2024-02-11 15:15:00
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The European Union continues to define new rules of the game. Soon Microsoft will be forced to allow users who wish to completely remove the Edge browser installed as part of the Windows 11 operating system.
Until now, users could indeed install another browser and set it as the default, but there was no possibility, at least officially, to remove Edge. After the update, which is expected to arrive early next month, Edge will become a program that can be removed through the settings menu, like any other program installed in the operating system. Other programs from Microsoft that are pre-installed by default will undergo a similar change, such as the Bing search application, the photos and camera application, and also Cortana, which in fact stopped working but still remains installed without the possibility of removing it.
These changes, in principle, only apply to Microsoft’s customers who live in one of the EU countries. However, it seems that it will not be a big challenge to convince the operating system that it is subject to the laws of the union: in the existing beta versions where the change is already in place, it is enough to change the geographical area through the location settings in the operating system to make the uninstall button appear.
Until the entry into force of the aforementioned change, Edge recently managed to reach a respectable market share, and recently even overtook Apple’s Safari browser and reached second place in the list of the most popular browsers in the world with 13%. That’s still far from Chrome’s market share, but certainly represents relative progress for Microsoft. Now it remains to be seen whether the new restrictions demanded by the European Union will reverse the trend.
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