The built-in net search within the Windows Start menu is cool, and a lot more useful than you might think. But like nearly each different a part of Windows currently, it insists on conserving you in Microsoft’s playpen by forcing hyperlinks to open within the Edge browser. That’s about to vary, a minimum of should you dwell in most of continental Europe. A current change to the developer channel signifies that hyperlinks from the Start search and widgets in Windows 11 will open within the working system’s default browser, no matter that occurs to be.

The change is available in an August announcement on the Windows Insider Preview notes, with a pointed addendum that it’s just for the European Economic Area. That’s all of the international locations within the European Union, plus Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. “Windows system components use the default browser to open links,” says the submit, a change that can presumably head to the overall Windows 11 launch inside a couple of weeks or a few months. It ought to apply to just about any a part of the working system that opens a hyperlink through a browser, from the primary Start menu search to assist hyperlinks deep in submenus.

This will lastly repair a difficulty (Microsoft would name it a “feature”) that customers have been complaining about for years, ever since Microsoft inexorably tied its proprietary providers to the Edge browser and, by extension, the Bing search engine. PCWorld’s Mark Hachman was documenting Microsoft’s iron grip over Edge integration way back in 2016. There have been varied person work-arounds for this conduct for individuals who needed to completely use third-party browsers like Chrome or Firefox. But Microsoft has repeatedly adjusted Windows to block these tools.

Why make this variation solely in Europe? The replace textual content doesn’t say. But should you’ve adopted expertise information in any respect, you realize that Europe’s financial legal guidelines overlaying competitors (or lack thereof) are much more strict than most components of the world, with kind of each main American tech firm dealing with both intense scrutiny or specific enforcement motion from the European Commission. As The Verge notes, this variation is probably going being made to adjust to the Digital Markets Act which can come into impact subsequent yr.

Sadly, however not surprisingly, Microsoft appears intent to make these adjustments solely the place it’s pressured to take action. The remainder of us Windows customers will nonetheless be seeing Edge tabs now and again, whether or not we wish to or not.