On Windows 11, Edge is preinstalled and can't simply be removed either. Furthermore, it constantly bugs you about if you're sure you don't want to enable their recommended settings, which ends up re-enabling all the analytics/rewards/etc.
In Europe, you can now fully remove Edge from Windows 11, and it doesn't come back (or at least hasn't so far). And it's not even hard, you just uninstall it like any other app. They do give some scary prompts, and it does disable all internet-based integrations in the start menu, but that's not even necessarily a bad thing.
You have to have Windows with region set to a European country during the initial installation. If you chose US during the original installation, even if you live in the EU and now have your region set to one, that won't work. But you can install Windows from scratch (it has to be on a formatted partition, if you restore from a previous installation it doesn't work) with the right region choice, and the option is simply there.
The edge situation is a mess for sure, and Microsoft seems to have such a perfect understanding of the current judiciary climate that they can't dance around the lines without any consequences.
> have such a perfect understanding of the current judiciary climate that they can't dance around the lines without any consequences
More like they have their hands in creating the current judiciary climate. Kind of hard to file suit against someone who is intertwined with the agencies that would investigate them.
