These changes are only applicable to users in the EEA. For those outside the region, Windows will continue to function as it is!
The changes to Windows for DMA-compliance include:
- You can now uninstall Edge and Bing web search using the built-in settings. Earlier, the option was greyed out.
- Third-party web search application developers can now utilize the Windows search box in the taskbar using the instructions provided by Microsoft and choose any web browser to show results from the web.
- Microsoft will no longer sign-in users to Edge, Bing, and Microsoft Start services during the initial Windows setup experience.
- Data collected about the functioning of non-Microsoft apps, primarily bug detection and its effects on the OS, from Windows PCs will not be used for competitive purposes.
- Microsoft, from now on, will need explicit user consent before combining data from the OS and other sources. It will also deliver new consent screens where required.
About 20 years ago, Microsoft was found guilty and convicted, because they forced their browser on their users, driving out competitors by abusing their de facto monopoly on PC operating systems. These days, they are doing the exact same thing again, just on an even broader base. I don’t even understand how this verdict took so long.
It makes perfect sense once you understand that regulators have only cared about stock prices for the last 40 years. The EU coming down on giant corporations is a new development
Only because we don’t have any tech giants, we’ve slept on it so we get the money this way and try to slow down others until we figure shit out.
You can see that we don’t care about consumer that much in markets we’re strong.
It’s just lobbyism
Lol this is asinine.
America let their tech companies get too big to the point that they are all behaving ridiculously anti-competitively, and you think the solution is that the EU should have let their companies get so big that they behave anti-competitively?
This is the EU steeping in to clean up America’s mess when it spills over to them.
Yes, if only the rest of the world would be so selfless.
Your simplification of the issues to steer this into your preferred narrative and conclusion is also asinine. The EU power broker’s hands weren’t getting their share of the bribes and are punishing orgs that didnt realize that the corruption they take part in is everywhere. Corruption in EU countries is old world corruption and is just part of the system bottom to top. Nobody has clean hands.
Your simplification of the issues to steer this into your preferred narrative and conclusion is also asinine.
It’s always projection.
You really have less than zero idea of what you’re talking about, this is actually hilarious.
Checkmate, amiright.
I impaled your heart with my mighty sword, peasant; And all that solemnly using but my words. Words… Forged in the gaping depths of my unending intellect, sharpened with rigorous studies, and honed through years of practice. You can only hope to reach the heights of my wit.
tip of my hat turn to the beautiful maiden on my side
M’lady, I’m sorry that you had to witness this murder. Shall we?
make passionate love to my queen
I’ll shake the piss hand over the shit hand any day.
Lol, try again number 24.
Yes you do. SAP is gigantic. You just don’t hear about it because they’ve infected every business instead of being a consumer-oriented brand.
The fucking sad thing is, when they did it 20 years ago Internet Explorer became the gold standard. Now they are pushing super hard, annoying users, killing competition and they have a tiny market share. They aren’t getting anywhere, just being assholes because they don’t know how not to be.
Edge is just a Chromium build with more manageability for enterprise use.
Which is a problem, because Chromium is becoming a monopoly too. Safari and Firefox have a small marketshare and Google is abusing their power
Because Apple saw that and said “hold my beer”.
“They” (collectively large lobbying corporations) own the US government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture Read all about it
sounds about right
The behaviour required of you when you have a monopoly is different when you don’t.
These days IE isn’t a monopoly. Chrome is. So Microsoft is allowed more leeway to nudge its users.
This isn’t a verdict. There’s been no court case. This is Microsoft complying with EU regulation, which is very recent. Microsoft has responded to it quite quickly.
Demand reparations for Netscape Navigator!
Me for the rest of the week:
Is you regional settings set to a European country?
(by the way, life pro tip, setting your region to a European country solves a ton of issues people have with Windows, most complaints I see I never had a problem with even though I live in Canada, my settings are set to UK)
Interesting that setting your location to the UK gets you EU protections. Do the EU protections apply in the UK? They Brexited didn’t they?
IIUC when they separated they basically ended up with a snapshot of EU regulations. So most of GDPR applies. But IDK if the DMA will apply as it was created after they split.
Yeah you better set it to Ireland or Malta to get full EU conformity.
Genuinely curious: Does that actually work? Don’t you have to have your credit card registered to an Irish bank to make payments in that PC’s Windows Store?
I never, ever, linked any payment means to Windows or Microsoft, and yes it absolutely works. I’ve got my VPN set to Europe as well most of the time though (Sweden actually), and for the language settings I’m indeed using Ireland, and can confirm in that configuration it works.
On iOS in the UK you’re not able to sideload on the new update so probably not
I don’t think that would be possible in an Apple phone. In an Apple phone, Apple can check where you are by checking your GPS coordinates.
This is the life hack I never knew i needed. Thanks!!
Linux solves the rest.
Wrong conversation
You’re right. I either fumbled it or found a bug in my client.
You could always uninstall with the Revo Uninstaller
Check out Chris titisi’s script. Can do quite a bit and uninstall edge.
It can be ran as a single command without any manual download.
Microsoft now permits
The benevolence! Letting people do what they want with their purchased software. wow!
You don’t buy the software. You buy a license to use their software.
Yeah and with Apple, it feels like we buy a license to use their hardware.
Right, and the consumer protections and ownership rights for that licence are grossly insufficient compared to what you would get if you bought a physical object.
We’ve allowed ridiculous compliance requirements and forced updates to become normalized when we never should have, and we’ve accepted the undermining of user authority because we refused to fight for it.
A license subject to the law. Which can easily say that “license” is no different from a physical object you buy.
That’s what it’s become. But, hear me out, what if I want the hardware without the software? Tough luck? Both are so tied together that if the company pulls the rug you don’t have reasonable access to the hardware.
You don’t need Windows to use a computer. There are tons of flavors of Linux among other options. There are plenty of manufacturers who sell Linux boxes and you can always build your own. Microsoft just pays a lot of manufacturers to bundle Windows in the cost, but not all.
What are you talking about? Most suppliers allow you to buy the hardware without forcing Windows on you.
I have no idea why you’re being downvoted because you’re right. You don’t really own hardly any of the software you buy. You don’t buy the software, you buy a license to use it in almost all commercial cases. It would be financial suicide for companies to revoke those licenses in most cases, but it still is what it is.
Just because software vendors legally made it that way doesn’t make it right. Also probably the main reason, many people don’t have any qualms pirating.
Right. This is only “right” because tech corporations were allowed to undermine the meaning of ownership without any attempt to protect customer rights. The concept of “buying a license” is fundamentally contradictory, because without the transfer of ownership, nothing was “bought”. Yet they still present this licensing process as if it was a purchase, which is deceptive.
Many take it for granted that this is just the nature of digital purchases, but the digital market simply created the opportunity for companies to redefine purchases with less resistance. Now they are trying to do the same with physical objects: physical media, technological devices, vehicles, so forth, trying to establish that people didn’t own what they bought.
And the basis of all of this is simply that they wrote some text that they said so. Can you imagine if customers tried something like this? They would be laughed out of the room. It’s a sham. The flimsiest possible pretense of legitimacy. Yet it’s treated as valid because they have the lawyers to defend it while the average customer does not, and governments often neglect their role to advocate in favor of the public.
Sure, but I’m not making a statement about the ethics of it. I’m just stating that that’s the current reality. That’s how commercial software is sold. I’ll freely agree it’s a bullshit practice and we should actually be able to own things, but that’s a whole different discussion.
K, but conquer4 certainly seemed to be either implying it or making an irrelevant distinction, since the comment they replied to was a “should” kind of comment.
Especially when your pirated version generally cannot be made to stop working via vendor rug-pull, and will continue to work in perpetuity at least up until it is no longer compatible with current operating systems.
I see hive mind stupidity is alive and well as your completely factual statement is downvoted by absolute morons.
I’m baffled by all the downvoting. It was also my first thought that we rarely own the software we use.
Welcome to lemmy. You’ll hate it here.
Please leave then lol.
This ought to happen everywhere. Either I’m the admin on my machine or I’m not. If it’s not, I’m not sure how much longer I’ll tolerate a Windows machine.
PSA: Once this rolls out into the actual downloadable Windows builds, everyone should be able to do this by reinstalling Windows.
European Economic Area PCs
As noted above, some functionality is only available in the EEA. Windows uses the region chosen by the customer during device setup to identify if the PC is in the EEA. Once chosen in device setup, the region used for DMA compliance can only be changed by resetting the PC.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm…
Can we get THIS fucking comment on the front page please? Outstanding work, friend! Sincere thanks!
I’d worry about how that might effect other things. Windows isn’t the only thing that changes its behavior based on region. What other software would be looking at that specific region setting?
That’s the real gift given by Microsoft:
Once chosen in device setup, the region used for DMA compliance can only be changed by resetting the PC.
Just change your region back to where ever you are after setup. Nothing on your PC outside of the OS will be reading the region set during Windows Install, they’ll be asking for the currently set region.
Maybe I’m misreading what you quoted but it seems to suggest you can’t do what you’re suggesting.
Once that region is set, it’s locked in unless you do a reset of the PC…which would presumably go through the windows set up again and ask for region.
You can always change your region in settings though, and Microsoft is not removing that ability as that would cause much much bigger problems. But their DMA checking only cares about the region selected at set up, whereas everything happening at runtime only ever gets the current region as the set up region has never been available before.
Hmm, if it doesn’t honor that setting being changed after the initial install it could be possible to set it during install to get the benefits, then change it post install to make other apps behave normally.
You haven’t been the sole admin on a Windows machine in a long time, friend.
If you care about stuff like being the sole admin of your machine, IDK why you’re using Windows.
You can be the admin of your machine, but I bet you know what that would mean :)
But I thought this was a crucial part of the operating system?!
The Internet Explorer system stuff is still there, the difference is that when it launches as a normal browser, it automatically opens Edge instead of IE. (iirc)
Yeah, internet explorer is integrated deeply in places you wouldn’t expect.
It is, specifically MS Edge WebView. For example new MS Teams and new Outlook client are using WebView. Widgets are using it as well as do many other things.
This uninstall will most likely still keep Edge present, it will just be somehow hidden / not as easily accessible.
EU regulation continues to be the only thing making big tech’s shitty products somewhat usable. First USB-C, now this.
Don’t forget the GDPR which is why we have cookie hell now on the web. Even they think they screwed that one up.
The cookie regulation was a different directive. Also, GDPR does not require or recommend website pop-ups, and many websites are actually using them illegally. If websites want to mess up their website because of a bad interpretation of the GDPR, that’s their own fault.
So where are the people saying edge couldn’t be uninstalled because it’s a core part of the system that other element depended upon. I swear I have seen this answer on every reddit post about uninstalling edge, yet Microsoft show its absolutely possible (although only in Europe, because dependencies don’t work the same in Europe 😂).
That’s what they said about Internet Explorer right up until the moment where Microsoft wanted everyone to switch to Edge. Not only could you suddenly uninstall it, but it even started uninstalling itself!
Funny how that happens
Wasn’t it actually a core component until they phase it out in Win7 or Win8? AFAIK (at least on WinXP) the entirety of GUI is rendered from the IE.
I’m sure it’s just uninstalling the browser chrome. The backend is woven into too many MS products to be completely removed.
Kinda yeah. WebView2 is edge (chromium) based and definitely is not uninstalled by uninstalling edge. But it won’t have the browser chrome or the MS Account association (for now, we all know it’s possible for ms to make things worse 💀)
A lot of apps do use Edge as an embedded control to display web content. (Back before Edge was a thing, they would do the same thing with Internet Explorer.) Doing this is the path of the least resistance to whoever is developing these pieces of shit, since they can (up until now) expect Edge to be present on the user’s system without having to cart around their own copy of a web browser and keep it updated in perpetuity with all the potential security holes not doing so could bring, yadda yadda yadda. Uninstalling Edge will indeed cause those particular programs to break.
There is now also the “Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime Environment” (via) which may or may not be able to run on its own even if the regular user-facing version of Edge is uninstalled – I have no idea, and I haven’t tried.
Kinda hard to download a browser without a browser
winget install firefoxAh yes, I’ll tell my mom that.
Of course the real way to do it is force a browser choice on OOBE.
Probably be able to redownload it through the MS store.
There are other protocols on the internet you know…
If windows ships curl, then it’s easy!
What you mean? No one is asking for removal of default browser, i say it should be possible to uninstall it. That’s different.
Who puts up with this shit anyway? Go buy an Apple. You can eat it while installing Linux.
This need to be applied to smartphones
They are working on it (or it is part of the DMA) to enable users to uninstall preloaded apps.
Linux phone when?
Already exists but not in a good shape for “normie” use
normie Linux phone when?
On the year of linux
It takes the EU to force Microsoft to act reasonable.
Not only Microsoft unfortunately.
At least they are complying. Apple is being childish and throwing a tantrum.
Seriously, it took the EU to force Microsoft not to grey out “uninstall Edge”. Still there are non-billionaire people who want to eliminate government regulations, it boggles my mind. I mean, besides brainwashed business school bros.
These changes are only applicable to users in the EEA. For those outside the region, Windows will continue to function as it is!
You misspelled “Windows will continue to be as fucked up as it is!”
Easy solution: don’t use Windows or if possible nothing from Microsoft at all
I personally don’t, but for users in a corporate environment, it’s not that simple. I had to leave my organization for a service contract to escape the toxic shithole that was corporate IT with a Microsoft bias.
Not for me :)
Not OP but okay, I’ll bite: What exactly do you prefer about being locked into the MS ecosystem as opposed to being allowed to choose, including the choice to keep that very ecosystem?
Nothing. I just live in the EU and am very happy about that fact. ¯\_༼ᴼل͜ᴼ༽_/¯
So in other words you misunderstood me stating that continuing to force those applications down users’ throats is better described as “fucked up” than as “functioning”?
I assumed you meant the entire quoted paragraph including the part about the EU. Therefore my bad.
Props to EU keeping these assholes in check
Great news. Although it’s bizarre that it took an entire continent passing a new law to get to this point.
Not every country in Europe is in the EU
*Most of the best parts of a continent
Neither are these laws voted by EU, rather EC and are applied to all the EEA and even countries currently in the process of accession as they are required by the agreement to keep aligning their laws with EU ones until they reach membership.
Does this EU’s Digital Markets Act also applies for Android and all the preinstalled apps by Google and the phone manufacturer?
For anyone looking for something like that right now - https://grapheneos.org/
Been on graphene for a few months now. Aside from a few apps that are over-reliant on the Google ecosystem, it’s works fine. Would recommend. Battery is also a lot better with all the tracking and such removed.
GrapheneOS user here, compared to my stock android pixel it’s night and day, no sense of my phone spying on me.
I use almost entirely FOSS on the graphene one, I now do most of my daily phone activities on the graphene, and use the stock primarily for work (I refuse to taint the graphene phone just so I can do my job).
The installation was extremely simplistic compared to other custom android versions I’ve run. It was literally: plug in phone, click button, phone restarted itself, clicked another button, done.
It applies to all ‘Gatekeepers’, including Google.
It does as per the law. I don’t know whether Google is compliant as of yet.
‘‘Software you can’t uninstall’’ should not be a thing.
