It didn't change my browser default to edge, it asked i told it to leave default what it was,
Edge out rivals? No! Firefox boss BLASTS Microsoft's Windows 10 browser brouhaha
Mozilla chief Chris Beard has fired off a tetchy open letter to Microsoft supremo Satya Nadella – because Windows 10 shunts Firefox users onto Redmond's new Edge web browser. Internet Explorer users were warned that Edge, Microsoft's Chrome-chasing new browser, would be the default in Windows 10. But as it turns out, users of …
COMMENTS
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Friday 31st July 2015 08:00 GMT goldcd
Yes
I just went through this yesterday and there's a page in the installer, where it shows I think browser, music, photo viewer and summat else. Sure if you click through it sets MS stuff as the default, but easy enough to click and ask it to leave your defaults alone.
Just loading up Firefox, I get a big highlighted "Use Firefox as my default browser" button, with a small "Not Now" alternative option.
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Friday 31st July 2015 17:24 GMT desdes
Re: Yes
You must not have upgraded to Windows 10. Or the CEO of Firefox. Or you both didn't bother to read anything you were clicking on. Or tried to open Firefox up on first install.
If you even marginally pay attention during the install, there is a huge screen which asks you for defaults. Nothing is set up as default until you either run it for the first time after the upgrade or you set it there.
So please little sheep. Actually go through the install first and not just get all riled up over nothing. Firefox is chicken littling people.
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Saturday 1st August 2015 17:57 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Yes
Knock! Knock!
Who's there?
THE BROWSER WARS OF 1999! FEAR!!!
Seriously, is this still a thing? It's 2015!
If you wanted to have Firefox in the first place, you have enough sophistication and Google-fu to switch back to it, should you want to.
This "the user is too brain-crippled to be able to choose (but we want him to have CHOICE anyway!)" is just so fecking retarded.
Let them have their smalltime ways, point and laugh at them but stop writing emotional "open letters"..
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Wednesday 12th August 2015 07:27 GMT werdsmith
Re: Yes
People are going to moan about MS forever. Everytime an MS employee so much as coughs without covering their mouth, there will be people on the Web accusing MS of starting a world epidemic.
So tired of it all, these people should get romantic partners and live a little.
Oh wait, most of them would probably find last suggestion beyond their capabilities.
OK, so they should get an interesting hobby then.
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Friday 31st July 2015 16:38 GMT Hit Snooze
"Time for the EU to have a polite word with MS? The more I hear about Windows 10 the more glad I am that I'll be waiting to install it."
This is what is wrong with so many people in IT nowadays - believing everything they read on the internet about technology without ever trying it! Sure, you have to rely on reviews for big purchases, but believing a competitor's comments or a journalist's review for something in Windows 10?
A review is like one side of a breakup, it is not the actual truth, and requires a large intake of salt while reading it. The author will leave out facts and use opinions to spin their story on whatever features or concerns they come up with.
As many people pointed out above, if you use the custom installation then you can keep all default settings. Not a big issue.
Note: I am not a fanboi of any OS, browser, hardware/software, etc, I use use what works best for the situation.
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Friday 31st July 2015 03:57 GMT Wensleydale Cheese
"Didn't ms already settle with the eu over this? And then paying almost a billion dollars for failing to offer a browser choice for over a year?"
And when the browser choice finally landed on my EU version of Windows 7, it was pretty crap, pointing at truly ancient versions of other browsers.
What everyone seems to have forgotten was the unbundling of Media Player for EU versions,
That never happened either with the EU versions I came across.
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Friday 31st July 2015 07:11 GMT Lee D
Did you ever actually buy the N version?
I know I have it for download as part of my VL with MS, so it exists and is available.
Just because you never asked for it, or even that no seller bothered to sell it by default, doesn't mean it wasn't an option. I *have* seen it as an option, a few years ago, on buying a new PC on one of those customised-dropdown-box things.
I'm far from a Microsoft apologist but it was the wrong solution to suggest they could put out an alternate version that would never sell, rather than unbundle it from ALL versions. Or at the very least, make ALL EU sales be the N version unless the end-user asks otherwise. The same kind of thing as Browser Choice... "Do YOU, the end user, want this piece of bundled software?".
But it exists. There's also a K for Korea version. God knows what's different in that, I wouldn't like to think of what that contains.
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Friday 31st July 2015 07:41 GMT Joe 48
Apple don't give me browser choice, Linux doesn't give me browser choice. Why single out MS? Oh wait, because they managed to corner a large percentage of the market. Did they do this because their software is crap. No, if it was crap it never would died out years ago, they did it because at times its quite good. Never understood the IE issue. Not my browser of choice but certainly feel like MS have been unfairly hit on this one. They Bundle a mail client too if Mozilla want to throw some more toys out of the pram.
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Friday 31st July 2015 08:31 GMT keithpeter
Linux
@Joe 48
"Linux doesn't give me browser choice"
Depends on the 'Linux' (or BSD) distribution you choose and how you install it.
Which I imagine is a similar the the point that is being made above about Windows 10, except that the choice happens more at the 'which distribution' level.
"Oh wait, because they managed to corner a large percentage of the market. Did they do this because their software is crap. No, if it was crap it never would died out years ago, they did it because at times its quite good."
I suspect that the cost of changing from Microsoft products may well be a factor for many of the larger and more complex organisations. Functionality above a threshold plus incumbency is all that is required really, and of course Microsoft will ensure that they meet the threshold as you say. Radical shareholders will pounce on any form of 'gold plating' however so radical large scale re-factoring of code bases may not be on the cards. Perhaps we should celebrate the new Web browser as an example of new code?
Home users are becoming more aware of alternative choices and we shall see how that plays out over the next decade or so. That choice might be exercised at the hardware level though and the software will just be 'what it came with' as always. Hence the importance attached to defaults.
The teenagers I teach are quite comfortable with a variety of devices and interfaces, and this cuts both ways so things could be interesting. A low end touch screen convertible laptop with those Microsoft modern apps installed along with the Office apps and ready to go and with auto-syncing to a low end Lumia phone and cloud backup for 'stuff' might actually go quite well provided MS don't crud it up with clumsy marketing or lots of garbageware on the devices.
Coat icon: Its sunny. Need coffee. No milk in.
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Saturday 1st August 2015 11:18 GMT Charles 9
Re: Linux
"Depends on the 'Linux' (or BSD) distribution you choose and how you install it."
Most Live distros pack a default browser such as Firefox or a variant thereof. I think most user-oriented installation routines also set a default browser and leave it to you to pick an alternative later on from whatever manager is at hand.
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Monday 21st May 2018 20:55 GMT raving angry loony
Correction: MS cornered the market by using quasi-illegal (actually, completely illegal in some places) business practices, from their "embrace, extend, extinguish" campaign to outright putting code in their OS to make rivals for their other products fail. Right from before there even WAS a "Microsoft" Gates and company cheated, lied, stole, acted like gangsters, and got away with it. Which is why they're dominant. They didn't do by being "better". They did by being "meaner".
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Monday 3rd August 2015 08:25 GMT Wensleydale Cheese
@ Lee D
"Did you ever actually buy the N version?"
Nope, never saw it offered anwhere, which is why I made the comment.
No doubt I could have bought it via the Windows Anytime Upgrade route, but that's always been full whack full retail price.
"Just because you never asked for it, or even that no seller bothered to sell it by default, doesn't mean it wasn't an option"
So a theoretical option which isn't actually stocked by anyone is really a choice? Methinks not.
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Friday 31st July 2015 17:39 GMT desdes
Nothing unethical was done by Microsoft. Really Firefox is being really ignorant about this. Its really funny to watch all the chicken littles run about just because they said you don't have a choice (which you do in the install and its a pretty huge button to set your default browser... You can't miss it... Its right in the middle.) You immediately believe them. Not to mention you can just open firefox up and it fixes the fact that you can't read during the setup process. That's all firefox is dragging their buckles about.
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Wednesday 12th August 2015 06:56 GMT werdsmith
But you are missing the point. This is The Register, a place frequented by OS bigots where it is the fashion to get all sanctimonious about Microsoft and Apple whilst trying to big up stuff that normal humans have demonstrated over the last decade, that they don't really want.
Now get with the program.
Apparently, folk working in the MS campus at Redmond park their SUVs on the edge of the marked spaces, with their wheels on the line. I think it's time for the EU to have a little word with them.
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Friday 31st July 2015 06:33 GMT Dan 55
After upgrading the OS on a Mac your browser choice stays the same. You get badgered to change until you disable the system-wide Default Browser Plug-in in Firefox so they're pushing it a bit but they don't cross the line like MS does (Express install means change default browser then upload to mother ship).
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Friday 31st July 2015 05:21 GMT FF22
Re: In other words...
You're talking about something else. That's what all browsers do when you start them, and they're not the default browser.
However, what Mozilla complains about is that when you install Windows 10/Edge, and chose express install instead of custom, it makes itself the default browser without explicitly asking you about this.
That's the same way Firefox installer behaves, which also makes Firefox the default (without asking) if you just keep clicking the Next button when installing. I've just checked it, and that's how it works.
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Friday 31st July 2015 07:28 GMT Andy3
Re: In other words...
I chose Express and my default browser remained Firefox. I briefly fired up Edge and it told me 'Edge is not your default browser, would you like to change this?' The only complaint I have about Edge is that there's no free adblock and it won't import my favourites from Firefox, only from IE.
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Friday 31st July 2015 00:44 GMT stuartnz
No sign of it here yet
New Zealand was first in the world to get it, but despite having registered early, still no sign of it being available for either my Win 7 64 Pro PC or my wife's 8.1 laptop. Which fits with my plan to wait until the eager beavers (lemmings?) have done the worst of the bugfinding for me.
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Friday 31st July 2015 07:15 GMT Lee D
Re: And there's more!
Again, I'm not condoning this, but so does Apple.
Check out Apple Caching. You put it on any Apple servers in your enterprise and it will AUTOMATICALLY make all clients updating from your IP update from that Apple server instead. That server will download and cache updates, apps, and even purchases so that your clients don't have to go out to the net to download them.
Bloody dangerous in my opinion but - from the client side - there is NO WAY to turn it off. If your Apple device updates on a network, and Apple sees a Caching server sitting on the same IP, it will tell your devices to use the Caching server locally. I'm sure there's all kinds of certificate verification and whatnot, but it just sounds like a bad idea to me.
But it's been then since at least OS X's release, I believe.
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Friday 31st July 2015 08:37 GMT Adam 1
Re: And there's more!
P2P is a completely sensible way to distribute large files. Do you not find it a bit weird that your laptop, PC and media centre* all independently download the same patches over your internet connection rather than sharing amongst themselves and only downloading it once.
I suggest you flag your network as metered..
* yes, sadly dead now
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Friday 31st July 2015 08:59 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: And there's more!
I do this with my Linux installations. I have deployed several internal repositories, and configured my clients to use them. This means 1 download from the public repository and thats it. Since I don't update on the day patches are released, so my download can be throttled to 256K and if it doesn't finish until tomorrow...no worries.
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Friday 31st July 2015 04:57 GMT raving angry loony
Microsoft's nature won't be denied.
Odd, I would have thought that changing customer defaults without ADEQUATE warning (I'm sure there's a line in the multi-page disclaimer somewhere. Sorry, not acceptable.) would be against Microsoft's probation. Or is that particular legal fiction over now, and they get to revert to their usual anti-competitive, "we own you" nature?
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Friday 31st July 2015 05:31 GMT Steve Davies 3
Re: Microsoft's nature won't be denied.
As far as MS is concerned there is only one browser now and that's 'Edge'. all others fail the Newsspeak test.
I guess someone inside MS thought that using this name would give them some competitive Edge?
Nah, shirley not... Coat, time to take the dog for a walk and not listen to U2 on my imaginary Zune
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Friday 31st July 2015 06:26 GMT Graham Triggs
And when you've find your browser has changed...
...you run Firefox from the start menu, and it sets itself as the default again.
Anyone capable of installing their own browser on Windows is capable of resetting the default after it has changed. For users, it's a minor irritation.
Put the handbags away.
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Friday 31st July 2015 14:30 GMT Dan 55
Re: And when you've find your browser has changed...
It doesn't any more, Windows 10 pops up a dialog which requires you to tell it which browser should be the default. Your initial two choices are clicking on the Edge icon to get a list of non-Edge browsers (WTF?) and 'Reset to the Microsoft recommended defaults' (Edge)...
https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2015/07/29/firefox-for-windows-10-how-to-restore-or-choose-firefox-as-your-default-browser/
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Friday 31st July 2015 07:01 GMT Anonymous Coward
That's nothing
I tried to run Edge on my iMac but it seems that Microsoft has deliberately crippled this and indeed most other things, as I've found to my chagrin after ordering and paying for Microsoft Office enterprise, SQL server, Sharepoint and about half a dozen other products I am too angry to list here. I was told by someone at my book club that I need all of this to get all the internet and for Facebook.
When will the EU refund me and send all of Microsoft to prison? I am a taxpayer. I'm not one of those refugee types; they get their software for free, I heard, along with £55k a year to live on. And a house.
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Friday 31st July 2015 07:17 GMT Andy3
Not on my laptop it didn't!
I've just upgraded to W10 and it did NOT change my default browser from Firefox to Edge. I did try Edge out of curiosity and found two problems - 1. No adblock (a major problem on some sites) and 2. Edge will not import my favourites from Firefox, only IE.
Apart from that, I'm quite impressed with W10....so far.
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Friday 31st July 2015 07:33 GMT wolfetone
You know what
It's difficult for people like me who either haven't been able to upgrade or choose not to upgrade to know what to make of Windows 10. If I took the article at face value, I would think that Microsoft has gone back to the bad old days. There are several other articles that would make me think that too.
However, reading the comments is completely different. As can be seen above, plenty people have upgraded and their browser choice hasn't changed. So the rest of us don't know who to believe.
I'd have liked to have thought that Microsoft would go Hit, Miss, Hit, Miss, Hit with their releases like they have done in the past. But from what I can see from the literature available, it's hard to know whether this release is a hit or a miss.
Still though, I long for the day it comes up as an option to upgrade to on my laptop. Only for the reason I want to play Shag, Marry, Kill with it.
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Friday 31st July 2015 07:52 GMT dogged
Re: You know what
> But from what I can see from the literature available, it's hard to know whether this release is a hit or a miss.
Honestly I think that's because a) this release isn't complete yet and b) the Reg seems to be gunning for MS recently (probably to please its idiot commentariat). Compare, for example, Andrew Orlowski's review on the Register to... well, practically anyone else's. Engadget's is a bit gushing but Peter Bright's on Ars Technica is far more sensible and reasoned (and still overall approving).
Win10 has rough edges at the moment (no pun intended). I've been asked by a few people whether they should upgrade and in every case (except for the developer and the syadmin who I gave a straight "yes, do it now, you need to learn this shit"), my advice has been "yes. But leave it until around Hallowe'en."
Because by then Edge should support AdBlock, NoScript and Ghostery, the dodgy bits should be sorted out and all necessary workarounds (for anything, we don't know yet) will be well documented. But if you don't need to upgrade, leave it until end of October/beginning of November. Patience will be of benefit to you.
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Friday 31st July 2015 08:32 GMT Paul Shirley
Re: You know what
The reg and orlowski in particular are disappointed that 2+ years solid cheerleading for WinPhone and some other ms stuff harmed their reputation when ms started listening to the market (a very tiny amount) and backtracked on some of the mistakes.
Jilted lover syndrome ;)
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Friday 31st July 2015 08:27 GMT Paul Shirley
Re: I bet this is unpopular...
The copy running on my PC is MY software and needs to respect MY existing choices. Not Microsoft's.
On a virgin install they get some slack, user tracking isn't quite good enough to give them my preferences before I give some clues and it seems they might be respecting my preferences on upgrades anyway. Sure there are less visible things they are hijacking though!
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Friday 31st July 2015 10:18 GMT Hellcat
MY software
Unless you're a majority shareholder in Microsoft, I'm guessing what you actually have is a licence to use their software.
I've no issues with how they've bundled things. Life would be traumatic if every single feature or function of the OS was treat like the browser.
Open calculator. You have a choice of calculators, please choose from the list or search...
Open notepad. You have a choice......
Providing there isn't anything actually blocking me using a different product if I want to (looking at you Apple...) I've no issues them providing their own. If I don't like it, I'll install something else and use that instead.
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Friday 31st July 2015 12:11 GMT Dan Paul
Re: I bet this is unpopular...
Yes, the decree requiring Microsoft to provide "Browser Choice" was over in 2014.
They are legally free and clear if they want to block alternate browsers.
BUT THEY DIDN'T DO THAT HERE!
Mozilla has ALWAYS been a bunch of crybaby wimps who can't fight their own battles on the field of competition, so they have governments do it for them.
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Friday 31st July 2015 21:15 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: I bet this is unpopular...
"Yes, the decree requiring Microsoft to provide "Browser Choice" was over in 2014.
They are legally free and clear if they want to block alternate browsers.
The mandated browser choice period may be over but the ruling in law that they did the wrong thing by forcing a browser on users is not.
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Friday 31st July 2015 08:36 GMT Anonymous Coward
Could be a sound technical reason
If it does this (still waiting for my prompt to upgrade at home) there could be a sound technical reason.
A user might not be on a recent version of FF so if it just leaves it be and defaults to Edge there maybe less chance of the install screwing up.
I think MS did perhaps learn from it's run-ins with the DoJ and its on the back foot this time (I get the sense the company is in deep trouble if this version of Windows isn't a success) so I doubt it would want to alienate users by doing this unless there was a solid reason for doing so.
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Friday 31st July 2015 15:29 GMT keith_w
Re: Could be a sound technical reason
I upgraded my Surface Pro and then launched Firefox (NOT previously my default). It promptly informed me that it was out of date and I should upgrade it. I also had to upgrade the Flash and Java addins so I could do what I wanted to do, It took less than 15 minutes and I was up and running.
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Friday 31st July 2015 19:05 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: What about Apple
>> I wonder how many letters are sent to Tim Cook over default browser?
Read the article again. It has nothing to do with the OS's default browser out-of-the-box. The problem is that people _upgrading_ to Windows 10 are finding their default browser changed to Microsoft's.
I have upgraded many Macs to many different versions of OS X and the default browser has _never_ been changed by the upgrade process or the newer version of the OS.
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Friday 31st July 2015 12:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
I write Firesuxxx instead of Firefox, much like I write Micro$$$$$$haft instead of Microsoft, CRAPple for Apple and C*ckia for Nokia. I haven't thought of anything funny for Google yet, but rest assured, when I do, you'll all be the first to know.
Could readers of this comment please upvote it if you think I am a master of humour and clever wit, and downvote it if you think I am an immature twat who needs to move away from my parents.
Thank-you.
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Friday 31st July 2015 15:00 GMT ctm66
I find this odd, since Firefox abandoned their presence on Windows Phone and reduced their commitment to Windows in general with the abandonment of the Windows 8 app version of Firefox. It seems to me that Mozilla may be the one not offering much choice - all in all, I had no issue retaining Firefox as my browser of choice, and while I admire Mozilla, the Edge browser is pretty exceptional on the speed side of things. The comments of the CEO don't make any sense given the facts and Mozilla's own behavior.
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Friday 31st July 2015 16:14 GMT AndyJenk
There are alternatives available for most things supplied with Windows and other operating systems. Should Microsoft not supply a notepad with windows because better are available? If it didn't supply its own browser by default should it not provide one at all? If it didn't supply one how would you download another? If it supplied Firefox wouldn't then suffer the wrath of Google? What about drivers? Many companies supply their own. Do you want Windows to ship without ANY drivers?
Under Windows 10 can you not still download Firefox and does Firefox not give you the option to make it the default? How exactly would you download Firefox to do this without a default browser?
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Friday 31st July 2015 16:55 GMT Andrew Williams
Deja vu all over again
Same kind of shenanigans Microsoft pulled all those years before. Same type of "But Microsoft can do what they want", "But Apple/Google/Whoever does it, so it is ok" pap. Wrong is wrong, no matter how many people do it.
I do wonder whether corporate W10 systems will have their data hoovered into the cloud or not. I hardly think the likes of [Any/all large corporate] are going to be too orgasmic if said hoovering is going to happen. And if it's not going to happen to them, why the little guy/guyette/other?
It's almost as though Ballmer has risen from the dead...
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Friday 18th September 2015 15:43 GMT Bazzza
The only setting the upgrade conveniently ignores
I've upgraded more than a dozen PCs at work from Windows 7 Pro and Windows 8.1 Pro using the MediaCreationTool application. In all cases, the default browser would either have been Chrome or Firefox and in all cases I opted to retain "my files and settings". In all cases, Windows 10 changed the default browser to Edge and the new method of resetting it back again is not average-user-friendly - it is very clunky, a poor example of interface design, and cannot be done from within each respective browser - e.g. selecting "Make xxx my default browser" from within the browser takes you to a very busy Windows 10 settings dialog. I have no doubt that this is deliberately bad UX design by Microsoft in the hope that Edge will be left as the default for at least some of the protocols that Chrome and Firefox would have been set for previously. Pathetic, really.
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Thursday 1st February 2018 17:09 GMT Appsjunk
Olde school capitalism
I've worked with/on Windows systems since the first beta download in 1995. While I applaud the innovation, the continuing development etc. I cannot help but be disappointed that Microsoft is an old school capitalist business that is all about market share, power and control. I see more and more that the new business model is collaborative ('collaboration is the new capitalism'). Why? Because most of us realise the old school model is destructive to people's lives (the 99%) and our precious planet. Windows has already been censured regarding IE way back but here we have more of the bad behaviour, allowed because of a lack of laws, capitalism's maxims (buyer beware, what the market will bear, etc), and enacted by those with little morals and ethics (sociopaths). All I can say is get over it. At least until enough people gather their votes together to make changes with due process.