I guess this seems petty, considering where I work, but if you forcibly disable Microsoft Edge - find the executable, right-click your way into the properties -> security options, choose "change", "disable inheritance" and remove all permissions from it... the whole Windows _experience_ just gets better? No ads in interface, no pestering you to change browsers when you upgrade, none of that? It's all just gone?
You know that first time you installed an ad blocker and got to experience the whole "the internet, except we have clean running water and penicillin now" feeling? It's like that at the operating system level. It's really, really remarkable.
(Linux people: I get it. I know. If you didn't get your first distro on _one floppy disk_ I've been doing this longer than you. I'm on Windows because most of our users are.)
@mhoye It’s sad because the _idea_ behind IE integration—build the web into the OS, instead of reconstructing an OS inside the web—was brilliant. But it was deployed in service of Microsoft’s business model and thus ruined for everyone, including the universe outside Windows, forever.
@zwol The thing that kills me is that it _isn't_ Microsoft's business model. They're not an advertising company, and they're terrible at it.
@mhoye @zwol it feels like the "build the web in" part sort of happened ages back with other goals and the web is just so poisoned that of course advertising was going to leak into it sooner or later? that may not really be a good model, it might just be way more that adtech is inescapable in any commercial product one way or another at this point, but still.