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Dear Reader,

With all the weird new controversies raging around us, it is nice to get a blast from the past. I felt a rush of nostalgia when I saw Mozilla's 87-page report [1] documenting Microsoft's efforts to undermine browser choice for users of Windows 10 and 11 systems. The whole report could have been written 30 years ago, back in the era of the browser wars. Although, I confess, I got a warm feeling remembering 30 years ago and what it was like to be young, I was still struck by the frustration of realizing nothing ever gets fixed.

The report details all the ways (some subtle and some not-so-subtle) that Microsoft tips the scales to keep their Edge browser in front of Windows users – even users who have made another choice for a default browser. According to Mozilla, migrating from Windows 10 to Windows 11 resets the browser to Edge even if you have a different default browser. Windows search opens links in Edge even if you have a different default browser. Several dialogs use trick wording to get users to select Edge even when they don't have to, and Edge is prepinned to the taskbar.

Microsoft used to be known for this kind of tactic, and although they have tried to clean up their image in recent years, they can't seem to stop playing games. The infuriating part is how they make this kind of thing look "normal" – like it is perfectly routine to mess with your customers' heads to trick them into using your browser. Misleading questions with tricky wording are the stuff of phishing scammers – are we truly resigned to expecting this from the largest software company in the world?

It is worth asking, how important is the browser now anyway? The PC desktop used to be the center of the IT universe; now it seems like almost an anachronism. Android and iOS both have a built-in bias for the vendor's browser, but we seem to have lower expectations for phones. And I'm sure that Microsoft would argue (as they have before) that they are no longer the monopoly that they were back in the 1990s, so restrictions on their browser promotion that were brought by antitrust action should no longer apply.

But the fact is, even if such actions are not strictly illegal, persistently tricking your own customers into adopting a product they have already said they don't want is both annoying and disingenuous. We can't stop it, but we can still call it out and let people know that the new side of the leaf Microsoft turned over looks exactly like the old side.

The search engines are still big business. You don't have to drill down very far to see that all this attention to the Edge browser is really about building market share for Microsoft's Bing search. To be fair, Mozilla Corporation is also a for-profit entity, although it is owned by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation (figure that one out), and, for the record, Mozilla also gets lots of money out of aligning itself with a search engine.

This is all too much to analyze here in my little one-page column, but what I'm really talking about is respect. If a vendor keeps asking you about software you have already rejected – and sets up little traps to trick you into reinstalling or reactivating it – it is a good sign they don't respect you. Have some respect for yourself and go find another system that takes you seriously.

Joe Casad, Editor in Chief