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Comment by barryvan | Hacker News Reader

I suspect they will buckle -- but only partially, with an allowlist of browsers blessed with this ability. This will quiet the noise, but will also make it harder for small and innovative browsers to compete, as I doubt Microsoft will build out the processes to become blessed due to cost/benefit.

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Probably, but for security reasons the only correct thing to do is remove the ability of Edge to set default browser within the browser.

The only option app developers - including internal Microsoft ones - should have is open some OS settings app in a supported way, but the user has to accept the selection.

It should work like an Android permission prompt. The OS should have an official method for apps to request to become the default (not merely link to the default apps page of settings). The OS prompt should look like this:

Would you like to make <APP NAME> the default app for <APP CATEGORY>?

[No and don't ask again] [Yes]

Any app that wants to become the default (including Edge) should go through the official prompt. If the user has already said no, and the app wants to continue nagging, at this point the app will be able to link into the settings (but not pop up the official prompt).

This seems to be an industry-wide trend. Google, somewhat recently, also banned "unauthorized" browsers from logging into Google accounts at all.

All browsers already claim to be "Mozilla" so it's not like there is no way to work around that.

They're doing far more when fingerprinting browsers than looking at the User-Agent.

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