Oh my, this is amazing.

I'm not sure the engineers realized despite their secrecy, it would be noticed by the press immediately after deploy.

But the best part is how Google engineers immediately on seeing it figured "oh yeah, we should do that too" (although they apparently got the necessary approvals however that was done at Google, it was easier to do because they figured "well, youtube must have done due dillegence before doing it.")

Amazing!

I don't know how they didn't all get fired. Like, ALL of em, including everyone who set up the special "OldTuber" priv long before.

But... it worked! This is a hacker story for the history books, it sounds like the kind of thing programmers did 20+ years ago for nothing except the reward of doing it right (against their own career interests), that I feel like doesn't happen so much in a more professionalized industry.

Something that stuck out to me was how concerned Google was that even while recommending other browsers next to Chrome, that putting Chrome first in the list could rankle antitrust regulators. Fast forward to 2019 and Windows 10 makes you fight multiple menus and "suggestions" just to switch your default browser away from Edge.

Your comment is demonstrably nonsense. Windows 10 only suggests Edge if you make IE11 your default browser.

If you choose Firefox or Chrome it never suggests that you should switch to Edge.

Microsoft’s lawyers are not stupid.

I'm confused. It prompts me all the time to change my default browser to Edge. Microsoft products ignore the default browser bit and open links in Edge, which them opens pop-ups to change my default browser to Edge.

Even the UI for changing the default browser in Settings heavily encourages you to set Edge.

Try something like EdgeDeflector (https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector) for redirecting those links to your default browser.