Switching from Microsoft Edge gets more annoying in Windows 11

[sounds]

Summary

Windows 11 makes it even harder to use anything but Edge:

 

Quotes

Quote

You can use any browser you want on Windows! But are you sure you wouldn't like to try Microsoft Edge instead? Are you sure? Are you really, really sure?

 

My thoughts

It's been long enough for Microsoft to forget why people hated Internet Explorer.

 

Maybe someone will make an automated tool for this? (Psst, Firefox's "Set as Default" is just exactly that, it doesn't require any extra clicking.)

 

Sources

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/08/switching-from-microsoft-edge-gets-more-annoying-in-windows-11/

[da na]

Personally I just use Edge, I prefer it over Chrome for privacy reasons - I'd rather only Microsoft have my data, than Microsoft and Google.

[sounds]

Personally I don't use Edge. Thanks for the "i" upvote though.

[Murasaki]

How Edgy of them.

 

 

 

 

Dont hurt me!

[YoungBlade]

5 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Personally I just use Edge, I prefer it over Chrome for privacy reasons - I'd rather only Microsoft have my data, than Microsoft and Google.

That's an interesting angle. I've always preferred to use as diverse services as possible so that no one company can completely wreck my experience or lock me into an ecosystem. For example, within Firefox, I don't use the included password manager but use LastPass instead so that I could jump to a different browser or different password manager without losing both.

[da na]

3 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

That's an interesting angle. I've always preferred to use as diverse services as possible so that no one company can completely wreck my experience or lock me into an ecosystem. For example, within Firefox, I don't use the included password manager but use LastPass instead so that I could jump to a different browser or different password manager without losing both.

Interesting. By chance, have you ever used Mine? Mine lets you see what companies have your data. 

[da na]

11 minutes ago, Murasaki said:

How Edgy of them.

 

 

 

 

Dont hurt me!

Wow that joke was firefox

[duncannah]

Well, the same company that planned to hijack browser installers would do something like this... Some parts of the OS still don't respect your browser choice, and instead open Edge (and use Bing if you were searching something)..!

 

Meanwhile, on macOS...

Just a simple drop down menu. From the "walled-garden" company...

[RejZoR]

And this assholery is exactly the reason I hate stupid Edge even more. Also wasn't Microsoft bitch slapped in the past for doing shit like this? Apparently not enough and hard enough.

[Forbidden Wafer]

1 minute ago, duncannah said:

Well, the same company that planned to hijack browser installers would do something like this...

[StDragon]

Since MS threw in the towel and just adopted the Chromium engine, the "new Edge" is much better. It's also integrated with Microsoft Defender Application Guard which provides an option to open a new tab in a Hyper-V container. Basically, it's sandboxed. I call it "the bomb box" because no malware from a site is going to leap from it into your OS. Well...not unless you download a file and manually execute it on your desktop (but that would be really stupid now wouldn't it).

I still use other browsers however. I'm just fine leaving them not as default.

[nurax1337]

Hopefully this'll still work: https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector

It basically supports the Microsoft-Edge Protocol (URI?) and forwards the requests to whatever your default browser is.

So if you use Windows Search (from the Windows Menu), you'll still see bing sadly - but at least you'll see it in your default browser

If they make changing the default browser more difficult, that sucks - but I, personally, care a lot more about this!

 

Quote

Well, the same company that planned to hijack browser installers would do something like this... Some parts of the OS still don't respect your browser choice, and instead open Edge (and use Bing if you were searching something)..!

Edit: this seems relevant - by @duncannah

Edited August 18, 2021 by nurax1337
Added related comment in...

[YoungBlade]

3 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Interesting. By chance, have you ever used Mine? Mine lets you see what companies have your data. 

I've never heard of Mine before, no. I'm sure tons of companies have small pieces of data on me. I try to disable forms of tracking wherever I can, but a lot of the time these days you aren't allowed to block certain forms of tracking, and plenty of sites just won't work if you don't have cookies enabled.

[Mihle]

I wonder if this is something EU or someone else could go after.

 

I think they would have years ago but today I am guessing they won't.

[Kronion]

26 minutes ago, Mihle said:

I wonder if this is something EU or someone else could go after.

 

I think they would have years ago but today I am guessing they won't.

Probably depends on how much Microsoft pushes Edge to the average user and what effect that has on the usage stats.

 

The last time the European Commission fined Microsoft in relation to browsers (back in 2013 - as far as I'm aware), Internet Explorer was still used widely. That simply isn't the case anymore, Edge probably is third or fourth (behind Chrome, Safari and possibly Firefox). I am no legal expert, but I think an antitrust or anti-competition case won't be feasible as long as Edge is a fringe browser.

[Master Disaster]

This sounds more like Chrome being coded badly than MS doing anything wrong. If Firefox can change all defaults with one click so can everything else, the fact Chrome makes you do them one at a time is a chrome issue.

[Arika]

I actually like this better, some links I would prefer to open on a different browser 

 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Other than synchronizing with your Google account rather than a Microsoft account, I can't think of a reason to even bother downloading Chrome. So are people really still downloading Chrome by choice? Or is there something more sinister going on behind the scenes there... mhmm

[Guest]

to be fair, Edge is pretty much Chrome anyway - why bother downloading the same thing lol.. 

[WolframaticAlpha]

6 hours ago, RejZoR said:

And this assholery is exactly the reason I hate stupid Edge even more. Also wasn't Microsoft bitch slapped in the past for doing shit like this? Apparently not enough and hard enough.

Only difference rn is that this time a competitor is in the lead

[captain_to_fire]

6 hours ago, StDragon said:

It's also integrated with Microsoft Defender Application Guard which provides an option to open a new tab in a Hyper-V container. Basically, it's sandboxed. I call it "the bomb box" because no malware from a site is going to leap from it into your OS

@leadeater can correct me on this but Application Guard is only available to the Pro Windows 10/11, and even that has to be triggered manually. One must pay up for an enterprise version of Windows 10 E3 or E5 in order to automatically configure unknown websites or sites outside of the organization to run inside the Application Guard. Also, even regular Microsoft Edge is already sandboxed even without Application Guard as it is using Chromium sandbox.

 

5 hours ago, Kronion said:

The last time the European Commission fined Microsoft in relation to browsers (back in 2013 - as far as I'm aware),

even much earlier. When Windows 7 was released in 2009, the EU versions have IE disabled and will give a prompt to download other browsers.

[WolframaticAlpha]

1 hour ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Other than synchronizing with your Google account rather than a Microsoft account, I can't think of a reason to even bother downloading Chrome. So are people really still downloading Chrome by choice? Or is there something more sinister going on behind the scenes there... mhmm

Some people don't want to bother with switching from bing. I just use chrome. It syncs in all my extensions, and vimium is not f*cking broken.

[leadeater]

22 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

@leadeater can correct me on this but Application Guard is only available to the Pro Windows 10/11

 

Quote

Operating system    Windows 10 Enterprise edition, version 1809 or higher
Windows 10 Professional edition, version 1809 or higher
Windows 10 Professional for Workstations edition, version 1809 or higher
Windows 10 Professional Education edition, version 1809 or higher
Windows 10 Education edition, version 1809 or higher
Professional editions are only supported for non-managed devices; Intune or any other 3rd party mobile device management (MDM) solutions are not supported with MDAG for Professional editions.

 

 

P.S. Not read topic at all but switching to Edge, OMG WHY!?!?!

[captain_to_fire]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

P.S. Not read topic at all but switching to Edge, OMG WHY!?!?!

Might be easier to manage using Group Policy? Not sure if the likes of Chrome and Firefox can be managed in Group Policy

[TetraSky]

Sure hope that by the time it's released to market, that they will have a quick option to change the default browser for EVERYTHING and not one by one or by ticking the box on the one and only prompt they show after installing a new browser.

 

That said, Edge is basically Chrome without the google spyware in it now. It would work fine for the majority of users.

But I would still want to use Vivaldi, for all the "power user" features, like the sidebar, easily accessible bookmarks, notes, rss, email, adblocker, mouse gesture, etc etc all built in.