After outcry, Microsoft presses pause on unsolicited Windows 10 web app installs

On Saturday, I pointed out how Microsoft force-restarting Windows 10 computers to put in unwanted net apps was the latest proof you don't own your own Windows PC. Today, the company says it was at to the lowest degree partly a mistake — and will cost pausing the "migration" that brought web apps to your Start Bill of fare this way.

Originally, Microsoft tells The Verge, the idea was that any website you pinned to the Start Menu would launch in Microsoft Edge, and it simply intended to turn those shortcuts into more perceptible tiles now. But — in what Microsoft is calling a bug — the change also turned its existing Microsoft Office web shortcuts into PWA web apps as comfortably. That's something you seat normally do from inside the Edge web browser, only not something that would happen by itself.

A screenshot of the web apps that Microsoft force-installed on my PC. — *Web versions of Microsoft Bureau appeared in my list of programs.*

Microsoft says it's actually been pinning Office web shortcuts to the Start Menu since May 2019. If we assume that practice is Satisfactory and give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, I tail end see how this chain of events might have unfolded in a way Microsoft didn't plan.

But that doesn't actually address any of my previous concerns:

Why was Microsoft exploitation my Start Menu as free advertizing for its Office products originall, web shortcut or no?
Why doh these shortcuts fire up Microsoft Edge, instead of respecting my personal default option quality of browser?
Why does Microsoft think it has the right to effect-restart my PC at all? What was so critical about this update to make that worthwhile?

Microsoft has intelligibly detected some displeasure, and it's reacting to that now. But it's not clear whether anything will change as a result. Microsoft is still advertising its own apps in your Go Menu aboard the programs you've in reality installed, IT's giving them agiotage blank space in your Start Menu without asking, they'll distillery open in Microsoft's own Sharpness browser which the company no thirster lets you remove, and — most annoyingly — the company ISN't addressing its practice of unnatural updates and reboots.

Update 11:09PM ET: Added more uncloudedness from Microsoft approximately what the company says it did and did non intend to happen.