In the latest Windows test releases, Microsoft discourages other browsers

One of the Australian publishers of ZDNet has given me a punch earlier today, after seeing a tweet from an angry Windows 10 user. "It's surely a joke, is not it?" He asked. Surely, Microsoft knows better than intercepting an attempt to install a competing web browser with a plug for its own built-in Edge browser.

I've tried to replicate this behavior on a PC by downloading and installing Firefox on a PC running Windows Update 10 April 2018 (version 1803), the latest public release. It installed without any interference.

Then, I switched to a virtual machine running a recent version of Windows 10 Insider Preview, where I was able to replicate this behavior. For good measure, I tested the installers for Firefox and Chrome and I received this "warning" every time.

The wording of the dialog appears to have been designed by someone in the Legal Department, with no words denigrating competing browsers. But the implication is clear: "Do not install this other browser. Try Edge instead." By clicking the Install button anyway, the dialog box was immediately removed and the installation continued.

A few hours later, after watching a cascade of idle scandal on the part of a few journalists interested in Windows, I decided to do other tests.

To my surprise, I was unable to replicate this behavior in a separate virtual machine. I also could not bring up the annoying dialog box on a physical PC after installing the latest version of the insider preview (build 17758).

I tried to bring back the original virtual machine to a previous checkpoint, and the installation programs of competing browsers still worked perfectly, without interruption. Finally, as a last resort, I completely reset the virtual machine running version 17755. The offending dialog box still could not appear.

So what's going on here? Keep in mind that it is a preliminary version that will be available to the general public only a month or two later. My guess is that Microsoft has decided to test this feature for comments.

Hoo boy, have they received any comments?

A spokesman for Microsoft confirmed that it was a good test:

We tested this feature only with Insiders – The Windows Insider program allows Microsoft to test different features and features and gather feedback before deploying them on a large scale. Customers stay in control and can choose the browser of their choice.

In previous releases, Microsoft used A-B testing to test new features on subsets of its Insider test group. The company has also postponed and even killed features that have received negative comments.

It is possible that it is a very specific dialog box in response to a new setting of the October 2018 update, which allows administrators to block the program. install or display a warning when standard users attempt to install applications outside the Microsoft Store. With the "warn" option set, for example, trying to download the conventional setup program for Spotify results in this dialog box, which sends you to the store for the properly packaged version.

For the time being, Windows users will have to wait and see if this promotional feature enters the final version of the October 2018 update. Personally, I hope that this awful idea will be thrown into the trash and permanently deleted. It is unlikely that the increase in the use of Microsoft Edge is significant. more importantly, it would have a profound negative impact on Microsoft's reputation, canceling years of positive work with the open source community.

One thing is for sure: in 2018, no one was working on the Windows team 20 years ago, because that's exactly the kind of thing that pushed Microsoft to do counterfeiting in the late '90s. that someone can Google.

Do not use Microsoft Edge when you do it, because Google will … well, here, see for yourself:

Who said that the wars of the navigators were dead?

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