course. If the EU takes on Facebook, in addition to Amazon, Apple, and Google, we'll have our answer. Don't expect that to happen until early next year, though, at the earliest, because... I mean... 2018? Damn.

The other other Big Tech antitrust problem

With Amazon, Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech firms, how long do you think it will take for America's broadband ISPs to get the same attention? Because they probably should.

So says an excellent piece by arstechnica's Tom Simonite:

The new fervor for tech antitrust has so far overlooked an equally obvious target: US broadband providers. “If you want to talk about a history of using gatekeeper power to harm competitors, there are few better examples,” says Gigi Sohn, a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy.

Sohn and other critics of the four companies that dominate US broadband—Verizon, Comcast, Charter Communications, and AT&T—argue that antitrust intervention has been needed for years to lower prices and widen Internet access. [As many as] 162.8 million Americans do not use the Internet at broadband speeds [and] New America’s Open Technology Institute recently found that US consumers pay, on average, more than those in Europe, Asia, or elsewhere in North America.

[...] Children without reliable Internet have been forced to scavenge bandwidth outside libraries and Taco Bells to complete virtual school assignments. In April, a Pew Research Center survey found that one in five parents with children whose schools had been closed by coronavirus believed it likely they would not be able to complete schoolwork at home because of an inadequate Internet connection.

Such problems are arguably more material than some of the antitrust issues that have recently won attention in Washington. The Department of Justice complaint against Google argues that the company’s payments to Apple to set its search engine as the default on the iPhone make it too onerous for consumers to choose a competing search provider. For tens of millions of Americans, changing broadband providers is even more difficult—it requires moving.

I live in Canada, where broadband access is more affordable, so this issue wasn't top of mind for me, but Simonite's piece raises some excellent points; the telecom oligopoly that has been allowed to develop south of the border is just insane, and absolutely needs to be reigned in, or broken up, or at least broken open. Here's hoping that Democrats get a chance to do so; with everything they'll have to deal with (assuming they get control House, Senate, and White House, of course), their dance card is going to be pretty damn full for the next couple of years.

Simonite's piece is excellent, and well worth a read - there's a lot more over at arstechnica than what I've extracted above - so go give them some clicks.

This week in Facebook: Hypocrisy, incompetence, and partisan political bias, and that's just one of their policies

As reported by HuffPost:

Under mounting pressure to quell the flood of partisan misinformation coursing through its platform, Facebook announced a new policy in September: It would stop accepting all new political ads during the week preceding the presidential election.

[...]

In theory, as Zuckerberg touted, the policy would prevent political advertisers from spreading new messages to targeted audiences before fact-checkers and journalists had time to scrutinize them — reducing the risk of false and misleading claims going viral in the run-up to the vote.

In practice, it has been a disaster. [...] Chaos ensued almost immediately: Thousands of previously approved ads from Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s campaign and multiple progressive groups were wrongly blocked due to a “technical flaw,” potentially costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations.President Donald Trump’s campaign managed to launch new ads post-ban. And in violation of its own rules, Facebook approved ads from the president’s campaign prematurely declaring victory, as well as hundreds of ads bearing the misleading text “ELECTION DAY IS TODAY” or “Vote Today.”

Days later, Facebook is still putting out fires amid searing accusations of partisan bias and negligence. The company’s stunning failure to properly enforce its own high-profile policy at such a critical time has raised alarm about its preparedness for the fallout of the election — the results of which could be inconclusive for days or even weeks.

“[Facebook’s] implementation certainly has only inspired more fears over how they’re going to be able to handle these last-minute election-specific rollouts,” [Jesse Lehrich, co-founder of the nonprofit Accountable Tech] said. “It constantly feels like they’re dealing with optics — they’re thinking of everything as optical problems and never as structural problems.”

And that, friends, is Facebook in a nutshell, and why I think that the U.S. DOJ's antitrust action again Google was aimed at entirely the wrong target. Google might be problematic and monopolistic, but Facebook is actively evil. Google and Amazon are cuddly kittens by comparison; sure, they might be problematic in terms of business competition, but they have nothing on the corrosive toxicity and greed of Zuckerberg & Co.

Of all the Big Tech firms, Facebook is the most responsible for the deepening divisions in our discourse and society, structurally dedicated to encouraging the worst impulses of humanity for no other reason than their own material gain. Facebook is actively undermining civility, privacy, and democracy itself, and worst of all is that they aren't even doing it for ideological reasons; no, Facebook's undermining of civilization is being done, almost entirely, for the money.

Facebook is fairly begging to be broken up, but Trump's DOJ won't touch them; after all, their "mistakes" and "accidents" seem to trend entirely in one direction, and that direction mostly favours Trump and his supporters. Hopefully the DOJ of a President Biden, or a new Congress in which Democrats control both House and Senate, will take action against the most urgent Big Tech threat.

In the meantime, it falls to the rest of us to keep on doing what we've already been doing: deleting Facebook from our lives. Facebook is the problem; it's time for more people to stop being part of that problem.

A busy week for corporate bullshit

After months of keeping low profiles while COVID-19 dominated the headlines, the tech industry has apparently decided to make up for lost time with a one-week barrage of bullshit to close out October. Because who doesn't want to slide into the busiest sales season of the year on a slick of one's own mess, and associated consumer ill will? What do you mean, "Nobody with any sense?"

Anyway, here's a roundup of my favourites from yesterday, complete with pithy snarky commentary.

Is this the beginning of the end of Big Tech?

After months of hinting, and alluding, and leaking, the US Department of Justice has finally decided to actually piss, rather than just sitting on the pot.

As reported by Reuters, via Huffpost.com:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department and 11 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against Alphabet Inc’s Google on Tuesday for allegedly breaking the law in using its market power to fend off rivals.

[...]

Coming just days before the U.S. presidential election, the filing’s timing could be seen as a political gesture since it fulfills a promise made by President Donald Trump to his supporters to hold certain companies to account for allegedly stifling conservative voices.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley, a vociferous Google critic, accused the company of keeping power through “illegal means” and called the lawsuit “the most important antitrust case in a generation.”

The federal lawsuit marks a rare moment of agreement between the Trump administration and progressive Democrats. U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted on Sept. 10, using the hash tag #BreakUpBigTech, that she wanted “swift, aggressive action.”

The 11 states which joined the lawsuit all have Republican attorneys general.

Google, who have only just seen the lawsuit themselves, did not respond to Reuters, and will probably let their lawyers do the talking now that the matter is before the courts. I expect that the very pro-Microsoft/ant-Google crew at Thurrott will be gloating about this in a matter of minutes, although I seem to have spotted this one before they did, this time around.

So, the question of which Big Tech firm would be the first to face the US DOJ's antitrust ire has been answered, In spite of the destructive impact and overt evil of Facebook; the profoundly more anti-competitive activities of Amazon; the fact that Epic has been trying to preempt the DOJ and force an antitrust finding against Apple; and the fact that Microsoft are still abusing their position as Windows' gatekeepers to continue loading unwanted Microsoft-branded content, and ads for the same, onto the devices of Windows 10 users, it will be Google who will face official government antitrust action first.

The partisan nature of this action, coming just weeks before an election which Republicans look likely to lose badly, and backed by Republican senators and Republican governors, will likely form the backbone of Google's defense here; the fact that Elizabeth Warren has called for breaking up Big Tech firms like Google will likely not be as much of a factor. I think that's a solid defense; the prosecution case will rely mostly on the fact that Google actually is guilty of doing exactly what they've been accused of, and the matter won't be resolved for years, so for the time being it's business as usual.

Nonetheless, this is something of a watershed moment. The Big Tech firms (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google) have mostly behaved as if laws do not apply to them for years; what the DOJ has announced today is an intention to apply the laws to them, and I don't expect that Google will be the only one to face a DOJ antitrust lawsuit in the coming months; Apple and Google are already facing multiple antitrust actions in the EU. 

The appearance of impropriety here, with the pre-election timing and largely partisan backing, are unlikely to alter the fact that these companies are behaving like the abusive monopolies that they mostly are, or to change the fact that they are now all faced with a new reality: that their ethos of disruptive innovation has run as far as society is willing to let it. They will now be required to stop disrupting society, and start helping to stabilize it, or at least pay for cleaning up the mess they've made.

Again, it will be years before this finishes playing out, and while Alphabet Inc. might end up looking rather different, I don't expect that Google itself will change very much. But with the conversation now officially underway, there is finally hope that these corporations (and, by extension, all similarly-sized corporations) might finally have reached the end of the era of limitless permissiveness for their largely lawless, corrupting, tax-evading ways. And that can only be a good thing.

This week in Facebook: Zuckerberg throws contractors under the bus for Facebook's Kenosha fail, while deflecting responsibility...

... and if that isn't peak Facebook in a nutshell, I don't know what is.

As reported by TIME:

In a video posted to Facebook on Friday, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said that the social media giant made a mistake by not removing a page and event that urged people in Kenosha, Wis., to carry weapons amid protests. On Tuesday night, a 17-year-old named Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly fatally shot two people and injured a third.

Zuckerberg admitted that “a bunch of people” had reported the page and said the decision to not remove it was “largely an operational mistake.”

“The contractors, the reviewers who the initial complaints were funneled to, didn’t, basically, didn’t pick this up,” Zuckerberg said in the Friday video, which was taken from a larger company-wide meeting. “And on second review, doing it more sensitively, the team that’s responsible for dangerous organizations recognized that this violated the policies and we took it down.”

He went on to deny that the shooter had followed this particular Facebook group, as if that was required for him to have decided to show up for an event which was organized on Facebook by the group; went on to announce that the shooter's Facebook and Instagram pages had been "suspended," and that the "Kenosha Guard" page had also been taken down... just hours after the public outcry started about white supremacist militia groups organizing events on Facebook that led to the shootings.

On the plus side, though, Zuckerberg did describe the shootings, accurately, as a "mass murder," so at least he's finally stopped pandering to these asshats.

At this point, it's pretty clear that Facebook is not a positive force in society; their corporate culture is, and always has been, morally bankrupt, suffering from a total lack of anything resembling actual principles. And the problem is pervasive, the result of a corporate leadership which views rules as being for other people, and morals as the small-minded thinking of the unintelligent; Facebook is a fish that's rotted from the head down, and which is thoroughly rotten.

As long as Facebook is allowed to continuing policing itself, subject only to "internal investigations" of its own failures, no matter how many lives are lost as a result of those failures, its problems will not be solved. Facebook does not have problems; Facebook is the problem. And the only solution to that problem is for Facebook is to stop being Facebook, most likely due to antitrust action breaking them up into chunks of manageable size. No other remedy can possibly begin to bring the problem of Facebook to heel.

This week in Facebook

It's been a while since last posted one of these.

I mean, with all the COVID-19 chaos currently sweeping the world, it's just been hard to get all that worked up about Facebook's essentially evil nature. It helps that they've had very few major screwups, lately; there have been no more Cambridge Analytica-style scandals, no more Congressional testimony, no major developments on the anti-trust front... It had been so quiet, in fact, that Facebook's image looked like it might be about to recover from years of terrible PR.

And then the Wall Street Journal came along, and reminded us just how awful Facebook actually is:

A Facebook team had a blunt message for senior executives. The company's algorithms weren't bringing people together. They were driving people apart. "Our algorithms exploit the human brain's attraction to divisiveness," read a slide from a 2018 presentation. "If left unchecked," it warned, Facebook would feed users "more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform." That presentation went to the heart of a question dogging Facebook almost since its founding: Does its platform aggravate polarization and tribal behavior? The answer it found, in some cases, was yes.

From the "what took you so long?" file...Seriously, The Verge, what took you so long?

Without further do, I give you this post from The Verge:

YouTube has been pissing me off for weeks. I’m starting to feel like I should pay $11.99 a month to subscribe to YouTube Premium just to get rid of the annoying pop-ups Google sends me almost daily. Google has decided to place pop-up ads in its own YouTube app for Premium subscriptions. This feels slightly acceptable at first, but Google has also decided these should spam you to death, sometimes full-screen, with no option to permanently dismiss them so you see them all the damn time.

It’s a classic growth hack designed to get more people to use YouTube Music or YouTube Premium because, honestly, who cares about either of those services? I already subscribe to Spotify, which is far superior to YouTube Music, and I’d never pay $11.99 just to have fewer YouTube ads and background playback of videos on my phone. It’s a pointless subscription that Google is trying to lazily ram down my throat instead of improving its offering, competing fairly with others, and, most importantly, focusing on its customer experience.

Google’s efforts here have made sure I, and I bet many others, will never touch YouTube Music or YouTube Premium. I absolutely loathe both of these services to the point where I’m left swearing at my phone like an idiot, simply because these stubborn ads keep appearing on top of the YouTube videos I’m trying to watch.

Where to start? How about with the fact that YouTube's mobile app hasn't been exhibiting this behaviour for mere weeks. YouTube has been pissing me off with this bullshit for months. Or with the fact that feeling like making users feel they "should pay $11.99 a month to subscribe to YouTube Premium just to get rid of the annoying pop-ups"is the entire fucking point of the pop-ups.

About-Face(book)

I'm just going to jump straight to the lede, from CNBC:

Facebook has admitted that it gave dozens of companies access to its users’ data after saying it had restricted access to such data back in 2015, the latest wrinkle in a firestorm over how the social network manages user information.

In news first reported by The Wall Street Journal, Facebook handed a 747-page document to U.S. lawmakers released late Friday. In that cache of information, Facebook said it granted 61 companies like AOL, Nike, UPS and dating app Hinge a "one-time" six-month extension to comply with its policy changes on user data. In addition, there are at least five other firms that may have accessed limited data, due to access they were granted as part of a Facebook experiment, the company added.

In 2015, Facebook said it had cut off developer access to its users’ data and their friends.

What's that you say? Facebook said one thing about its treatment of users' data in 2015, only to be forced to admit in 2018 that their previous claims were actually bullshit? Quelle surprise!

Unlike their 450-page written response to Congressional questioning, Facebook dropped their latest coma-inducing door-stopper late on Friday, which is what you do if you're trying to bury a story; the idea is that most newsrooms have closed for the weekend, leaving only cable news channels who mostly rely on print media outlets to do their actual reporting, anyway. The Wall Street Journal, however, apparently had other ideas, and posted an extensive write-up:

Facebook provided the document to the Energy and Commerce Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in response to hundreds of questions from the committee, which quizzed Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg during testimony in April. The committee said on its website that it received the responses shortly before midnight on Friday; the deadline for the responses was the close of business Friday.

It is Facebook’s second attempt at answering Congress’s queries [...] lawmakers asked Mr. Zuckerberg whether Facebook was in violation of a settlement the company made in 2012 with the Federal Trade Commission, under which the company is required to give its users clear and prominent notice and obtain their express consent before sharing their information beyond their privacy settings. Facebook said in the document that it has not violated the FTC act.

Facebook indicated it has struggled to fully reconstruct what happened to its users’ information. “It is possible we have not been able to identify some extensions,” Facebook said about companies that had access to users’ friends’ information past the 2015 cutoff.

Q:  Did you, Facebook, violate your 2012 settlement with the FTC?

A: No, because we changed our policies three years after that, which is clearly good enough to keep us out of trouble.

Q: Are you sure?

A: OK, it's possible that we issued extensions to some of our favourite corporate customers after 2015. So, maybe. But probably not. [Three weeks later.] OK, yes. Yes, we did. Can we please bury this in a Friday night news dump?

[And... scene!]

Seriously, somebody needs to hold Facebook accountable for this shit.

Freedom from Facebook?

The #DeleteFacebook grassroots movement may seem to have stalled, but privacy and anti-monopoly advocacy groups aren't waiting for consumer pressure alone to goad Facebook into doing the right thing. Far from it, actually; they're hauling out the big guns.

From Gizmodo:

Privacy and anti-monopoly advocacy groups launched the Freedom from Facebook campaign on Monday, demanding that the Federal Trade Commission force the social media giant to break up into four separate companies. Sensing a moment of weakness, activists hope to establish stronger privacy protections and cross-platform communication.

After spending years ignoring privacy concerns and the potential for its platform to be used by bad actors, Facebook has made itself incredibly vulnerable to criticism. The Cambridge Analytica scandal demonstrated how it could lose control of millions of users’ data, and it has served as a tipping point for public outcry and political pressure. A coalition of groups that includes Demand Progress, Move On, Citizens Against Monopoly and the Open Markets Institute sees an opportunity.

On Monday, Freedom from Facebook launched a petition with three core demands:

1. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger should be separated into four companies that operate independently.
2. Require interoperability between competing social networks.
3. Create “strong privacy rules that empower and protect us.”

According to Axios, the petition will be accompanied a digital ad campaign that will target Facebook and Instagram users with simple messages like: “Facebook keeps violating your privacy. Break it up” and “Mark Zuckerberg has a scary amount of power. We need to take it back.” The ads will also run on platforms that aren’t run by Mark Zuckerberg, like Twitter.

I'd rather have seen U.S. lawmakers jump on this themselves, having recognized a winning issue when they saw it, but I'll take this as a consolation prize.

Microsoft's Edge-ey move garners predictable responses

I'd already written about this development last week, but it looks like the rest of the tech media world has also caught on to Microsoft's latest move to force Edge on Windows 10 users, and the results are about what you'd expect.

Por ejemplo, Mashable:

Sorry Microsoft, but this isn't the way to get people to use your Edge browser

or diGit:

Microsoft could soon force Mail users to use Edge for email links in Windows 10

In the latest Preview Build, Microsoft is testing opening all Windows Mail links in Edge, even if the user's default browser is set to Chrome or Firefox.

or Übergizmo:

Windows 10 Mail Users Will Be Forced To Use Edge For Email Links

The Reg:

Windows 10 to force you to use Edge, even if it isn’t default browser

Grab some popcorn: Redmond’s asked for feedback on the idea

The Inquirer:

Microsoft is trying to bolster Edge in Windows 10 by overriding browser defaults

Firm has learned nothing about anti-competitive strong-arming 

Express.co.uk:

Windows 10 could FORCE you to use Microsoft Edge, even if Chrome is your default browser

MICROSOFT could soon force Windows 10 users to open links in Edge, regardless of users’ default web browser.

These are just the headlines, of course, but the story that they'e reporting hasn't changed since Friday, and the headlines show pretty clearly how badly Microsoft have failed at pitching their terrible idea. Almost every headline uses the word "force" to describe what MS are doing; none of them are even potentially positive. The Inquirer talks about "anti-competitive strong-arming" in their headline; The Reg is grabbing their popcorn as they watch this fireworks show kicking into high gear. It's difficult to say what reaction Microsoft were hoping for, here, but none of these reactions are good news for Redmond.

None of them are particularly insightful or informative, though. For those things, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Paul Thurrott.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

So goes the famous quote by George Santayana. It would seem that Microsoft are determined to prove the truth of this bit of wisdom, by setting themselves up for yet another antitrust action of the type that they've already lost before... twice.

From The Verge:

Microsoft wants to force Windows 10 Mail users to use Edge for email links

A desperate move to grab browser share

Yes, I'd say that "desperate" is definitely the right choice of adjective, there.

Microsoft is testing a new change to its future version of Windows 10 which will probably annoy anyone using the operating system. The software giant revealed today that “we will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge.” The change means if you have Chrome or Firefox set as your default browser in Windows 10, Microsoft will simply ignore that and force you into Edge when you click a link within the Mail app.

It’s a ridiculous change, that’s similar to Microsoft forcing Cortana users to use Bing search and open results in the Microsoft Edge browser instead of other browsers that are set as default. [...] I’m sure Microsoft will receive a lot of feedback over this unnecessary change, and we can only hope the company doesn’t ignore it.

1) I don't believe that Microsoft listen to their Windows user community... at all, really, and 2) I hope they don't listen this time, either, because the their typical oblivious arrogance could well end up landing them in some richly-deserved hot water of the antitrust variety. Again.

Because you're not imagining it: Microsoft have done this before, back in the day when they were abusing their position as the platform's gatekeepers to drive Netscape out of business. Over-riding the users' clearly established preferences and using Edge as a default browser is not OK, even if it's only happening in Microsoft's own Mail app. Because this shit won't stay in "just" that app, if they're allowed to get away with this; it will find its way into every Microsoft app. It's just the first dick move in a clearly-telegraphed dick game with only one possible goal, i.e. a complete monopoly.

Which is, as I've said before, the whole point.

Not only are Microsoft failing (or maybe just refusing) to remember their own history, they're shooing themselves in the foot by doing so. Because this change won't force users towards Edge; it will just drive them away from Mail... assuming that any significant number of them were using Mail in the first place, which seems unlikely. Coming at a time when Microsoft is still struggling to convince users, and businesses, to switch to Windows 10, these shenanigans are unlikely to help MS's cause there, either, and may actually hurt. 

And all that bad is on top of the very real legal jeopardy that comes with such obviously anti-competitive and anti-consumer antics. It's moronic. Who signed off on this?

Whatever. Who cares. I just hope that they stay the course, this time, and pay the apparently inevitable price for doing so. With Democrats riding a building electoral wave that could see them take control of both houses of Congress, and Trump's impeachment all but certain if they do so, the impunity with which the Microsofts of the world continue to flout U.S. antitrust laws could end rather sooner than the monopolists are planning on, which can only be a good thing.

So, go for it, Microsoft! Keep right on trying to make "fetch" happen. Keep doing you, no matter how much damage you do to your own cause in the process. When the end comes, I will be there watching. With popcorn. And maybe beer.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

Do you remember when Microsoft's vision for Windows 10 involved blocking normal program installation by default? When they had to make a big deal of the ability for users to enable "side loading," as if it was some sort of fucking gift that Microsoft were giving us out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than because Windows Store was a wasteland of shit that consumers wanted no part of?

They didn't stay backed down for long, though. It was only six months later that they were announcing Windows 10 S, a gimped version of the OS which didn't even allow the option of turning side-loading on unless you paid to upgrade from WX S to WX Pro. They ended up making upgrades free for the rest of 2017, because the Windows (later Microsoft) Store was still a wasteland of shit that consumers wanted no part of. Oh, and WX S was also unusably bad, because there were no apps for fucking thing.

Well, it turns out Microsoft still isn't done trying to force Windows users onto their horrible, horrible digital storefront for fucking everything, because they're trying yet again to do exactly that. Just, you know, not with people who've already switched over. No, it's only new WX users who'll get fucked.

From Tech Republic:

Windows 10: Get ready for more PCs that only run Microsoft Store apps by default

Microsoft is planning to update all versions of Windows 10 to incorporate S Mode, which will limit the machine to only installing apps from the Microsoft Store, according to a leaked roadmap.

Because of course they are. This has always been the plan.

Chrome now boasts better battery life than Edge. Your move, Microsoft...

Back in April, when Microsoft was  (yet again) trying to woo users of Google's Chrome browser over to Edge by boasting about Edge's battery performance, I predicted that it would only be a matter of months before Google improved Chrome's battery performance to be every bit as good as, if not better than, Edge's. Having previously confessed my unseemly love of saying, "I told you so," I will now take this opportunity to point out that Google have done precisely that.

From Mihăiță Bamburic at betanews:

Ask Microsoft which browser offers the best battery life on Windows 10 and it will not hesitate to tell you that Microsoft Edge is the best. And it has the test results to prove it: on a Surface Book, for instance, Microsoft Edge lasts a couple of hours longer than Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, which is remarkable.

But, and there is a but, an independent test disputes Microsoft's claim. YouTuber Linus Tech Tips has pitted Microsoft Edge against Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera and discovered that it does not deliver as strong a performance as Microsoft claims.

Linus Tech Tips took four Dell Inspiron laptops, with the same specs, and found that Microsoft Edge trails Chrome and Opera in battery life tests. It would seem that it still beats Firefox, after all. However, the results are much, much closer than what Microsoft's own tests indicate.

Linus Tech Tips' video is worth a watch:

 
Yet another Microsoft product claim debunked? That hasn't happened since Friday.

This is how Microsoft's month has been trending. After managing to go weeks with nary a negative headline in sight, they've now managed to fumble their response to WannaCry twice, are scrambling to do damage control after a source code leak, and had both their Windows 10 S security claims and their Edge browser battery life claims debunked, by experimentation, in the last week. I don't know why they thought that PC consumers would simply accept their PR releases as fact without independent benchmarking, given that independent tests have only been part of the PC culture for a few decades now, but Microsoft seem to have done exactly that. Winning!

So, in the face of all these headwinds, what is Microsoft's current focus? Apparently, mobile. Yes, again.Yes, really. From ZDNet:

The PC is Windows' stronghold, and, despite predictions of its demise, the PC seems to be holding its own, thanks in part to some nice hardware designs coming out of Microsoft recently.

But a few projects that Microsoft has been working on recently also show how it wants a life for Windows beyond the classic PC.

One of these is the effort to get Windows 10 running on ARM. Running Windows on ARM chips - the same chips used to run smartphones - means that Windows could start appearing on small, lighter, always-on devices. The first hardware is expected later this year.

Another project that could still show promise is Continuum, which allows a Window Phone device like the Elite X3 to dock with a keyboard and monitor and perform like a PC.

And finally there is Windows 10 S - a locked-down version of Windows 10 that aims to compete with Chromebooks on ease of use.

All these projects are looking at slightly different things, but they are all linked in their goal to take Windows beyond its traditional PC - that is, desktop and laptop - territory.

[...]

The bigger question is whether Microsoft can make a real breakthrough with any of these new categories. The desktop is Microsoft's home territory but when it comes to mobile it's an outsider at best. Android and iOS are firmly in control and as Microsoft found last time around, dislodging them is going to be incredibly hard.

However, it seems that Microsoft could be finally getting over the technical issues that have held back its ambitions beyond the desktop. The next question is to persuade consumers why they should make the switch.

Did I mention that Microsoft and Qualcomm are being threatened by Intel with possible patent infringement litigation for that Windows 10 on ARM project? Because that also happened last week. It's almost as if Intel realized how many of Microsoft's future plans were depending on Windows 10 on ARM to be their linchpin, and pounced.

Did I mention, too, that Microsoft themselves now can't be bothered to develop natively for UWP, essentially signalling the beginning of the end for a platform which is critical to their mobile efforts? Or that Microsoft have other lawsuit troubles, with their defence against Kaspersky Lab's antitrust complaint not exactly getting off to a strong start? Added to all of that, it's nearly month end, putting us just days away from learning just how stagnant Windows 10's growth has been over the last 30 days.

Honestly, Microsoft have so many issues, on so many fronts, that it's becoming difficult to keep track of them all. Their efforts seem to be focused on everything, which sounds impressive until you think about it for a second, and realize that "Microsoft is focused on everything" is just another way of saying that Microsoft lacks focus. The strain has been showing for a while now, but the cracks in the facade are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, and it's hard to say what benefits, if any, are being realized through this seeming lack of strategic focus. I know that Microsoft want Windows 10 to somehow make them everything to everybody, on every device, in every circumstance, all the time, but somehow that seeming less and less like a realistic plan, and more and more like the Underpants Gnomes.

It's Microsoft's move, but with the situation becoming less tractable with each passing month, I'm not sure how many more chances they'll have to make "fetch" happen. Especially since their competitors in all these various tech-driven spaces aren't exactly standing still, waiting for Microsoft to catch them and pass them. How many more moves will Microsoft get, before it's effectively game over? Rich as they are, how many more missteps and outright failures can even Microsoft afford?

Well.... I guess that's one way to approach the problem...

When Kaspersky Lab filed its antitrust complaint with the EU earlier this month, Microsoft's response was basically boilerplate corporate legalese. "Microsoft's primary objective is to keep customers protected and we are confident that the security features of Windows 10 comply with competition laws," they said, adding that they'd reached out directly to Kaspersky a number of months ago offering to meet directly at an executive level to better understand their concerns," but without success (quotes from The Inquirer).

But that was then, and this is now, and their current strategy for fighting this antitrust complaint, is... novel, let's say. Yes, let's go with novel.

From The Reg:

Redmond is currently being sued by security house Kaspersky Lab in the EU, Germany and Russia over alleged anti-competitive behaviour because it bundles the Windows Defender security suite into its latest operating system. Kaspersky (and others) claim Microsoft is up to its Internet Explorer shenanigans again, but that’s not so, said the operating system giant.

“Microsoft’s application compatibility teams found that roughly 95 per cent of Windows 10 PCs had an antivirus application installed that was already compatible with Windows 10 Creators Update,” said Rob Lefferts, director of security in the Windows and Devices group.

“For the small number of applications that still needed updating, we built a feature just for AV apps that would prompt the customer to install a new version of their AV app right after the update completed. To do this, we first temporarily disabled some parts of the AV software when the update began.”

Basically, Kaspersky are complaining about Microsoft abusing their control of the Windows platform to disable competitors' software, violating EU rules about such things, and Microsoft's defense is that they do exactly this, but that it's OK, because security. Presenting their actions as a consumer protection move is pretty baller; it's also bullshit, because there's plenty of evidence just floating around that Microsoft can, and do, disable competing AV software for reasons other than compatibility issues.

If you're wondering what it looks that like, then wonder no longer! It looks like this:

So, Microsoft can use their control of Windows to (a) know when your AV subscription is due to expire, and (b) "helpfully" remind you a day or so ahead of time.... that they have a free AV solution already installed on your machine, which they'll just be switching you to, automatically, if you should be, I dunno, too busy, or something, to renew that. Because they have your back (wink, wink). Somehow, according to Microsoft, this is about software compatibility, even though compatibility issues with the 3rd part software are never once mentioned.

This genius legal strategy is the work of the same team who are defending against multiple class-action lawsuits using basically the same argument that cost Microsoft US$10,000 in small claims court. Redmond's anticonsumer, monopolistic practices seem so blatant here that I'm finding it hard to imagine the EU doing anything except ruling in Kaspersky's favour. There's a reason why Microsoft already have a not-dissimilar, €497 million antitrust ruling on record.

All of this comes even as Microsoft's data privacy practices still being assessed by EU regulators - most of their recent improvements in that area were done in response to regulatory pressure, and regulators were not sounding convinced that Redmond's concessions in that area went far enough. To be facing antitrust action, again, with the data privacy stuff still not resolved, and multiple class action lawsuits grinding their way to apparently inevitable losses... well, I'm not an expert, but it sure looks to me like Microsoft's leadership have been on the receiving end of some seriously awful legal advice.

Microsoft are now perpetually operating in a mode of trying to minimize eventual penalties, while doing as little as possible about their bad practices in the meantime, all while knowing that their arguments in defense of those practices are basically insufficient to win any case on its merits. And, as a yuge corporation with plenty of cash in reserve, they can probably afford to wage these legal battles of attrition for quite a while yet. Whether they can afford the long-term damage that they're doing to their reputation in the meantime, or the momentum gains they're missing while spending years mired in legal trouble, remains to be seen.

Windows 10 isn't an operating system, it's an advertising platform

The hits keep coming, this time from Mark Wilson at betanews:

Microsoft is disgustingly sneaky: Windows 10 isn't an operating system, it's an advertising platform

Don't believe what Microsoft tells you -- Windows 10 is not an operating system. Oh, sure, it has many features that make it look like an operating system, but in reality it is nothing more than a vehicle for advertisements. Since the launch of Windows 10, there have been numerous complaints about ads in various forms. They appear in the Start menu, in the taskbar, in the Action Center, in Explorer, in the Ink Workspace, on the Lock Screen, in the Share tool, in the Windows Store and even in File Explorer.

Microsoft has lost its grip on what is acceptable, and even goes as far as pretending that these ads serve users more than the company -- "these are suggestions", "this is a promoted app", "we thought you'd like to know that Edge uses less battery than Chrome", "playable ads let you try out apps without installing". But if we're honest, the company is doing nothing more than abusing its position, using Windows 10 to promote its own tools and services, or those with which it has marketing arrangements. Does Microsoft think we're stupid?

When Windows 10 first hit computers without a price tag, questions were asked about what the hidden cost might be. We've talked about the various telemetry, privacy-invading and tracking features that are to be found, and this is certainly part of the price one pays for a free operating system ... sorry, ad platform.

But as more and more ads have gradually crept into Windows 10, the implications of using Windows 10 become ever clearer. Microsoft has boasted about the millions and millions of computers that now have Windows 10 installed. These are not just additions to the user-base, they are consumers ready to be advertised at. It is a captive audience staring at screens all around the world -- perfect for pummelling with ads as there's nowhere to hide!

Microsoft is not only incredibly aggressive with its advertising, it is also disgustingly sneaky. Many of the various forms of advertising that can be found in Windows 10 can be disabled, but don't expect this to be easy, particularly if you're not completely au fait with the world of technology. [...] Seriously... who would think that in order to hide the OneDrive ads, you'd need to flick a toggle labeled Show sync provider notifications?

[...]

It might feel as though we're going over old ground here, and we are. Microsoft just keeps letting us (and you) down, time and time and time again.

It's time for things to change, but will Microsoft listen?

Yes, Microsoft is now even losing betanews. So... Will they listen? Will they change?

My guess is: no. Not until they're forced to, anyway. But it's interesting that even outlets like betanews are now mentioning Microsoft's past history of losing antitrust lawsuits when talking about Windows 10.

I still don't think Microsoft are likely to face any antitrust action while Trump is POTUS, but if there's enough public outcry, who knows? Trump likes to present himself as a populist, watches his poll numbers obsessively, and might like nothing better than to score some cheap consumer-advocate cred by taking a swipe at a target as large and obvious as Microsoft have made of themselves.

Microsoft's anti-competitive bullshittery with Edge

From betanews:

Microsoft is no stranger to pissing people off, particularly when it comes to Windows 10. There have been endless cries about forced updates, complaints about ads, moaning about privacy, and now the CEO of Vivaldi has lashed out at the company for its anti-competitive practices with Microsoft Edge.

Jon von Tetzchner says that Microsoft has forgotten about the "actual real-life people that use technology in their daily lives." He takes particular umbrage at Windows 10's continued insistence of resetting the default browser to Edge.

Indicating that his patience has now run out, von Tetzchner points to a 72-year-old friend who was confused by the change and unable to reverse things. He says that Microsoft is failing to respect the decisions made by users, and this is something that needs to stop.

Every time Windows 10 upgrades, it changes the default browser to Edge. Same thing tends to happen when a new browser is installed -- for some reason, it leads to restoring Edge as the default option. Not the new browser, and not even the browser that was there as a default one previously.

[...]

As someone involved in the development of software, von Tetzchner is acutely aware of the desire to increase user numbers. But this is not an excuse for foisting unwanted software onto people:

Our goal as technology companies should be to provide great software to our users. At the same time, we should accept that some users prefer software created by other companies. It is our responsibility to be fair to the users, and this is what should drive the technology industry forward. Stripping users of their ability to choose or forcefully limiting their options stalls progress. Focusing on building great products is what should drive us to excel.

[...]

Where has the user's absolute prerogative to make a choice gone?

It is time to do the right thing. Stop stealing the default browser, accept user choice and compete on the merits.

The problem is that Microsoft know that they can't complete on the merits. They know that what they're pushing is shite that consumers wouldn't adopt voluntarily, given a choice, which is why they're abusing the access that they have as gatekeepers of the OS itself in as may egregious ways as they can think of. DJT's DoJ probably won't do anything, either, unlike last time,  given how many corporate CEOs he's nominated to head basically every department of his administration. Consumers' rights seem to be the furthest thing from the new U.S. Administrations' collective minds.

Von Tetzchner is absolutely right about this, though. Microsoft's anti-competitive and anti-consumer bullshit is completely off the chain. Their behaviour is the opposite of market forces in action; it is, instead, the worst sort of monopolism. It really does need to stop... but it won't. Not unless and until Microsoft is forced to stop, which doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon.

Well, that's one way to compete...

From FOSS Boss:

Microsoft opening the source code of a lot of its projects in the last months convinced some people that the company – under its new management – is now good, and that it “loves Linux”, however, this assumption came to be wrong today with the latest monopoly try from Microsoft.

[...]

Some users have reported that one of the new Lenovo Ultrabooks (Yoga 900 ISK2 and other models) has a locked BIOS setup. which doesn’t allow you to install another operating system on the laptop. It’s simply “locked”; for example if you tried to install Ubuntu on it, the installer won’t detect the hard drives because of this setup.

BaronHK is one of those who faced this problem and started talking about it, here’s his quote about the issue:

They have the SSD in some strange “RAID” mode where Linux can’t see or be installed to it, and neither can Windows unless you add some drivers to your Windows installer media. They removed AHCI mode from the BIOS. Then they wrote additional code so if you try to toggle it to AHCI mode with an EFI variable from EFIshell, it immediately sets itself back to RAID.

For the last 11 months, they were silent on why this machine was configured this way. The only reason we know why now is because Lenovo answered my Best Buy review by stating it is locked due to the agreement they signed with Microsoft for the Signature Edition PC program, so it’s very likely that all Ultrabooks in the Microsoft Store, and some outside the MS Store (such as at Best Buy) will eventually be configured so that Linux can’t be installed, even if there are some now where you can install Linux.

So consider “Signature Edition” a warning label that means “You aren’t allowed to run Linux, per Microsoft.”.

Lenovo from its side, confirmed the problem yesterday by replying to the guy’s review on BestBuy saying:

This system has a signature edition of Windows 10 Home installed, it’s locked per our agreement with Microsoft

That means that there’s an agreement between Microsoft and Lenovo to do this kind of setup, it’s intended and not just a “bug” in the BIOS or something, as the official response states from the above Lenovo reply.

Words fail.

I mean... yes, it's a laptop, and most people buying a laptop aren't looking to replace its OS. But some very definitely are, and doing a side deal to lock the laptop hardware to Windows 10, only because your software isn't good enough to make them want to stick with Windows 10, is pretty damn shady. In fact, it's exactly the sort of thing that's often prohibited by pro-consumer competition and anti-trust laws, in a variety of jurisdictions.

Remember when Microsoft lost an anti-trust case, after trying to leverage their market share to drive competitors out of the market, rather than competing within the marketplace? Because they sure don't.

The bottom line here, for the consumer who cares about consumer choice, is pretty simple:

If you see the “Windows 10 Signature Edition” badge on a laptop, DON’T BUY IT! You may not be able to install Linux (or any OS) on it, and there’s nothing you can do to the machine to change this currently.