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Mozilla Accuses Microsoft of Sabotaging Firefox With Windows and Copilot Tactics (nerds.xyz) 68

Posted by BeauHD from the called-out dept.
BrianFagioli writes: Mozilla is accusing Microsoft of stacking the deck against Firefox, arguing that design choices in Windows steer users toward Edge even when they explicitly choose another browser. According to Mozilla, parts of Windows still open links in Edge regardless of the default browser setting, including results from the taskbar search and links launched from apps like Outlook and Teams. Mozilla says this means Firefox often never even gets the opportunity to handle those links, which quietly shifts user activity back into Microsoft's ecosystem.

The company also points to Microsoft's aggressive rollout of Copilot as another example of platform power being used to push Microsoft services. Copilot appeared pinned to the taskbar, arrived automatically on many systems with Microsoft 365, and even received a dedicated keyboard key on some laptops. Mozilla argues that when the maker of the dominant desktop operating system promotes its own browser and AI tools at the system level, it becomes far harder for independent browsers like Firefox to compete.

Mozilla Accuses Microsoft of Sabotaging Firefox With Windows and Copilot Tactics More | Reply

Mozilla Accuses Microsoft of Sabotaging Firefox With Windows and Copilot Tactics

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  • Wait so you expect me to believe (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Thursday April 09, 2026 @06:04PM (#66086080)
    That a fine upstanding company like Microsoft would engage in potentially anti-competitive behavior? Perish the thought. Quick fetch me my fainting goats!

    On a more serious note elections have consequences. If you like having choices when it comes to software 45 years of zero antitrust law enforcement is one hell of a consequence.

  • Consent Decree Expired for Microsodt (Score:5, Informative)

    by JakFrost ( 139885 ) on Thursday April 09, 2026 @06:07PM (#66086088)

    Don't you know that the consent decree and the memorandum of understanding from the previous antitrust lawsuits with the Department of Justice (DOJ) expired for Microsoft?

    They do the same thing every decade with their lock-in OS and features line OneDrive and Copilot. Every single time.

    I'm other news, the sky is blue and water is wet.

    • While the pattern is the same the world has in fact changed a bit. Consumers generally expect things integrated. OSes need to include browsers, it's expected cloud storage to be included (an Apple innovation with iCloud closely followed by Google with Drive), and lets face it Microsoft was completely late to the party for any attempt to integrate an assistant at an OS level, they just slapped AI on it.

      I suspect courts would not find these things anti-competitive in today's world. It's the unexpected bullshi

    • The tech companies and Mozilla are the party of the status quo institution.

      We will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of HTML - CSS - JS soon enough.

      It will be up to people outside of big tech and Mozilla to build out a replacement for the 30 year old web stack, get it mature enough, get it past the ANSI/ECMA/IEEE standards board first before big tech comes on board.

      There are partial replacements and short-term alternatives (cross compile to JS / HTML) but those just get back into the same poor legacy of X

  • Okay, I'm gonna pretend I don't know anything about downloading and installing a browser and just go the Microsoft Store and search for "Firefox". Yup, it's there. Now, I'll try for Google Chrome. How odd, it isn't available.

    Surely the browser that you can't even get from Microsoft's app store would have less market share, right? Nope, according to the data, Chrome is still on top, despite the fact that you have to manually download and install it on Windows.

    I doubt this occurred to Mozilla, but perhaps

  • What Is their Point? (Score:3)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Thursday April 09, 2026 @06:24PM (#66086114)

    Accuse all you like. Launch a DOJ investigation and find them guilty of anti-competitive and monopolistic behavior. What's the outcome? FUCK ALL! That's what.

    Mozilla needs to build a better browser than this Chromium shit. Nothing else will matter, if even that is enough.

    • The problem is that Google offers a software development kit that sabotages firefox browsers hitting Chrome SDK built sites in varying ways depending on (seemingly) the day of the week.

  • To be fair (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jrnvk ( 4197967 ) on Thursday April 09, 2026 @06:39PM (#66086150)

    I am certain Microsoft sabotaged their own products way more than anything else with their CoPilot shenanigans.

  • Microslop is guilty (Score:3)

    by JThundley ( 631154 ) on Thursday April 09, 2026 @06:44PM (#66086170)

    Microslop is so guilty in this regard. Outlook has an option buried in the settings regarding whether to open web links in Edge or the user's preferred globally set default browser. Guess which setting is the default! When you go to the Google Chrome website, Edge both shows a popup and injects an ad over and into the site begging people to stick with Edge instead. Mozilla is also right about it's complaint; many things in Windows just open Edge and ignore the default browser. It's so blatantly illegal monopolistic behavior.

    • Outlook has that setting separate from the default file associations because installing and uninstalling browsers would break Outlook (neither firefox nor chrome would undo their registry changes). I had to fix that on an irritatingly regular basis, so the change was welcome.

      Whenever I open my gmail in Edge, I get a popup about installing chrome.

      • That's some serious Stockholm syndrom if you welcome that change. Why can't Microslop be expected to make Microslop software work with Microslop software? Is it really this hard to just have and use a default browser?!

        • Which is a funny question given the issue. First off, it's a problem caused by 3rd party software, corrected by having a separate control to have Outlook keep using Edge after someone else's software broke the file associations. So, Microsoft made sure Microsoft software continued to work with Microsoft software despite Google or Mozilla breaking it.

          See, those other browsers don't just take the default association for .htm and .html, they change other registry values in those keys, and don't change the

          • Does setting the default browser in the settings not fix it? I also fix Windows users' issues and I haven't seen this one, but that's because their comptuers are so locked down. In my mind there's the default browser in settings and if you uninstall the current default, it changes to another or at least prompts the user to set a default like I've seen with filetypes. Just let me blame Windows :)

  • so why don't they file a competition complaint?

    It is after all illegal to leverage a monopoly position to get another.

  • Install a PWA using chrome on Ubuntu, and in that PWA, follow a link - it opens in chrome even if your default browser is FF.

    I can't wait for FG to finish their implementation of PWAs...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      Perhaps the installation of the PWA hard codes a call to the browser that installed it. Try installing it using FireFox.

  • Microsoft just loves paying antitrust fines to the EU.
  • I've been complaining about that since the first time I touched Windows 10.

  • In the meantime, use MSEdgeRedirect (Score:4, Informative)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Thursday April 09, 2026 @10:30PM (#66086342)

    https://github.com/rcmaehl/MSE... [github.com]

    A Tool to Redirect News, Search, Widgets, Weather, and More to Your Default Browser

    This tool filters and passes the command line arguments of Microsoft Edge processes into your default browser instead of hooking into the microsoft-edge: handler, this should provide resiliency against future changes. Additionally, an Image File Execution Options mode is available to operate similarly to the Old EdgeDeflector. Additional modes are planned for future versions.

    No Default App walkthrough or other steps, just set and forget.

  • Something I've noticed is - being forced to use Azure and O365 at work - the experience in firefox is horrendous. Laggy, sign-in looping, it's just awful. Even in azure - activate subscription, and usually even 10 minutes later I still have no access to resources. If I do the same thing in chromium it usually happens right away. Maybe just optimised for chromium browsers (?), and maybe it doesn't like my extensions, but it's a massive difference - anyone else see this?

    • Something I've noticed is - being forced to use Azure and O365 at work - the experience in firefox is horrendous. Laggy, sign-in looping, it's just awful. Even in azure - activate subscription, and usually even 10 minutes later I still have no access to resources. If I do the same thing in chromium it usually happens right away. Maybe just optimised for chromium browsers (?), and maybe it doesn't like my extensions, but it's a massive difference - anyone else see this?

      I use Safari, FireFox and Opera on My Macs. They all perform pretty much at the same speed, Might be Azure related.

  • OK so it was Netscape back then.

  • ... if Mozilla gets there first! Quick! People are getting used to the interface. Change something!

  • firefox self inflicted damage (Score:3)

    by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @12:22AM (#66086398)
    seriously firefox does more to sabotage firefox than Microsoft does. Firefox is marginalized itself so much they no one actually considers them competition anymore.

  • 90s M$ (Score:1)

    by HnT ( 306652 )

    Do not let the marketing and image campaigns fool you, the 90s monster of Micro$oft was never gone, it just started acting as if it was cool and modern and different.. but it is just the same old.

  • > .. According to Mozilla, parts of Windows still open links in Edge regardless of the default browser setting ..

    ClippyAI: Proprietary microsoft-edge: protocol links: Many Windows features (Start menu search, Widgets, News and Interests, Outlook/Teams links, etc.) use a special protocol that only Edge (or Edge variants) can handle. This bypasses the user's chosen default browser. Third-party workarounds like EdgeDeflector were blocked by Windows updates
  • As someone who doesn't use Windows and had to drop FF because it just doesn't work for me anymore, I think there are bigger issues than MCSFT steering people away.

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