Mozilla has escalated its fight against Microsoft’s relentless Edge pop-ups

It looks like Mozilla has had enough of Microsoft’s controversial tactics to push people towards Edge.

About three months ago, researchers Harry Brignull and Cennydd Bowles published a detailed study showing how Windows pushes people toward Edge. We covered the findings back in July, noting how Windows 10 and 11 go out of their way to derail your preferred browser setup.

Now, in a blog post published a day ago, Mozilla says it spoke to Microsoft, hoping that laying out the evidence directly might convince them to treat users with a bit more respect.

But according to the Firefox-maker, those discussions led to nothing. So Mozilla says it has run out of patience and is taking its fight straight to antitrust regulators in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Brazil.

The company claims Microsoft shows no interest in changing how it pushes people toward Edge unless a government forces its hand.

“Microsoft’s standard for respecting people’s choices is legal compliance. Not what’s best for its users,” Mozilla wrote, adding that “Microsoft ships only when a regulator requires fairer design.”

The last part of the statement is particularly interesting. It’s because Microsoft does indeed have a cleaner, less annoying version of Windows already. If you happen to live in the European Union, Microsoft dialed back several of these nudges because the Digital Markets Act gave them no choice.

Here’s an example for reference on what Edge users see when they try downloading Google Chrome outside of the EU:

Now here’s an example of what Edge users in the EEA see (or rather, don’t see):

If you look at the two screenshots, you’ll notice that the EEA version doesn’t have the nagging pop-up asking you to stick to Edge when you try to download Chrome.

And this applies elsewhere too. Windows Search and widgets still send links to Edge, setup screens steer you away from your browser, and file types like PDFs and SVGs remain tied to Edge.

Worse, Mozilla says Microsoft is finding newer ways to push Edge on everyone. Copilot opens links in a dedicated side panel powered by Edge instead of your default browser, no matter where you live. Even the Windows Backup tool can silently drop your chosen browser and restore Edge as default when migrating to Windows 11.

We saw similar complaints back in June when the Browser Choice Alliance called out these tactics in a public letter addressed to Satya Nadella. But it had no effect, so Mozilla had to take this step.

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