Microsoft blocks browser choice for 1.4 billion Windows users, study finds

Microsoft continues to override folks’s selection of net browser throughout Home windows 10 and Home windows 11, based on a follow-up study published by Mozilla in May 2026, with new proof that the sample now extends into Copilot and the Home windows Backup migration software.

The report, titled Over The Edge 2.0: Do Microsoft’s Design Ways Nonetheless Compromise Free Browser Selection?, was written by impartial researchers Dr. Harry Brignull of Testimonium Ltd and Cennydd Bowles of NowNext Ltd, and revealed by Mozilla Analysis. It updates a January 2024 report from the identical two authors, which first documented how Microsoft steered Home windows customers towards its Edge browser by way of a spread of interface methods. Two years on, the researchers went on the lookout for the identical behaviors once more, this time throughout 4 areas and two variations of Home windows, and largely discovered them nonetheless in place.

What the researchers examined

Brignull and Bowles constructed eight digital machines utilizing Microsoft’s Hyper-V software program: 4 operating Home windows 10 Residence and 4 operating Home windows 11 Residence, one pair for every of the areas beneath take a look at. These areas had been the USA, the UK, India, and Germany, the final standing in for the European Financial Space as a complete. A VPN gave every digital machine a neighborhood IP deal with matching its assigned area, because the researchers wished to rule out geolocation as a separate variable from the area setting constructed into Home windows itself.

The selection of Home windows 10 in addition to Home windows 11 was deliberate. Though Microsoft ended assist for Home windows 10 in October 2025, the working system nonetheless runs on a considerable share of machines worldwide. Citing StatCounter information, the report notes that round 32 p.c of Home windows customers globally had been nonetheless on Home windows 10 within the first quarter of 2026, with the determine nearer to 43 p.c in India, so the researchers judged it important to check each working techniques quite than assume Home windows 11 alone tells the total story.

Three questions anchored the analysis. Can an individual obtain and set up a browser aside from Edge with out interference? Can they set that browser as their default with out interference? And as soon as they’ve completed so, does Home windows respect that selection going ahead? Answering every query meant strolling by way of the precise screens a typical consumer would see and judging whether or not any dangerous design patterns had been current, utilizing a taxonomy tailored from the work of Arunesh Mathur and colleagues, whose 2019 research of 11,000 procuring web sites stays probably the most cited catalogs of manipulative interface design. The taxonomy names patterns together with Trick Wording, Obstruction, Visible Interference, Preselection, Nagging, and Compelled Motion, every describing a definite means an interface can nudge, mislead, or block a consumer from performing on their very own desire.

Findings throughout the browser journey

The reply to all three analysis questions, throughout each area examined, was no. Microsoft doesn’t, within the researchers’ judgment, let customers obtain another browser, set it as default, or hold it as default, with out operating into at the very least one dangerous sample someplace alongside the way in which.

Among the particular findings echo the unique 2024 report virtually precisely. Looking Bing for phrases like “obtain chrome” or “obtain vivaldi” nonetheless surfaces a big injected panel titled “All you want is correct right here,” which the report says pushes natural outcomes down the web page and compares Edge favorably in opposition to a grayed-out rival brand utilizing claims the authors name ambiguous quite than correct. Finishing a Chrome obtain from google.com nonetheless triggers a banner studying “Microsoft Edge runs on the identical expertise as Chrome, with the added belief of Microsoft,” content material the researchers say Edge injects straight into the rendering of a competitor’s web site, a observe they describe as an unprecedented breach of the conventional boundary between a browser and the pages it shows.

Newer findings concern how Home windows and Edge deal with first-run setup. Throughout the Home windows 11 first-run expertise, a display headed “All the time have entry to your latest looking information” invitations the consumer to let Edge frequently import bookmarks, historical past, and passwords from different browsers. Within the US and India take a look at circumstances, the researchers discovered the settle for choice styled as a outstanding button whereas the decline choice, “Not now,” appeared as a smaller hyperlink, a design selection they are saying runs in opposition to Microsoft’s personal revealed steerage on when to make use of a button quite than a hyperlink. Finding the management to modify this import off later required navigating to an obscure inner deal with, edge://settings/profiles/importBrowsingData, that the report says was by no means surfaced once more as soon as the preliminary consent had been given.

The researchers additionally describe what they name a possible consent “pipeline”: three separate, individually modest-looking requests, protecting browsing-data ingestion, cross-device Edge synchronization, and advert personalization, that might mix to provide Microsoft a wider behavioral image than any single display discloses. The report is cautious to say this connection is a speculation quite than a confirmed technical discovering, because the authors didn’t perform network-level evaluation to hint the place information truly flows. They name on Microsoft to make clear the purpose straight and counsel the query deserves impartial technical analysis.

Setting a rival browser as default fared no higher in some respects. After making Firefox or Vivaldi the default browser in each Home windows 10 and Home windows 11, the researchers discovered that Edge remained the registered handler for the .pdf and .svg file sorts within the US, UK, and India take a look at circumstances, a conduct the report labels Obstruction as a result of there was no obvious purpose to withhold these file-type associations from a browser the consumer had simply chosen. A separate however associated sample, Preselection, appeared when Edge got here pre-pinned to the Home windows taskbar on each model and area examined, regardless of Microsoft’s personal 2023 weblog submit pledging that every one Microsoft apps would use the identical pinning-confirmation stream required of rivals.

New floor: Copilot and the Home windows 11 migration

Two findings mark real additions to the 2024 report. The primary issues Microsoft’s Copilot assistant. When the researchers chosen a hyperlink returned inside a Copilot reply, the browser had already been set to another default throughout each area and each working techniques, but the hyperlink opened in a side-panel net view that the report says is constructed on Edge’s personal rendering engine, quite than within the browser the consumer had chosen. The researchers weigh two doable justifications Microsoft may supply, a seamless in-flow expertise and improved reply high quality from studying the rendered web page, and conclude that neither is robust sufficient to justify overriding an specific prior instruction; they classify the conduct as Compelled Motion. A companion consent display inside Copilot, titled “Browse together with your Edge information,” carried two data-sharing toggles that defaulted to on within the US and India take a look at circumstances and to off within the UK and EEA, although the underlying Copilot construct quantity was equivalent throughout all 4 areas, which the researchers say factors to the area setting inside Home windows itself, not the Copilot app, because the supply of the distinction.

The second addition issues what occurs when somebody upgrades {hardware}. Microsoft’s Home windows Backup software is marketed, within the firm’s personal assist documentation, as making it “simpler than ever to maneuver to a brand new PC.” The researchers backed up a Home windows 10 machine operating another browser as default, restored that backup onto a freshly put in Home windows 11 system, and located that the choice browser was not transferred. Microsoft Edge was silently set as the brand new default as an alternative. Home windows Search outcomes nonetheless listed the choice browser with an “Uninstall” choice, suggesting the app was current, however deciding on “Open” redirected to the Microsoft Retailer, the place the consumer wanted to reinstall it from scratch after which manually reset it as default. The report attributes the mismatch between what Home windows Backup guarantees and what truly occurs to Trick Wording, and treats the poor discoverability of the choice browser afterward as Obstruction.

This discovering lands at a specific second. Home windows 10 assist resulted in October 2025, which implies the inhabitants of individuals finishing up precisely this sort of migration, changing an unsupported machine with a brand new Home windows 11 system, is unusually massive proper now. The researchers argue {that a} silent reset of browser selection throughout what’s successfully a compulsory improve cycle carries extra weight than it might in an peculiar 12 months.

Regional variation and the EU’s Digital Markets Act

The clearest sample within the new report is regional. A number of dangerous patterns documented within the US, UK, and India take a look at circumstances had been merely absent when the identical journeys had been run with the Home windows area set to Germany, standing in for the European Financial Space. The Bing “All you want is correct right here” panel didn’t seem. The Chrome obtain banner was lacking. The Home windows 11 ingestion display offered settle for and decline choices with equal visible weight quite than a preselected toggle. A devoted “Make Firefox the default for .pdf” management appeared the place different areas provided no such choice. The “You are virtually completed establishing your PC” journey and its accompanying “Net looking / Restore really helpful” immediate, each criticized at size within the 2024 report, didn’t seem in any respect within the EEA take a look at circumstances on Home windows 10.

The researchers attribute this divergence to regulatory stress quite than a change of philosophy at Microsoft, pointing to the corporate’s personal public acknowledgment of updates made to Home windows in response to the EU’s Digital Markets Act. Even so, the report is specific that EEA customers aren’t freed from dangerous patterns altogether. Obstruction across the browser-ingestion setting, Trick Wording within the Copilot consent display, and Preselection in Edge’s taskbar pinning all continued within the German take a look at circumstances, which is why the researchers nonetheless reply no to all three of their core analysis questions even throughout the area topic to the tightest regulation.

That break up mirrors a wider theme documented in a College of Antwerp evaluation revealed this month, which discovered {that a} Digital Markets Act requirement for gatekeeper browsers like Chrome and Safari to indicate EU customers a selection display when setting a default browser drove meaningfully greater Firefox use on cellular units contained in the EU than in markets the place the rule doesn’t apply, an impact the paper estimated at roughly 6 million further Firefox customers. The identical paper discovered that amongst EU customers, the browsers gaining most from that contestability had been Chrome, Safari, Edge and Firefox in that order, all American merchandise, a discovering PPC Land reported on July 8 alongside the paper’s broader argument that regulatory contestability in browsers doesn’t routinely translate right into a win for European options. Learn along with the Mozilla-backed findings, the 2 items of analysis level to the identical underlying image: EU guidelines seem to maneuver actual numbers, however solely as much as the sting of what the principles truly specify.

Why this issues for advertisers and publishers

For folks working in paid media, the browser an individual truly makes use of just isn’t a settled truth a lot as an enter that retains shifting beneath measurement and focusing on techniques. A browser default just isn’t merely a stylistic desire. It determines which cookie and storage guidelines apply to a session, which tracking-prevention defaults are energetic, and, more and more, which AI assistant intermediates a click on earlier than it ever reaches a touchdown web page. If Home windows is nudging or resetting that default at a scale of greater than a billion machines, as the brand new Mozilla-backed report suggests, then attribution assumptions constructed round “the browser the consumer selected” deserve a re-assessment, significantly round Home windows 10 to Home windows 11 migrations occurring now that Home windows 10 assist has lapsed.

PPC Land’s coverage of Safari’s tracking protections has already documented how browser-level defaults can silently strip identifiers equivalent to GCLID from a significant share of periods, degrading the very click on information that automated bidding techniques rely on. The Over The Edge 2.0 findings describe a parallel however distinct drawback: not a browser vendor tightening its personal privateness defaults, however an working system vendor allegedly working to maintain customers by itself browser by way of interface design quite than by way of open competitors. Each dynamics level the identical course for measurement groups, towards much less certainty about which browser setting a given click on truly occurred in, and due to this fact much less certainty about what any single attribution quantity actually represents.

The report’s account of Copilot forcing hyperlinks open inside an Edge-based view, quite than in whichever browser an individual has chosen, additionally touches a dwell query within the business about how AI assistants intermediate net visitors. As AI interfaces tackle extra of the work that used to belong to a browser straight, opening hyperlinks, summarizing pages, finishing up multi-step duties, the identical self-preferencing incentives that formed browser competitors over the previous three many years seem like reappearing inside assistant merchandise themselves. OpenAI’s personal choice to fold its year-old Atlas browser into a brand new ChatGPT Work agent, introduced on July 9, 2026, reveals the business transferring in the other way of standalone browsers and towards assistants that embed looking as one software amongst a number of, a shift PPC Land reported the same week. Whether or not that consolidation produces the identical self-preferencing stress the Mozilla-backed researchers describe inside Copilot is exactly the type of query the report says future researchers and regulators needs to be expecting.

Regulatory scrutiny of Microsoft’s Home windows enterprise just isn’t confined to browser defaults. PPC Land’s reporting on the Digital Markets Act has tracked Microsoft’s designation as a gatekeeper alongside 5 different massive expertise corporations since 2023, and newer protection has adopted the European Fee’s choice to open market investigations into cloud infrastructure suppliers, together with Microsoft Azure, in November 2025. The Over The Edge 2.0 report provides a particular, screen-by-screen account of what gatekeeper obligations do and don’t seem to have modified contained in the Home windows working system itself, distinct from the cloud and platform-access questions these separate investigations are analyzing.

Limitations the researchers acknowledge

The report is specific about what it doesn’t declare. Software program updates itself constantly, and Microsoft can alter Home windows, Edge, and Copilot conduct remotely or by way of staged rollouts to restricted consumer teams, which means any given display described within the report might change by the point a reader encounters it. The authors additionally disclose that Mozilla, because the report’s sponsor and a competing browser maker, has a business curiosity within the consequence, whereas stating that the evaluation and conclusions are the authors’ personal. Claude, an AI system from Anthropic, was used through the analysis section for some information retrieval and summarization, together with the browser-market-share figures drawn from Cloudflare Radar, work the authors say was independently checked and verified by Mozilla researchers earlier than publication. The dedication of which interface patterns rely as dangerous was made completely by Brignull and Bowles.

The researchers cease wanting asserting that Microsoft is exclusive in utilizing these strategies, noting that prior analysis from our bodies together with the OECD has documented comparable patterns throughout the expertise sector extra broadly. Their scope was restricted to the precise Microsoft consumer journeys they examined, not a comparative audit of competing working techniques.

What the researchers advocate

The report closes by repeating a name first made within the 2024 model: that Microsoft abandon the dangerous patterns recognized worldwide, not solely in jurisdictions the place regulation presently requires it. The authors body the EEA’s comparatively higher exhibiting as proof that regulatory stress can change company conduct, and so they encourage regulators in the USA, United Kingdom, and India, alongside the EU, to deal with the findings as an information level in favor of energetic enforcement quite than reliance on voluntary compliance. In addition they flag AI assistants as the world almost certainly to wish contemporary scrutiny going ahead, on the reasoning that as working techniques, browsers, and AI merchandise change into more durable to separate from each other, the alternatives for one firm’s assistant to quietly favor its personal browser, search engine, or cloud service are more likely to multiply quite than shrink.

Timeline

• January 2024 – Mozilla publishes the unique Over The Edge report, the primary model of this analysis into Microsoft’s browser-choice design practices.
• October 14, 2025 – Microsoft assist for Home windows 10 formally ends.
• March 31 to Might 14, 2026 – Brignull and Bowles seize the screenshots and take a look at journeys underlying the up to date report throughout Home windows 10 and Home windows 11 within the US, UK, India, and Germany.
• Might 5, 2026 – Copilot testing is carried out utilizing construct 147.0.3912.98, the model cited all through the report’s Copilot findings.
• Might 2026 – Over The Edge 2.0: Do Microsoft’s Design Ways Nonetheless Compromise Free Browser Selection? is revealed by Mozilla Analysis, authored by Dr. Harry Brignull and Cennydd Bowles.

Abstract

Who: Dr. Harry Brignull of Testimonium Ltd and Cennydd Bowles of NowNext Ltd, commissioned by Mozilla, authored the analysis analyzing Microsoft’s Home windows, Edge, Bing, and Copilot merchandise.

What: A follow-up research to a January 2024 report discovered that Microsoft continues to make use of dangerous interface design patterns, together with Trick Wording, Obstruction, Visible Interference, Preselection, Nagging, and Compelled Motion, to affect which browser Home windows customers find yourself on, with new findings protecting Copilot’s in-app hyperlink dealing with and the Home windows Backup migration software resetting browser defaults after a Home windows 10 to Home windows 11 improve.

When: Testing was carried out between late March and mid-Might 2026, and the report was revealed in Might 2026, two years after the unique Over The Edge research.

The place: The analysis coated Home windows 10 Residence and Home windows 11 Residence throughout 4 areas: the USA, the UK, India, and Germany, the latter representing the European Financial Space.

Why: The findings matter for advertisers, publishers, and entrepreneurs as a result of browser defaults form which tracking-prevention guidelines, cookie insurance policies, and AI intermediaries apply to a given session, and since the report paperwork measurably fewer dangerous patterns solely within the area coated by the EU’s Digital Markets Act, proof the authors say helps continued regulatory scrutiny of how working techniques steer consumer selection.