Microsoft agreed to hide shortcuts to Internet Explorer and show customers in the EU the infamous browser ballot screen. While the US decided not to take action against Microsoft on this point, the EU didn’t hold back. In both cases, regulators found that Microsoft was abusing its market-leading operating system to unfairly promote its Internet Explorer (now called Edge) browser disadvantaging competing web browsers.

I’m, of course, thinking of United States versus Microsoft (2001) and Microsoft versus European Commission (2009). I’m not a lawyer, but some case law is common knowledge in the tech field. That news probably did make Microsoft sit up and pay attention.īefore discussing the changes in the latest Windows builds, I’d like to refresh your memory on Microsoft’s earlier escapades with antitrust regulators. Firefox may be bleeding users by the millions, but the more-ethical browser still has almost 200 million users.

However, last month both the Brave and Firefox web browsers either copied EdgeDeflector’s functionality or signaled it was on the roadmap. The 0,5 million EdgeDeflector users were probably never more than a nuisance to Microsoft. Edge will even “declutter” your browser settings, as Microsoft calls it, and unpin competitors from the taskbar and replace the pinned apps with Edge.

When opened, Edge will aggressively push the user to set it as the default web browser. Microsoft uses these links instead of regular web links to force users to open them in its Microsoft Edge web browser. This work-around will only work until the next cumulative update is released.ĮdgeDeflector is an app that intercepts microsoft-edge:// links - found throughout the Windows 10 and 11 shells and other Microsoft apps - and redirects them to regular links that open in your default web browser.

You can uninstall Windows Update KB5007262 to revert the change. Update ( ): Microsoft has backported this change to Windows 10. However, it omitted the headline news: You can no longer bypass Microsoft Edge using apps like EdgeDeflector. Something changed between Windows 11 builds 2244 (both Windows Insider Preview builds.) The build changelog makes a few mentions of changes to the protocol and file associations/default apps system.

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