 I'm extremely happy to report that the European Union has managed to force Microsoft to stop many of its abusive behaviors towards its users. As a result, Microsoft will start offering a different version of Windows to the EEA, the European Economic Era, which includes Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. I've decided to call this version Windows EU, because come on, let's immediately see what changes compared to normal Windows 11, which we all know and love. So firstly, all applications in Windows can now be uninstalled by the user. And by the way, that doesn't apply to just Windows, but all operating systems. Starting from March 2024, it will be a requirement from the EU to allow the user to uninstall any kind of application. In this case, this includes the camera application, Cortana, finally, and Photos. I would kindly decide that we'll be able to all remove these three applications anywhere in the world, starting next year. If you live in the EEA, you will also be able to turn off web search from Microsoft Bing, aka you can finally remove Bing from the Start menu search. You can also remove Edge, the default Windows Internet browser, yet again, only in the EEA. If you liked the idea of searching in the Start menu and just didn't like Bing, fear not. Finally, for the dear European users, Microsoft offers the ability to define custom search providers, meaning that you'll be able to select any application to grab what you're typing in the search bar and offer you contextual information, not just Bing, also Google. Secondly, Windows has a widget support, which is a sidebar containing various widgets information, such as Meteo and News. This is pretty cool, however, when only Windows can decide what gets in there, no app developers can submit their own widget. But that's about to change. The EU decided that this goes against fair competition, and they made Microsoft create a new API from scratch called Defeat Providers, which will allow developers to add their own widgets, as long as you live in the EEA, that is. And if you do have the privilege of living there, then you will also get this amazing feature. Directly quoting the Windows blog post in the EEA, Windows will always use the customer configured application default settings for the link and file types, which means that if you live elsewhere, then Windows might decide to ignore the default settings for link and file types that you decided. Like you're going to settings, change the browser to Chrome, update and wow, it's back to edge. They are saying that they won't do that, but only if you live in the EEA. Even better, Windows will respect what application asked to open a contact with. This means that if an application says, open this link in Chrome, then that link will actually open in Chrome. This means that if you don't have Windows EU, your operating system will sometimes override what the application asked to be opened with. So wow. So amazingly enough, another feature that might not follow EU rules is Copilot, the text AI thingy that allows you to interact with the system through messages. They are rolling it out in North America, United Kingdom, parts of Asia and South America. And one day they say we would like to also have it in the EEA. But you know, the European Union wants us to respect customers, so that's gonna take a while. Okay, I'm getting a bit excited here, but it's amazing to see the European Union recognize what Microsoft has done for years is actually not fair competition and has to be legislated if you want to improve society. And it's amazing that Windows prefers to maintain two different window versions, one for the EEA and another for everywhere else, rather than just give up those unethical behaviors. You might wonder whether you can get Windows EU even if you don't live in the EEA, something that I would recommend. So everything depends on the position that is set when you first set up the device. If you want to change that, then you will have to wipe out all the data from the device and start a new install entirely. So yeah, the trick of going to settings and changing the language won't work, sorry. Now that I've outlined all the changes of this new Microsoft operating system, I feel like I also ought to explain briefly what this legislation is all because. So that would be the DMA or the Digital Markets Act, which was enacted in 2022, but will only start being effective from March 2024, so four months from now. The DMA recognized that there are some digital products that have such a high market share that it's practically impossible for new competitors to offer an alternative. These products are called gatekeepers, and there are various guidelines to identify them. If you are a gatekeeper, then you are expected to follow some extra rules that guarantee a fair competition. The current gatekeepers are various Google products, Google Play, Google Maps, Google Search, YouTube, Android, Chrome, and so on. The Amazon Marketplace and its advertisements, some Apple products, the App Store, iOS and Safari, TikTok, weirdly enough, some Metaproducts, some Marketplace, Instagram and WhatsApp, and finally Microsoft, thanks to LinkedIn and Windows. All of these products will have to allow third parties to interoperate with the gatekeeper services, allow businesses' users to access the data they generate, and provide advertisement users tools to carry out an independent verification of their advertisement. So that sounds pretty interesting. They won't be able to treat their own products favorably in ranking compared to similar competing products, such as in Google Search, they won't be able to push up Google results, they won't be able to prevent users to link other business outside their platforms, and they will have to allow uninstalling default applications in their phone. Finally, they won't be able to track the user outside their own services for the purpose of targeted advertisement. This as an example forbids Google Chrome to track the user outside-core Google websites for advertisement purposes. But of course, these technological giants aren't happy about all of this, in fact, many have opposed this gatekeeper status. Firstly, Meta has decided to fight the EU over Messenger and Marketplace. Again, Messenger being a gatekeeper means that it will have to be interoperable with other services, which I would love to see, by the way. However, according to the company, Messenger is actually not a messaging application, in fact, it's just part of Facebook, it's not like they're two distinct products. This is an extremely weird argument, considering that Facebook has forced you to download the Messenger application to be able to chat for over a decade. The argument for Marketplace, instead, is that it's not actually a store, it's just a way for users to meet each other and exchange products for money, which Facebook never actually sees or knows anything about. As an avid Marketplace user, I can attest that it's kind of true, so whether that's enough for it to not be a gatekeeper service, well, that's up to the European Union. The court is expected to rule within months ahead of the March deadline to make sure that all services will actually abide by the rules by their date. Another company that has issued a complaint about its gatekeeper status is Apple. They probably claimed, and I didn't double check the exact documents, so just quoting Bloomberg, which had only talked about draft, but they probably claimed that both of their upstore and iMessage services shouldn't be considered gatekeepers. This is because the former will have to allow site loading of applications under the new AU rules, and the latter will have to be interoperable with other chat platforms. Obviously, Apple is known for trying to avoid doing both of those things, so they won't trap a legal fight over it. If they do file a complaint but the court doesn't reply to it by March 6, then Apple will still have to comply with the rules by that date. All of this means that the 6th of March 2024 is officially my new favorite date of next year. I just can't wait. Also, according to the latest EU regulation, if you watch a video and that video isn't sponsored by anybody and yet it took a lot of time to actually record, write, edit and research, you should like donate something, because otherwise I just cannot keep doing all of this. So I've got links which you should see there. I have a general goal of 1000 euros every month to be able to pay the editor and the, you know, equipment. Fun fact, I'm recording with this Microsoft microphone and also this microphone, so I'm just testing different things. So if you could donate something to me, that would be awesome. If you can't, don't worry. It's not actually mandatory, but still, if you could like subscribe. You know that stuff. So yeah.