Home windows Begin menu hyperlinks may lastly launch through Google and Chrome

Final week, we coated how Microsoft is revamping the Begin menu with some massive upgrades, standardizations, and cleanups. Yet one more factor presumably coming to the Begin menu is a welcome change to how net hyperlinks are handled when clicked.

Extra particularly, it seems that while you click on on hyperlinks from Home windows’ built-in search function—whether or not within the Begin menu, the taskbar, or elsewhere—these hyperlinks will now open in your system’s default browser as a substitute of at all times opening in Microsoft Edge, experiences Home windows Newest.

All of that is based mostly on some new flags that Home windows Newest found in Edge’s Canary construct (which is the latest and most “in improvement” model of the browser). For instance, a brand new flag named msExplicitLaunchNonEdgeDB seemingly refers to an express launching of a “non-Edge default browser.”

Nonetheless, the flags go even additional, with one referred to as msExplicitLaunchNonBingDSE that seemingly refers to an express launching of a “non-Bing default search engine.” If true, this is able to imply you’d be capable to launch hyperlinks through Google Search (non-Bing) in Google Chrome (non-Edge)—an enormous change for the Begin menu!

The precise motive behind these developments is unclear, however it’s attainable that Microsoft is apprehensive about being slammed with new fines from the European Fee. Most not too long ago, Microsoft was compelled to make Home windows 10 prolonged safety updates free for customers in Europe.