The USA seems to ignored the purchase of competitors in most cases. Why is this any different? FedEx bought TNT Cargo which was a much for affordable air courier just to kill their competitor and expand their business. Air shipping costs have gone up as a result from what I can see.

For greater security, your organization can host their own Gitea server rather than be exposed to the MS security gaffes at Hithub. Check out Gitea.com and https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2Fgo-gitea.

"Gitea = Painless self-hosted all-in-one software development service, including Git hosting, code review, team collaboration, package registry and CI/CD"

It is stupid for advertisers to just play the same ad over and over and over. That also annoys customers who will avoid the product.

I would find Google much more usable if there were some selection switches to turn off AI images and turn off the stock images.

.

Google would also be more helpful if you could tell it "yes I'm looking to purchase something" or no I'm not. Sometimes it's pushing all the retail links when I don't want them, and other times when I am actually searching for something I need to buy the other sites are clutter.

Altavista was good at letting you define what you were looking for.

I find that the window dragging and docking and sizing works very well in Win10 and haven't seen the problems you describe. But my monitors are smaller. I wonder if it's a driver thing, or if Windows just can't handle big 4k screen sizes well.

One weird thing I noticed is that recently some applications start up behind other windows rather than at the front. They didn't do that before so I blame some Win update.

I'm hoping Windows 12 will fix the sins of Windows 11 (just like Vista and Windows 8 were largely fixed in later releases).
However, Windows 10 is enjoyable only because Open Shell fixes the craptastic Win10 start menu.
[ https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FOpen-Shell%2F... ]

Win11 broke so many nice Win10 things it's painful. e.g.
- Why use white popup windows with no borders against the white running application?
- Hiding all the most useful items in right-click menus is a mistake.
The GUI experts are out of touch with the reality of what their users want / need.

However, I think Windows will only get worse as Microsoft pushes AI features that really suck.
They should make Win12 the "no AI" upgrade from Win10 that runs on existing machines, and make a separate Win42AI for people that want to waste their time on it.

I am really annoyed that our local library shelves are kept half empty, yet they purge books every spring. Our librarians don't seem to value preserving old books and building up the collection.

Microsoft is incompetent when it comes to managing user credentials, especially when someone has different credentials for different workspaces or companies. Letting MS infect your computer with an MS Account for login can cause a lot of problems. They tend to take over your world. Always have a local account, at least as a backup.

Also uninstall MS OneDrive so it can't mess up your file system. (You will need to uninstall it again after every major Win 10 update.)

Microsoft-Uninstall or Disable OneDrive

We do have it good overall with YouTube. There is a lot of good content.

I would be fine with reasonable ads. Static ads next to the video would be fine (mostly, they are sometimes objectionable). And I am getting a few static ads now. I think they are testing them because I only see them on some PCs.

However YouTube video ad quality is crap in many cases. I don't want to sit through it just because I hate the ad content. Then there is the frequency. Two unskippable ads before a 15 minute video with one or two in the middle is unacceptable. I'll stop watching YouTube if my ad blocker stops working.

True, it did spark a revolution. So only mostly bad.

...that resulted in a colossal waste of energy.

It's fascinating how disfunctional MS is.

Did the problem you described occur with Win11?

I uninstall OneDrive as part part of my standard Win10 setup process. I also uninstall Skype so it doesn't appear in the right-click menu.

It isn't customizing the web site. It is customizing MS Edge and the configuration of the browser's blank "new page".

There is no need to visit MSN. It's content just doesn't get loaded anymore in a new page.

Yes, that is what you are setting up, a custom MS Edge layout that is blank for a new page.

No extension is required.

Just open a new tab and then open Page Settings (the gear in the top right).

Set:

Quick Links - Show Promoted Links = Off

Content = Content Off

Done.

Then do that again every time MS Edge gets updated, because it's Microsoft.

MSN has always been a bunch of clickbait articles and celebrity infospam with a few genuine news articles mixed in. The first thing I do when installing Windows is to turn off all the crap "content" news feeds on the task bar and in MS Edge. I do see it occasionally when Microsoft helpfully turns it back on during some update. There should the option to switch from MSN-human or MSN-AI to some real news feed.