This seems far worse than their IE-bundling issue back in the day... at least users have a few web browsers to choose from, but what good is that when user preference is overridden?
It shouldn't have to be a separate setting from the overall default browser, but at least it's relatively easy to change.
An alternative is to use Firefox Focus (Firefox Klar on F-Droid) as your default browser, then its "open in" feature if you want to make it a permanent session.
It's funny how Apple gets away when doing the same thing or worse than Windows, yet Windows is always the one getting criticism. Like how Apple always try to enable Siri after an update. Or how managing when an update should be done is incredibly worse on macOS than on Windows.
Windows forces you to use bing/edge when you accidentally search from the launch programs menu, but I never intentionally search from there so it’s a minor inconvenience (for me). Never had it fail to respect that setting elsewhere. It also does a good job letting you set default apps for all types of files (and in fact letting apps change that setting themselves with a little user interaction) unlike iOS which only lets you change it for a few types of apps (and then through the worst designed settings menu I’ve ever seen). Can’t leave iOS behind though because I need my iMessaging.
Only reason I assume this is all the Google apps on my phone bring up a sheet when I tap a link asking which browser I want to use-- with "system default" being one of the options.
Really there's no excuse for this, it can't be too difficult to adapt system apps to fall in line with the expectations for third-party apps.
It's a valid concern but I'm fairly certain it's nowhere near the top reasons that they do this. They have a history of trying to shove users into Microsoft's unwanted browser against their (often informed) wishes.
Do you have some more context? I have found this trivial to change...
Apparently this was an issue with the user, not the OS. My bad.
EDIT: Actually, I remember now that I had to use duti to change this from the command line.