This is just horrible. They are so desperate to get back market share that they resort to "purposely bad ux in new versions" tactics. What is their goal? Get more users on Bing? Get more tracking data via Edge?
Beat their record fine from the EU? None of the others seems like a plausible result.
The reason they dare to try is because they know they might even get away with it.
I'm definitly not condoning it but the situation is very different from when they got fined. At the time Microsoft was fined smartphones weren't a thing. One might argue that this competes with Microsoft desktops marketshare. Also in notebook sales Chromebooks have on average (roughly) about a 20% market share [1]. On top of that Microsofts browser market share was 90+ % at the time of the fine, now it's almost non existant.
If it were up to me they would be fined into oblivion for this anti-competitive behavior but I think they might actually get away with it.
[1] https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/07/30/theres-no-stopping-...
1 - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/es/ip_20_...
2 - https://www.statista.com/statistics/639928/market-share-mobi...
This is probably it.