You already know about Microsoft’s desperate ploys to get you to use Edge on Windows 11 — chances are you’re one of the folks who have gone through the test of patience to install Firefox or Google Chrome.
Well, new research by Mozilla reveals that the Redmond crew are not only still up to their old tricks, but getting worse. All kinds of “harmful design” shenanigans are at play here, in order to “not allow people to download and install an alternative browser, to set it as their default, or to continue using it as their default, without harmful interference.”
If only we could only get the same treatment as Windows users get in the EU...
Staying desperate
So what did the research find? Well, Mozilla discovered that a lot of the shady tricks Microsoft was called out for in the past are still happening:
- Visual interference: Searching for different browsers to download in Edge still brings up the “All you need is right here” banner, as well as a banner promoting the browser when you go to Chrome’s download page.
- Default browser selection trickery: There is a button at the top of the default apps screen to change to a different browser, but not every file type is switched over.
- Trick wording: Things like “Use Microsoft’s recommended browser settings,” “You’re almost done setting up your PC” and more still persist.
- Dark patterns: In the setup screens you normally see a few days later, Edge-preferential options are shown as big blue buttons, whereas keeping the same settings is usually smaller, greyed-out text.
And that’s just a few of the many different harmful patterns Mozilla found — including Copilot opening links in Edge instead of your default browser, pre-selecting checkboxes to sync data to Edge, and resetting it as the default browser when you migrate from Windows 10 to 11.
Just make a better browser
It screams “inferiority complex” if I’m being real, which is a shame because Edge is indeed a good browser. It runs on the same Chromium engine as Chrome (to support all the same extensions), but also has some efficiencies built into it to not drain the battery as badly.
But this aggressive lock-in, some high RAM resource usage in the background and the clutter of Copilot and MSN news does make it falter. It’s not like Microsoft doesn't have a history of doing this — they were taken to court over an antitrust lawsuit in 1998 for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows and making it difficult to install a competing browser.
The only difference now is that users are committed enough to jump through those hoops to get to their favorite browsers. I mean “Google Chrome” is one of the most searched terms on Bing after all!
If you want to compete, build something better. Don’t go about it this way.
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