Clippy does payday loans?

"It looks like you're trying to buy something you can't afford. I can help!"

I remember the XP era when this kind of scammy pop-up was a 3rd party addon everyone wanted to remove. I thought it was bad enough when I spotted that Edge addon for Sales Offers. But getting in to buy now, pay later deals is bottom scraping in an extreme!

This is going to annoy anyone using Edge. If they wanted to erode the set of users still using that browser, this is an effective way to do it. I also can't imagine why they thought this was a good idea. A lot of sites already bother people about these useless payment systems, so they're already facing a lot of competition.

I also can't imagine why they thought this was a good idea.

It is called kickbacks. Corruption, we used to call it in the old days.

You mean, the 10 users using Edge ?

Better, there are 101 (2) .

Why is any of this a surprise? Their entire business model is built upon monetisation, at any moral expense, of its service provisions. None of this is unknown. MS morality has been as such since day one.

Perhaps the weirdest part of all is that from a pure capitalist stance, what they do isn't a problem. From an abuse of monopoly stance it is of course another matter entirely.

Things won't change until consumer and business customers tell them where to go. So, as the average el reg reader are those that can, please for the love of computing, do so.

That's what it looks like. With the history (and likely future) of that sort thing in mind it seems to me that the EU would do well to take an active role in creating alternatives: a relative pittance of public money to prop up existing alternate platforms (most importantly Linux + AOSP) and applications (office and browser, at least) would go a long way, especially combined with a stipulation that public funds may only be spent on compatible hardware and software*.

The key idea would be to force the existence of actual alternatives, not necessarily forcing their use on the public sector (although, see **); importantly, the alternatives would be available to business and private use as well. If need be complaints of state aid could be dismissed on national security grounds**.

* say, only PCs capable of running Linux, only phones and tablets with manufacturer supported AOSP as an option; the AOSP part would need supporting services as well, most importantly an alternate app store; desktop and server software would have to available for Linux (i.e. not only Windows or other proprietary OS), apps for AOSP (as well as iOS or Android)

** with straight face, even, as this would provide for strategic independence, the lack of which is currently a problem; the potential for snooping might also a be consideration (or at least this is what the US government would seem to insist us to believe when a provider is under the thumb of a foreign power (with Huawei at least))

I'm actually laughing. I still remember what Microsoft did in the past. Consumers and users get what they deserve -- so gullible, with a short memory and easy to attract with just a bit of convenience, gimmick features and some marginal "performance" gain.

I've never run Edge and never will*.

* Fingers crossed that the employer will not force it down our throats.

And yet, when it comes to privacy, Edge is even worse than Chrome:

https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf

On top of that, Chrome (as bad as it is) at least never tried to upsell to me as Edge does ("Shopping with Microsoft", really?), and the fact that this stuff even exists in the corporate version of Edge is even worse.

Quality software from the market leader.

The frightening thing is that while the likes of Reg users hate it in practice it'll probably be used a lot. Still, it's good to be reminded why I baled out of using Windows a long time ago.

If you're shocked by this, you can't have been paying all that much attention over the past 25 years.

I suspect that this integration of loan-shark services into the browser is a precursor to broadening out the practice to include payment for "only available as paid cloud service" functionality, followed by the OS itself. A nice way to bilk as many pennies as possible out of poorer people's pockets, under the standard guise of "making it affordable to everyone".

Given the number of people that get into serious financial problems with debt, pushing credit to people through a web browser is pretty disgusting.

I assume that the browser somehow knows when the user is underaged of course. Doesn't it?

someone had to say it. Punctuated "Bangs!" added for emphasis (and humor)

This is El Reg, old chap. Not Slashdot. They're called exclamation marks.

The Internet Explorer compatibility mode gives enterprises a path out

Count me out. IE still unavoidably has serious security issues and MS hasn't learnt that putting this stuff into the browser is asking for trouble. No doubt people are already working on how to redirect any payments…

Instead of Edge, maybe they should call it RimJob?