When you buy a new PC—whether a high-end gaming device or an entry-level laptop—you expect it to be clean from the start. However, Windows 11 typically comes with at least a few unwanted pre-installed apps, called bloatware. How should you remove bloatware from your PC?

  • @TrickDacyEnglish
    10•9 months ago

    So Microsoft was fined a ton of money for making IE not uninstallable, and they’re now doing that shit again? Surprised, but not really

    Edit: I read about it on Wikipedia to refresh my memory and wow, yeah they got off quite easy, writing their own terms and also having them expire after a few years. As if an established monopoly will behave itself a few years later because… it learned its lesson or something?

    • @[email protected]English
      2•9 months ago

      We’re they fined? I heard they were penalized with nothing. And boy, did they learn a lesson.

      • @TrickDacyEnglish
        1•9 months ago

        Yikes… I remembered them being forced by the government to do stuff. I just read about the outcome again and it’s so fucked up… Yeah you are right:

        At the initial trial, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Microsoft’s actions constituted unlawful monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890,[2] but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit partially overturned that judgment.[1] The two parties later reached a settlement in which Microsoft agreed to modify some of its business practices.[3]

        On November 1, 2001, the DOJ reached an agreement with Microsoft to settle the case. The proposed settlement required Microsoft to share its application programming interfaces with third-party companies and appoint a panel of three people who would have full access to Microsoft’s systems, records, and source code for five years in order to ensure compliance.[30] However, the DOJ did not require Microsoft to change any of its code nor did it prevent Microsoft from tying other software with Windows in the future.

        Microsoft’s obligations under the settlement, as originally drafted, expired on November 12, 2007.[33] However, Microsoft later “agreed to consent to a two-year extension of part of the Final Judgments” dealing with communications protocol licensing, and stated that if the government later wished to extend those aspects of the settlement as far as 2012, it would not object. The government made clear that the extension was intended only to give the relevant part of the settlement “the opportunity to succeed for the period of time it was intended to cover”, rather than being due to any “pattern of willful and systematic violations”.[34]

        https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.

        So yeah, they agreed to do some stuff temporarily, for the appearance that something was done. They should have been fined a LOT and also forced to allow uninstallation of IE WITHOUT A FUCKING EXPIRATION DATE