What if we got to easily choose our web browser, and didn’t have to rely on complex operating system settings to change the pre-installed default?
98%? Sounds like bad polling to me
@Zoboomafoo @Vincent given it’s from Mozilla I’d say there’s a very good chance the audience they had access to for the poll skewed significantly towards the Firefox-users demographic 🤔
From the full report:
For the experiment, two panel providers helped us recruit 12,000 survey participants across Spain, Germany, and Poland.
So given that they used third-party providers, I don’t think they would have been biased to Firefox users specifically. (And in fact, given the current state of the market, the majority probably wasn’t a Firefox user.)
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I think if you asked people, it’s one of those questions that sound good so of course they’ll say yes. In practice, they’re too lazy and can’t be bothered, and that’s where they privacy invasive and monopoly practices take over. Because in the end, path of least resistance and defaults is what determines what the majority do.
But then you have windows 11 where it takes about 5-10 whole minutes to get rid of all the defaults that point to Edge, and even then some things, like help pages links and the start menu’s search bar will keep openning Edge.
You of couse have google phones where chrome and google search are shoved to each one of your home pages and to the global phone search bar.
At that point you need to wonder - are people just being lazy, or do those companies make it just hard enough, and often impossible, to not use their pre-defined defaults?
It’s both.
Remember when Apple introduced the iOS update to stop cross-app-tracking?
One popup that asks the user if they want to allow this tracking or not, and would you look at that, the majority clicked NO.People do care, they’re just too lazy, even if they’re aware.
On what platform do you need to “rely on complex operating system settings” to change the default browser?
98% ???
Did they place a gun in the responders’ face?
This sounds like people wanting to replace edge or IE with chrome, rather than wishing they can have Firefox.
Not saying I’m a fan of Edge, but I booted up my old Surface after not using it for a few years and out of everything Edge was surprisingly one of the most responsive programs. Oddly enough it also opens up PDFs super fast. Guess that’s just a long way of me saying it’s definitely better than IE and at least a step forward.
It’s not any worse than chrome imo, I agree.
No shit lmao
Makes sense. If a company uses marker dominance of one product to nudge users to use another, then this should be a crime of anti-competitive behaviour. Instead, companies should be forced to offer all alternatives and not be able to highlight their own product any more than they highlight others.
So I’m just thinking about how this would work, in a perfectly non-competitive world:
There’d need to be some Browser Standards Association to implement and suggest browsers to add to a list of “certified browsers”, with transparent requirements to be included to ensure low quality or outdated browsers aren’t included. The OS would need to implement that entire list in a randomized format. There’d preferably be some sort of built-in pros/cons list of the browser, I suppose these could be put together by a combination of the BSA and the competing browsers.
But these pros/cons won’t be understandable or significant to 95% of people.The BSA would also want to ensure there’s diversity not just in browser and companies (like Opera getting 3 fucking entries), but would also want to ensure there’s a variety of browser engines (preferably not just chromium and webkit).
Even having an opinionated choice would be better than what we currently have.
BrowserChoice 's criteria was also OKish though nowadays it would be just reskinned blink and Firefox.
Yeah but giving you choice limits companies abilities to make back room deals among each other to show shit into your face…
Has anyone though about poor business people’s ability to control the default?
Well let me be one of the 2% then (seriously who did this poll lol) Idgaf.
Make the choice so it install the browser and uninstall other browsers as well. I can’t belive it is not standard with this simple choice that the user should be forced to do on any OS. EU do something about this!
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Complex? You install Firefox and two seconds later it’s pestering the shit out of you to make it the default browser
Guess what Edge and Chrome do if you make Firefox the default browser? They all harass you if you run them when they aren’t the default. At least Firefox respects the “don’t bother me about this again” checkbox
Yeah I think that’s exactly his point. Every browser prompts you to make it default, it’s not exactly a complex change.
Well, you are probably not using the previous defaults much once you’ve changed.
I think “complex” refers to the various dark patterns used by Windows and Mac/iOS to scare and/or force users that know nothing of computers into using the default browsers.
I think the article is talking about prompting users to choose a default browser without necessarily installing them, during the OS first run for example.
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