Brave and Firefox to intercept links that force-open in Microsoft Edge

I'm quite certain that all those non-standard URLs are all for internal links to OS-related information hosted on the web. If they instead just popped a custom app that hosted an Edge webview nobody would rip their shirts. Doing that would be ridiculous given that Edge is just there and has been tested and vetted by QA.

Don't forget that these things need to work on all versions of the OS and in all locales. You're asking MS to trust that any 3rd party app will give proper user experience for any locale when presenting such links.

It's not as-if MS was hijacking normal URLs. But ripping shirts is soooo much fun.

Ultimately though regardless of who is doing it, it is user hostile and needs to stop. Apple restricting browser engines on iOS doesn't somehow make Microsoft's steering and suppression of other browsers on Windows acceptable.

The US needs much better consumer protections.

As a user, Apple allows you to change your default browser in both iOS and macOS quite easily.

As a developer you can build a browser on top of whatever rendering engine you want, as long as you want to use the built-in WebKit.

Crucially, they are plenty clear about what is, or isn't allowed (well, mostly — plenty of app review horror stories around here), and all of that happens in the interaction with developers. The user experience is always pretty decent, and you don't have to deal with this whole "do this in 10 locations" nonsense.

None of this "you can install a browser, but we're going to lie cheat and steal to stop you" dark patterns nonsense. As a user, Apple just tells you No, and you get to decide if you want to live with that or not.

When she goes to do a google search, google's page keeps pushing chrome in her face. While she's trying to search for listings of gigs needing translation from Mandarin, Japanese, or Cantonese into English, the page she's on tells her she needs to click here and install chrome. She doesn't know what a browser or a Chrome are, so she thinks it's something she needs to do for the work search. Bam - she's now using Chrome. And he doesn't even notice the browser changed. Nor does she care. She never meant to install it or switch to it. Google is a bad player, and windows will check and once in a while ask if she wants to switch it back. Good. Me, a firefox user - I have literally zero issue clicking "no, leave my browser alone" twice a year.

She uses some office apps for spreadsheet type work, and msword. She uses some windows functions like copying files, and backing up her phone.

Telemetry lets microsoft know what she's doing, where she's getting confused or going into a loop pattern to do something, and when she tries something and gives up after it not making sense. They use that telemetry to improve their programs for people like her. Me - I turned that off. It's as easy as downloading winaero and clicking "disable telemetry" and "disable ads."

This is not illegal because it's literally what 90% of Windows users want. People who don't want that are technically apt, and it takes about 2 minutes for us to turn that off. It's just a default for 90% of the users - a correct one.

They can't increase revenue any more without "monetizing" the OS and users at this point.

It just doesnt take a trillion dollar company to maintain a decent OS and office suite. It never did.

Which is strange, because Nadella's Microsoft is no better than Gates' or Ballmer's.

No, I haven't. Sounds like an improvement. Regular Windows 10 is trying way too hard, and I think somewhere lots it's compass. The P in PC stands for something really important.

I’ve always said that you need to look after power users’ interests, because even though they’re a small percentage of your user base they’re the ones who influence everyone else. A single power user will likely influence their immediate family, their classmates, work colleagues, friends, relations.. easily a broad spread of people.

Neglect power users at your peril.

Not sure about that. I find chrome way too annoying. To see history new tab needs to be opened, download bar below with no way to see all without new tab. Edge fixed these issues with toolbar buttons, some new flag options, web capture, read aloud, startup boost etc are quite helpful.

Block ntp.msn.com & assets.msn.com in hosts file to block start page completely if anyone don't like it, which I'm not sure if can be done with chrome without blocking google. This makes my experience better than chrome.

Worth noting that in order to offer a toggle, we'd need to get around the default protection (same as Firefox w/ setting default browser). People can only currently use this by going to the `Defaults` handler in Windows and replacing Edge themselves

Well, obviously Microsoft would say they are.

But any common sense evaluation of the situation would recognize that Google introduced their feature to get AROUND a limitation and offer customers choice (If you install Chrome on iOS you're saying you want that to be your browser), and Microsoft introduced the same feature to INTRODUCE a limitation (In spite of any other browsers installed, Microsoft is ignoring all signals and already supported protocol handling capabilities to force you into their browser).

While a pedantic techie can read this and say it doesn't matter, the courts may see it differently.

On the one hand, at least this "hack" is implemented as its own protocol handler ("microsoft-edge:") which is how Brave and Firefox can "intercept it" (it's not like they are hacking some "interceptor", they are registering for the protocol just as any other protocol might see multiple registrants). On the other hand it is sad that this protocol was seen as necessary hack to Microsoft to get around Windows 10 backwards compatibility needs and the mistake of bundling IE11 with Windows 10 as a "fully supported browser for the life cycle of Windows 10" rather than an optional enterprise feature with an end date on the box.