> I think the problem here is that they installed it without user consent.

That depends. The post doesn't clarify whether Edge was already installed in its legacy incarnation. If so, and they received an update, that's not ""installing without user consent".

I recently installed the Chromium version of Edge manually and didn't encounter any of this behaviour. It's a shame that Microsoft are doing something Windows Update-specific, although maybe people who are the most averse to this behaviour are the more technical crowd who will have already grabbed an installer for themselves anyway?