What Microsoft Doesn’t Want Users To Know About Browsing The Web On Windows PCs

Every day, tens of millions of UK users rely on the internet on their Windows PCs: to work, to communicate, to undertake research, to share ideas and to engage with the world. But what happens when users’ ability to freely choose and use PC web browsers; our portals into this all-important forum is subverted?

An essential freedom is compromised: the ability to navigate the internet on our own terms.

For years, Microsoft has manipulated PC browser choice on devices running its dominant Windows OS in order to advance its own browser, Edge. Instead of competing on features and innovation, Microsoft requires major PC OEMs to exclusively preinstall Edge across all of their Windows PCs and deploys various dark patterns and sludge tactics to force the continued use of its own browser over rivals.

Microsoft thus undermines effective choice.This isn’t just about a browser; it’s about whether a user can make their own choices to conduct business on their own terms with the tools they prefer or whether Microsoft decides for them.

What does this look like in practice? There are a range of tactics in use by Microsoft to prevent or discourage users from using Edge’s competitors, including:

• Intrusive and misleading banners when users seek out alternatives to Edge. When users use Edge to search for an alternative browser, Microsoft displays prominent, intrusive and often misleading banners on the Bing search engine results page. Users are liable to mistake these for security alerts against competing browsers
• The preinstallation of Edge and ONLY Edge on new Windows PCs worldwide (Jumpstart Program). Microsoft economically coerces major PC OEMs to set Edge as the exclusive preinstalled browser across their entire portfolio by ‘all or nothing’ discounts on the price of a must-have Windows licence, freezing out smaller rivals from even a small slice of distribution opportunities
• System updates to push users back to Edge or manipulative interface design that scares and confuses users into switching their default browser back to Edge after a system update
• Impeding users’ ability to change default browser, including blocking rivals’ one-click-switch workarounds, introducing complex settings menus where Edge stays as default for important file types and apps despite the user having chosen a different default browser, and hardwiring Edge to key OS-level access points (like Windows Search and Widgets)

Thankfully Change Is On The Horizon

On 14 May 2026, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) formally launched an investigation under the Digital Markets Competition and Consumers Act (“DMCCA”) to assess whether Microsoft should be designated as having strategic market status (“SMS”) based on its influence resulting from the widespread corporate use of Microsoft’s must-have Windows OS, productivity software suite, and other products.

This is a critical first step towards ensuring free and fair competition within Microsoft’s business software ecosystem, including between browsers, which are the key gateway for PC users to access the internet and web-based services.

The impact is clear; in a survey undertaken for the BCA in May 2026, more than 90% of UK small and medium-sized enterprises reported that they use web browsers for work. Throughout the UK, every day 15 to 25 million corporate users of the Windows OS access the internet as part of their work and do so using PC browsers. Microsoft’s restrictive practices don’t just force Edge onto users, they directly interfere with the user experience that is critical to the function of UK businesses.

At a macro level, these individual frictions likely add up to many hours of lost productivity a day. Crucially, Microsoft’s practices prevent users from experiencing the best features and innovations that alternative browsers have to offer and limit the ability of rival browsers, including UK-based browsers such as Wavebox and Waterfox, to invest in innovation.

This issue goes beyond our daily web-based tasks – Microsoft’s behaviour impacts the entire digital ecosystem. PCs are a critical channel for important, complex and high-value AI tasks that relate to business or professional use and education such as coding, deep research and more.

Moreover, PC browsers are among the primary ways, if not theprimary way, that PC users access different AI agents and AI chatbots for these vital, organisational AI tasks. PC browsers are also a key way to access cloud-based software. If left unchecked, Microsoft’s efforts to control the way PC users access the internet today can have far-reaching consequences for how everyone will access the critical products of tomorrow.

The CMA investigation – including consultation with important stakeholders – is now formally open and will continue until February 2027, making it a critical time for UK internet users, businesses of all sizes and other organisations to speak up for the freedom for all UK PC users to navigate the internet own their own terms (for more details, see the CMA website here).

For more information on how to protect your browser choice, please visit: https://browserchoicealliance.org/