Comment by IAmBroom
1 day ago
In at least one past version of Windows (circa 1990s), if you tried to replace the default web browser of IE with another choice you were given an Open File dialog window to choose the executable.
Funny quirk, though: that particular window wouldn't show files named firefox.exe. It would accept that as typed input, if you were at the correct folder, but the file listing omitted that particular file.
Maybe it was mozilla.exe; it was a long time ago. But that was the discovery that pushed me off IE forever.
I vaguely remember that being the start of the browser prompts to set your current browser as the default. It was so hard to just configure that they had to build a way to set it within the browser.
You saw that again in more modern times when Microsoft removed support for the APIs they provided to set browser defaults, forcing browser makers to write step by step instructions on what to click to set the default browser.
I believe they walked that back, but it left such a bad taste that I switched my installation of Windows from default mode to EU mode in order to avoid it. And come to think of it, I haven’t used my windows machine for much outside of AI in about 6 months.
But Microsoft is not alone in these sort of defaults games - every OS or browser maker, Apple, Google, Firefox, wants to create moats so they can more easily monetize your usage of a product. I never thought I’d prefer the business model of free to play games, where they just outright ask you for money and have to keep finding new ways to entertain instead of relying on hard to change defaults and selling your data.
An app being able to see itself as the default browser sounds like such a dangerous API, especially if it can be done silently without the user realizing it.