Microsoft’s move to keep users off of Google Chrome and Firefox
Windows 10 thus far has been a huge success, with Microsoft’s newest OS having recently passed over 110 million installs. All in all, that’s a pretty impressive start given that the highly anticipated Windows update was released just about 11 weeks ago.
But Microsoft doesn’t want to stop stop at desktop OS dominance and call it a day. On the contrary It wants to take back some of the valuable browser marketshare it lost rather quickly to Google Chrome. That being the case, leaked screenshots from an upcoming build of Windows 10 show how Microsoft plans to dissuade users from changing the default web browser on their system from Microsoft Edge to something else.
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As you can tell from the photo below, users partial to Chrome or Firefox will be presented with a “Give Microsoft Edge a shot” alert with the “Don’t switch and try it now” button highlighted in bold. Making the case for Microsoft Edge, the alert touts some of the browsers features, including the ability to get answers from Cortana, a distraction-free reading experience via reading view, and the ability to “write on webpages and share your ideas.”
We can only imagine the extent to which this will infuriate Mozilla CEO Chris Beard who just two months ago lambasted Microsoft for making it somewhat tricky for users to retain their old web browsing preferences. Consequently, Windows 10 users are now more likely than ever to stick with Microsoft Edge.
Addressing the matter on Mozilla’s official blog, Beard wrote:
We appreciate that it’s still technically possible to preserve people’s previous settings and defaults, but the design of the whole upgrade experience and the default settings APIs have been changed to make this less obvious and more difficult. It now takes more than twice the number of mouse clicks, scrolling through content and some technical sophistication for people to reassert the choices they had previously made in earlier versions of Windows. It’s confusing, hard to navigate and easy to get lost.
Interestingly enough, Beard at the time even noted that Mozilla had reached out to Microsoft over the issue but that such overtures were ultimately useless.
In any event, the next major update to Windows 10 is anticipated to launch sometime in the next few weeks.
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This article was originally published on BGR.com
