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Microsoft is using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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It just pops up randomly. Went to go make a coffee and when I came back there it was. I'm in the UK so it's not just happening to US people.
I'm just so confused. I've been running Win 11 retail since launch and before that I ran Win 10 since launch. I've never seen anything like this.
On my work laptop (surface pro) I get these popups randomly. Usually it happens when I restart or after an update. On my home laptop (also surface pro), I mostly get them when I need to open Edge or another program from home that I use for work. Usually because it's not set as the default. It happened enough that on my personal home laptop (which I'm choosing not to update to windows 11), I actually edited the registry to stop it from suggesting Bing, Edge, and Windows 11. On my work laptop I can't do that (no administrator access) so I see these things all the time. Full screen popups for Windows 11 (which has compatibility issues with some of the software I use for work), switch to edge popups (usually when I open a PDF in Adobe or similar), that kind of thing. I didn't set the defaults on the work laptop. It was issued to me this way. I am using it as the company I work for has intended and at up via their IT department.
To be fair though, I've seen Google do similar in Chrome when my default browser is set to Firefox at home. I have chrome for the occasional Google service I use that may require it for added use case. But it's not the default. Gmail is good for this. I see popup ads for Google Fi (which I use) all the time. Same with drive and the YouTube premium ads are everywhere. That's also not okay but at least it's just in the browser. I don't see this nonsense Everytime I wake the computer from sleep mode.