Web Browsers Monopolisation




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Brave and Firefox to intercept links that force-open in Microsoft Edge
Microsoft has inadvertently re-heated the web browser wars with the company’s anti-competitive changes to Windows 11. It made it more difficult to change the default web browser and has expanded the use of links that force-opens Edge instead of the default browser.
The latter issue is something I addressed in 2017 with the release of EdgeDeflector. Instead of using regular https: links, Microsoft began switching out links in the Windows shell and its apps with microsoft-edge: links. Only its Edge browser recognized these links, so it would open regardless of your default browser setting. I created EdgeDeflector to also recognizes them and rewrites them to regular https: links that would then open in your default web browser.
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What if Chrome broke features of the web and Google forgot to tell anyone? Oh wait, that's exactly what happened
"Browser monoculture" is often bemoaned as a threat to the web. According to Statscounter, which tracks browser use, over 70 per cent of the market is made up of people using Google Chrome or another browser based on the underlying Chromium project.
What web advocates worry about when they say this is bad is that Google can effectively determine the future of the web by determining which features to support and which not to. That's a lot of power for a single company that also has an effective monopoly on search and advertising.
What would happen if Chrome decided to break fundamental features of the web and didn't even feel the need to tell anyone?
Well, we can answer that question because that's what Chrome did.
Earlier this year Chrome developers decided that the browser should no longer support JavaScript dialogs and alert windows when they're called by third-party iframes.
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