Windows 10's version was definitely better, but it still had its own brand of sketchiness.

Specifically, they had chosen a window size that placed the "default web browser" selector conveniently scrolled off the bottom. It would never be scrolled into view by default, even if the defaults control panel had been explicitly opened for the purpose of setting a default browser.

Oh there were definitely dark patterns, especially if you add in the "Microsoft Edge is the recommended browser for Windows 10" or whatever was displayed when you tried to change the default browser.

My only point is that, even by their own logic, it's a step backwards, which makes the stated reason seem like straight up deceit.

It baffles me that Microsoft cares what browser people use; Edge is based on Chromium and Edge's user count confers absolutely no authority over web standards (one of the major things Google gets from making Chromium) to Microsoft.

Edge defaults to Bing for searches, which is a direct source of revenue via ads. Edge also uses browser history for ad targeting via the "personalize your web experience" option; I don't recall whether that's enabled by default but I'd expect it is. On top of those there's a price-comparison feature (affiliate revenue) and a Pinterest partnership.

No more than a year ago the little "help" icon in explorer linked to bing with a prefilled search query that didn't even include a guard to make sure only microsoft.com results were returned (that has since been fixed). The results were (predictably) full of blog spam.

Microsoft was deliberately showing blog spam, just to route users to bing. I can't understand how that's a good business model.

Why doesn't control of Edge give Microsoft a say in web standards? They are not just a Chrome reskin: they can and do add features that Google doesn't like or hasn't prioritized, etc.

If there's a decent chance that the web is the future, would you really let yourself be cut out as a platform, considering you _are_ a platform?

Gotta hedge your bets.

"based on" is very different from "is", especially when the source isn't copyleft.

wild guess but get enough market share to "embrace, extend, extinguish" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

>Windows 11 is a step back from more granular control considering there is no longer the option to change defaults by protocol. Instead, you need to go through multiple apps to see which protocols each app supports rather than going straight to the protocol/file type you want to change the default for.

haven't had a Windows machine for a couple years so I'm wondering - is there still a registry and are protocols still registered in it? I'm obviously not thinking about everyday users going through that to change permissions, just thinking about me.