Of course I find this attempt from Microsoft to make you stick on Edge (together with all the other ones) pretty ridicolous,
But after having to use Win11 + Edge for a bunch of days instead of my usual OS and Browser I really don't understand why people who doesn't give a shit about their privacy and the welfare of the internet (because if you use Google Chrome this must be your case) just don't use Edge.
It's basically chrome but with more cool features and a much better integration with the OS!
So I guess in this case maybe it was not an attempt to make user stick with Edge, but just the Edge developers being annoyed by the fact that all what they do is not apreciated 😂
You mean all they didn't do? But the answer is in your question. Better integration with the OS. That's the problem. IE6 did the same thing. Then MS started altering standards a bit once they gained majority of users. This resulted in broken standards and monopoly that took us decades to break. Remember that Microsoft is the creator of EEE...
It's still the same engine, so in a way they are not competing. FF is the only alternative in town and that scares me. Even Opera gave up on their engine. And indeed Google is trying to do a similar thing, but they have less power to do so than what Microsoft did. Google can force certain things, but Microsoft is in far better position to push things their way. But like you said, competition is a good thing.