Devil’s advocate: Microsoft, an ethically unclean company, is justified in using this tactic to compete with Google, because (a) Google did it to acquire Chrome users in the first place, and (b) breaking the browser hegemony at a user mindshare level (not rendering engine level) is worth some UX pain.
Note on (a): some will argue a difference between Google advertising Chrome on Google’s property (something they could do when bootstrapping Chrome) and advertising Chrome on other people’s property (something they could not do). But here, Windows and Edge are Microsoft’s property, like it or not.
Yikes. But also how unusual. I just checked in Gmail on my iPhone and not only does it have a third option of Safari, it has a fourth option of "Default browser app".
It seems (?) to be a bug but it makes me wonder how widespread the bug is, how often it's triggered. But that is very not cool. Thanks for the screenshot.
Google's behaviour is also bad but it is ahistorical to describe it as Google doing it first. Microsoft did it first, got sued, and lost. We're still being punished today with the fallout from the technical decisions made by Microsoft trying to prove IE was an integral part of the OS - if the file explorer crashes, your toolbar does too.
Side A is fighting side B, and therefore has to take these measures that harm bystander C. Nope, their fight, their problem, don't mess with my computer. I can happily say MS is wrong and Google is wrong
Note on (a): some will argue a difference between Google advertising Chrome on Google’s property (something they could do when bootstrapping Chrome) and advertising Chrome on other people’s property (something they could not do). But here, Windows and Edge are Microsoft’s property, like it or not.