Chris Beard, the CEO of Mozilla, has released criticisms against Windows 10 in a pair of posts on the company's official blog.
The first post is an open letter to Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, while the second post is a call for Microsoft to "undo its aggressive move to override user choice" with the release of the Windows 10 operating system.
Once users update their PCs to Windows 10, the default browsers for their systems will automatically change to Microsoft Edge, which is the successor to Microsoft's now-defunct Internet Explorer. Users that have changed their default browser to any other one will have to go into the settings of their Windows 10 PCs to change back to another browser.
According to Beard, the automatic change for the default browser of Windows 10 is a "dramatic step backwards" in respecting the choice of users on what software they want to use.
"The upgrade process now appears to be purposefully designed to throw away the choices its customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Microsoft wants them to have," Beard wrote.
According to Beard, while there is still the option for users to keep their previous settings through the upgrade to Windows 10, the option is less obvious to users and is more difficult. Users will have to go through twice the number of mouse clicks, scroll through some content and will have to possess a certain level of technical expertise to prevent Windows 10 from switching to Microsoft Edge as the default browser.
The decision for Microsoft to automatically switch the default browser for Windows to Microsoft Edge makes good sense for users that still have Internet Explorer as the default browser in their PCs, as the new browser will take over its position in Microsoft's software lineup. Microsoft Edge is one of the more anticipated features of Windows 10, and so Microsoft would like have as many users as possible open the software and try it out at least once, even if it means overriding the previously set preferences of users.
The upgrade to Windows 10 will not uninstall all the browsers by competing companies on the PC. Users can still go back to setting other browsers as their default one after they try to open the software once the Windows 10 upgrade is completed.
Beard said that the cause of concern was not due to his position in Mozilla, the maker of competing browser Firefox, but because of the Microsoft's lack of respect in respecting the choices that users have previously made as they used older versions of the Windows operating system.
