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.
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, if only the rest of the world would be so selfless.
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.
Are there any downsides to setting your region to some place other than where you actually are?
No, it just uses that to know which signs and types of spelling to use.
Useful fact: Both Ireland and Malta have English as official languages so you’re guaranteed availability of those locales (unlike say en-DE, which exists, (at least according to ICU), while en-FR doesn’t).
Fun fact: Both don’t have it as sole official language, though, and each EU member only gets to nominate one of their official languages as an official language of the EU, which means that with Brexit English ceased to be an official EU language. The commission manoeuvred around that though and still kept it as working language. With the Brits out of the picture though they’re not writing passive-aggressive memos regarding language use any more and the Irish certainly will not stoop down to that level, Euro-English can finally evolve freely and within ten years we’ll start telling Anglophones that it’s incorrect to say “there were five people at the party” (you attended), it’s “we were five people at the party”. Deal with it.
I’ve read about Euro-English and discussed it back on reddit quite some time ago, and I have to say I’m very skeptical whether such a thing exists or ever could exist. Fundamentally it’s a mis-learned standard English, and the mis-learning is to a large degree determined by the speaker’s native language - which varies extremely across Europe. Slavic speakers will have issues with articles, Germans much less so, etc. Consequently there’s hardly any definite characteristic of Euro-English (the examples in the article are too vaguely described, and I’m sure many European ESLs would find them grammatically unacceptable too). Perhaps one could speak of a variety of English used by EU politicians and institutions, but those people are hardly a linguistic model for the vast majority of other speakers.
Define standard English?
Both the USA and UK don’t agree on what it is.The sort of English you’ll see in literature, newspapers, any remotely formal communication, in grammars (which learning materials are based on as well). The stuff learners will aim to learn.
Differences between US and UK English, and the dialectal variety within each of them, are not all that relevant here. Where I live, students are taught British English, but no professor ever chastised us for using American pronunciation or vocabulary. Both are within the range of what natives will find acceptable.
You’d think it’s the language spoken in England
the examples in the article are too vaguely described, and I’m sure many European ESLs would find them grammatically unacceptable too
I wouldn’t ever drop the s for he/she/it but the rest is perfectly cromulent. Remember these aren’t high school mistakes they’re stuff that C2 speakers use, practically native-level “mistakes”, just as you’ll see American generals writing reports using “less” instead of “fewer”, or “good” instead of “well”, or “who” instead of “whom” (shudder). “was” instead of “were”. That’s language evolution, plain and simple, things change as they always have and the language does different things in different places.
but the rest is perfectly cromulent
“Competences”, “planification”, “to hop over” (=to refrain from)? Sorry, that stuff is downright grotesque.
Remember these aren’t high school mistakes they’re stuff that C2 speakers use
I can’t remember that because the WP article didn’t claim that. In fact, if you make these mistakes, you’re not C2, by definition.
just as you’ll see American generals writing reports using “less” instead of “fewer”, or “good” instead of “well”, or “who” instead of “whom” (shudder). “was” instead of “were”.
Except that this is language change from within the native community, in their native language, aimed from native speakers at other natives who will understand or (if they don’t understand them or use a different variety) correct them. Some of that stuff (who-whom, was-were) is well-established in already existing usage and dialects, it’s not an innovation at all.
That’s language evolution, plain and simple, things change as they always have and the language does different things in different places.
I’ll repeat myself: no, this isn’t ordinary language change, as this “Euro English” is simply a local characteristic of this or that speaker who failed to learn English as it is used by native speakers. ‘Euro English’ is not a real unit, as it has no defining characteristics. Imagine a European using some calque from his native language while talking to a European who has a different native language and who can’t understand the calque - this is not what happens in a normal speech community, these people will fail to understand each other, and their English is not a stable or reliably identifiable linguistic variety. You can see that especially in the table with “Euro English vocabulary”, where words are clearly marked by their origin, and they won’t be understood or will be found absurd by many other Europeans.
That is most definitely not a fun fact. It’s bad enough having the Yanks telling us how to speak our own language!
Are you telling me to deal with it, or something else?
Timezone stuff might act a little weird, same with fuzzy location
No issues with that for me as it’s separate settings 🤷
Linux solves the rest.
Wrong conversation
You’re right. I either fumbled it or found a bug in my client.
This is the life hack I never knew i needed. Thanks!!
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.
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 :)
I will tolerate it for -1.5 years.
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.
Which is entirely unnecessary and done explicitly so they can pretend it is essential to the operation of the machine.
Nah, mostly it’s just done stupidly many many years ago but MS being MS wants backwards compatibility.
Even MMC needs internet explorer for some stupid reason. It uses it to show HTML files or some shit.
No, it’s because IE was just a modified File Explorer to begin with. It was never its own independent software, but something cobbled together from already existing code. It’s these constant dependencies that are the problem due to laziness and bad practice.
Look into League of Legends and how Skarner and Minions are a structurally important part of the games entire code for another example.
IE died years ago.
Edge is Chromium.
And yet it’s code is still in there doing work. Way to fail t reading comprehension
No it’s not. It’s Chromium.
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 💀)
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.
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.
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.
Props to EU keeping these assholes in check
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!”
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.
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.
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
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.
More like LineageOS because Graphene is only available on very specific, hyper-expensive devices. Or just expensive if you want one that is already out of support.
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.
Meh, I purged windows from my systems last month. I will never be forced to (re)install Edge, use the garbage search, or link my pc to a gd Microsoft account again. I’ve had enough of Microsofts bullshit.
Luckily you don’t need Window$. You can install Edge on your Linux distro of choice! Will it then show warnings telling you Edge is the bestest browser when you use it to search for another browser? Who knows, why not try it and find out??? Please someone use Edge on Linux, Micro$oft is now a friend of Linux
Ironically people do actually use Edge on Linux. Beats me lol.
At least they actually got to choose which browser they wanted.
I had it installed briefly to use Bing AI before I discovered Perplexity
