The Economist embeds Gmail links in emails, not “mailto:”

Is there an easy way (without having to research and install 3rd party software) for non techie users to be able to set their email client to Gmail, AOL, etc? I know a lot of people who prefer to use their email in the browser without using a desktop client. If you click on a mailto: link without your desktop client set up it will launch the setup process, it's not a great user experience.

Are there better alternatives than using "mailto"?

Wanna bet this came about accidentally from copying text viewed in GMail, which probably does this replacement on all incoming mail?

To be fair, mailto: is handled the worst possible way on webmail.

It should be relatively easy for the browser to have a little envelope icon in the address bar when you're on a major webmail site. Such an icon, when clicked, could offer to register that webmail service as your mailto: target.