That's... Super interesting. Guess this is due to customer demand somehow. Surprised edge has that sort of clearance from the rest of the biz to make these sorta calls.
There's a lot of things that surprise me, since I assume Microsoft does a lot of dogfooding.
Like does any exec there ever open up Edge and cringe at the scam ridden cesspool that MSN has become? Or ask why they have to see Candy Crush ads jiggling around in the start menu? Somehow the low-rent skeevyness can't be outweighed by the ad revenue.
I suspect that Microsoft internally is using Enterprise edition, where the Start Menu behavior is disabled, and likely sets an internal landing page as the start page for the browser. So no, I suspect generally most Microsoft folks don't have to suffer what the rest of us see.
Those who do probably don't have the clout to demand a change that removes revenue.
I still have friends who work at Microsoft and internally, Microsoft employees see the same tabloid articles and a fresh install of Windows comes with Candy Crush.
What people on HN don't realize is that the general public likes Candy Crush and tabloid news. My parents love these things being front and center on their computers.
I have less issues with Candy Crush and tabloid news than I do with Microsoft's use of Taboola for ad revenue. It means you can go from stock Windows to malware in one click from the Edge homepage.
Ah no I bet it's about Edge losing default status with google docs users as people using google docs would be prompted to install google docs with it chrome. They adopted chrome for edge as they know they could not beat it now they are using the same old playbook Embrace, extend, and extinguish.
