On Thursday Mozilla's CEO, Chris Beard, penned an open letter to Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella about his concerns that Microsoft's new operating system was rolling back the clock on choice and control.
His specific concern is the Windows 10 Upgrade process and the in system method for selecting a default web browser:
I am writing to you about a very disturbing aspect of Windows 10. Specifically, that the update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Microsoft wants them to have.
He continues lamenting the extra work required by users to re-enable their preferences in Windows 10:
We strongly urge you to reconsider your business tactic here and again respect people’s right to choice and control of their online experience by making it easier, more obvious and intuitive for people to maintain the choices they have already made through the upgrade experience. It also should be easier for people to assert new choices and preferences, not just for other Microsoft products, through the default settings APIs and user interfaces.
In reality it is not that hard to change the default web browser on a Windows 10 system.
Earlier today I posted a how to that showed it only takes five steps to perform that action on Windows 10.
One of our regular readers, Aaron Hall, recorded a short video clip this evening of one element of the Windows 10 upgrade process. It shows that it takes just two clicks during an upgrade to de-select Microsoft Edge as the default browser and allow the previous system setting to remain the users choice.
Here is Aaron's video clip:
I am not sure what your definition of choice and control are but it sure seems that it is easy enough to prevent the change to begin with and modify it later if necessary.
What do you think - is Mozilla's CEO over reacting?
