If you live in Europe and run Windows with your automatic updates on, you may have already noticed this when your computer starts up:
»An Important Choice To Make: Your Web Browser!«
This does not only sound like a slogan from the next Obama campaign, but it doesn't look too official, either. And it doesn't look too professional. Maybe a virus? Malware? Is this legit? Yes, yes it is indeed.
This funky [read: fugly] new message is due to our friend, Windows update KB976002. It enables us to choose our browser if we were not smart knowledgeable enough to know that there are other choices besides Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Why would they do that? Well, let's look at the site it sends us to.
Well, that looks rather...awful? Anyways, in the Terms of Use we see two things. First: Yes, this site is made by Microsoft. [you can only see the imprint in countries where it is required by law, like Germany] Second: Why this page is bugging us.
»BrowserChoice.eu was designed in accordance with a competition law decision issued by the European Commission in December 2009.«
Yeah, they have been forced to.
But why does Microsoft do it this way? By making this look awful, not legit and showing no transparency on where this comes from and why it is bugging me, Microsoft has pretty much ashamed itself. Or wasn't it their fault? Did the European Commission tell them to make it ugly, so people wouldn't be brainwashed by the Microsoft CI like good digizombies? Or did they just not want to spend their costy designer's time on making this look pretty, because they have been forced to? I f that is the case - cheap move Microsoft, very unprofessional.
If you have a different default browser than IE - like I do - chances are you will never see this.
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