If you think making it harder to change the default browser away from Edge in Windows 11 was the only sleazy tactic Microsoft is employing to shove Edge down Windows users’ throats – think again. The company is using a microsoft-edge: URL scheme everywhere in Windows to bypass the default browser setting altogether, but luckily, competing browsers have caught on.
The Brave web browser added support for the
microsoft-edge:URL scheme with version 1.30.86, released last week. So, you no longer need to install EdgeDeflector if you’re using Brave as your default browser. It’ll pop up as an option when you click on amicrosoft-edge:link.This makes Brave the first web browser to implement support for Microsoft’s anti-competitive URL scheme. However, it’s not the only browser doing so. Mozilla developer Masatoshi Kimura has also written patches to implement the protocol into Firefox. It has yet to pass review and get merged into Firefox, but the ball is rolling. Firefox’s implementation is part of its overall Windows 11 shell integration work.
From everything I’ve read and been told, Edge is a good, solid browser in and of itself – it’s just so incredibly sad Microsoft has to stoop this low to force people to use it.
Unfortunately microsoft and apple are both guilty of these anti-competitive tactics. Still, they employ them because they are effective at capturing users.. They expect the market payoff will be worth whatever legal consequences there are, if any at all.
Like the author, I am very disturbed by technology that hijacks URLs. Users should never have to deal with this ever. However if Microsoft is hard-coding it’s own services into windows and refusing to respect when owners choose alternatives, then I feel justified in carving out exceptions. If MS deliberately designs an OS to disrespect owner choices, owners should be able to use tools to return control back to them even if that means redirecting microsoft’s unwanted properties to alternatives. I hate that things have gotten to this, but microsoft is solely at fault for it and frankly they don’t deserve any sympathy from users or developers who seek only to practice their own freedom of choice.
For now Mozilla and others are able to reverse engineer and defeat the anti-consumer methods used by microsoft, but it’s conceivable that windows 11 could put an end to this. Microsoft could use TPM to block any modifications to windows that give owners more control than microsoft wants them to have. PCs could face a TPM-apocalypse. Hopefully I’m wrong but I just have this ongoing sense that it’s only a matter of time before TPM that microsoft is pressuring windows users to have will get used against owners.
Yes, this technology trend is concerning, and seems to move in the wrong direction every year. I think the common metaphor is a ratcheting tool, that only tightens, but never relaxes.
Yes, there are legitimate reasons for deeper integration. For example, you might want to shop a map, and using your own component might allow better UI (and lower costs).
But that is a component. Like the HTML component that Windows had for decades, it would be inside your own program (or provided to other programs as a stable API).
But if OS starts to say “this is the only Maps application we will bundle, and others cannot be made default. If you click on an address or a geo location, it will only show up in the built in app”, then it is simply contradicting the user’s wishes.