Do you want to change your browser in Windows 11? It will be harder. Microsoft has just admitted it

Microsoft has long been doing what it can to increase the popularity of its own web browsers. A few years ago, it bent over backwards to force Windows users to use Internet Explorer, then it’s time for the new Microsoft Edge browser. Probably everyone has heard about Microsoft’s long battle with the European Commission (over the choice of the default browser).

Microsoft will again make it difficult to use third-party browsers

In August, information circulated on the Internet, that Microsoft plans to make it difficult to change the default browser from Edge to another in Windows 11. Instead of easily selecting a default browser in the system settings, you will have to manually change the default program for each of the 11 file types. We wrote more on this topic

Now, Microsoft has apparently found another way to make life difficult for lovers of other browsers. In one of the non-release builds of Windows 11 there is a blockade of the EdgeDeflector application. It is a program that allows you to redirect, for example, search results or open links from Edge to an alternative browser. EdgeDeflector is useful, for example, when using the system search engine or widgetswhen the page found opens automatically in the default Microsoft Edge and the search results show in Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

While the lock might initially seem like a system bug to testers, it wasn’t. Microsoft has just confirmed that it intends to intentionally block the redirection of links to other browsers. As the company stated in a statement sent to the American website, a “fix” to prevent “improper redirection” is to appear in the finished version of Windows 11. Forcing Edge to be used, Microsoft says it is part of its “end-to-end customer experience.”

In other words, Microsoft claims that blocking redirects to other browsers is the right decision, because only Edge is able to provide the appropriate level of quality. The appropriate “patch” – as Microsoft calls the changes – will be included in the next update package for Windows 11. The changes are of course criticized by the developers of EdgeDeflector. Microsoft, they say, manages Windows badly and places its own benefits (ad and subscription earnings) over its users’ productivity.