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You buy a new Windows laptop. Disappointingly, the only browser on that device is Microsoft’s own Edge browser, which you’ve never actually chosen to use. You manage to download the browser that you were using on your last laptop and set it as default in Settings. Job done, or so you think. A week later you click a link in an Outlook email, and to your surprise it opens in Microsoft Edge. You click a link in Teams and that opens in Edge too. None of this is a glitch. Behavioural scientists call it sludge, a type of dark pattern that adds burdens to users’ limited time, attention, and cognitive resources–making a choice you have already made harder to access, implement or maintain.

Before users have made or even been offered any choice at all, Edge is the exclusively preinstalled browser on new Windows PCs from the major PC manufacturers. That is the result of Microsoft’s ‘Jumpstart’ programme. The precise terms of this programme are shrouded in secrecy but it appears that Microsoft offers manufacturers global terms that serve to effectively be an ‘offer they can’t refuse’ to require that Edge and only Edge be preinstalled on every PC they ship under the programme.

As soon as the user turns on their new laptop, Microsoft’s dark patterns subvert a user’s intended choice by pushing users to stay with Edge while making alternative browsers noticeably harder to choose or maintain. The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT), a UK-based expert behavioural insights firm, has examined what happens if a user tries to choose differently in a BCA-commissioned study.

BIT’s review identifies 10 dark patterns across the user journey that make it harder to choose a browser other than Edge, or that override or obstruct a user’s choice once made. There are three types of dark patterns: ‘sludge and obstruction’ that make alternatives harder to choose or keep, ‘deceptive framing’ that makes Edge seem safer or easier without substantiation and ‘nudges’ that make Edge noticeably easier to use. BIT notes that pre-selected options can support fast setup, but their pull is strong and these can become dark patterns when they are used to hinder users’ preferences or when they are unsubstantiated. Across 58 studies, people were 27% more likely to choose an option over another simply because it was pre-selected. That is relevant for Microsoft’s surfacing of OS-level prompts after Windows updates that pre-select an option for users to use ‘Microsoft’s recommended browser’ setting – failure to opt-out resets Edge as the default browser. The strongest evidence shows that such tactics cost users time and mental effort, and BIT concludes the harm is greatest when several are used together. Time poor users face the hassle of switching back to the browser they already chose, again and again, and people with lower digital literacy just give up.

Regulators around the world have tackled browser choice on Windows before in the early 2000s. Today, the EU’s Digital Markets Act has again pushed Microsoft to change course: EU users can now uninstall Edge, and no longer have to battle against Microsoft tactics such as banners trying to stop users from downloading alternative browsers, or being pushed back to Edge following OS updates. The EU still leaves much room for improvement, but at least EU users are better off than those in the rest of the world, where Microsoft has for the most part not made any changes to respect user choice.

In the UK, on 16 October 2026, the Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, published its proposed decision to designate Microsoft as having ‘strategic market status’ in relation to its business software ecosystem including both its Windows OS and productivity software suite, which includes Copilot. An eventual designation would provide an important platform for meaningful steps 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.

In its indicative roadmap accompanying the proposed designation decision, the CMA notes that third parties have urged it to make sure Microsoft’s user interface design does not erode genuine user choice that steers users ‘towards its own products, even where users set a third-party product as a default’. Stakeholders now have until 13 November 2026 to weigh in with their views.

When UK Windows PC users choose to download an alternative browser and set it as their default, that choice should be respected. Today, it often isn’t. Regulators must protect choice on Windows PCs and across the web now, before the same bottlenecks take hold, including in new areas like AI. Under the CMA’s leadership, it’s time for UK businesses and users to have effective choice – and, critically, to have that choice respected.

For more information visit browserchoicealliance.org