Outlook for Android opening links in internal browser

It's the same old story. Microsoft knows best.

This wasn't an accident - it is hard to believe it, but this is a deliberate choice by Microsoft, a deliberate decision to interfere with a fundamental feature of the way people expect Android to work - when you click on an link to a Youtube video, you expect it to open in the YouTube App, etc. When you click on a link to a website that you are logged in to, you expect to get the full functionality that your logged in state provides. This was not done to promote MS Edge, because it doesn't make any difference if you already have MS Edge installed, and it does not coordinate with any cookies or credentials that you already have in Edge. Of course, given Microsoft history of being tone deaf to consumers, the forums are full of the usual misinformed nonsense about MS pushing "the browser that nobody wants". But Microsoft isn't going to "fix" this issue, because no matter what the users want, or say they want, Microsoft has decided that this is how links in email are to be handled, that it doesn't need to be fixed, because, as far as Microsoft is concerned, it isn't broken. Unless Enterprise customers have a problem with this (and Enterprise customers can probably fix this with a Group Policy in Active Directory), hundreds or even thousands of user comments and feature requests will be simply ignored.

Just last week I was blown away by the thought and ingenuity that went into the design of the new Surface Duo phone. After initially being disappointed at the price, I was actually persuaded that Microsoft really had delivered something that works, and had delivered an experience that people may not even have realized they wanted or needed. Panos even made the point of being able to stay "in context" when following a link in a text message because the link opened in the browser or app on the other screen. It's the 2nd screen that allows you to stay "in context", not some in-app mini-browser that still takes you away from the email that you were reading to display the link, it just manages to do it in a completely sub-optimal fashion.

You know the old saying, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me".  Well I'm well and truly ashamed. All my life I've been a passionate supporter of Microsoft. But time and again Microsoft has turned around and dumped on me, and fool that I am, I keep giving them another chance. It used to be because they delivered the best tools available, and then it was because they weren't Apple or Google. I had a Zune. I still use Windows Media Centre on a Windows 7 machine. After I finally had to retire my Windows phone, I configured my Android phone with as many MS tools as I could. I had to give up using Bing maps on my desktop for trip planning, because there's no Bing maps available on Android to share the tip with.  And OneDrive doesn't work quite the same way as it did on WIndows Phone. Then they told me that I could use MSTeams for free from my Android phone - but not on my Windows desktop. Now they screw me over with Outlook on Android, for no obvious benefit to anyone.

I'm probably not ready to buy a chromebook just yet - that's still a step too far. But when friends ask for my advice about tech purchases, I can't really recommend Windows unless they have a specific purpose in mind that requires software that is currently Windows only. And anyone doing something that technical doesn't need my advice in the first place. They'll probably get another year of Office 365 out of me, but the long slow decline from best option to least worst option to thanks, but no thanks feels like it is coming to an inevitable conclusion.

Sorry for that. I just needed to vent.

I use Gmail app. Problem Solved.

I just received a reply from outlook app support. It was intentional, there is no way to open in the default system web browser, and there are no plans to change.

Looks like I'm not using Outlook any longer.

See this post for the fix: Internal browser resolution

Quote from Microsoft - This helps keep our users in the context of their email while tackling quick tasks.

This is the thing that annoys me most - the context of my emails is that they are notification messages. If the information referred could be displayed in an email, it would be. The reason that I get a link is that I have to be authenticated to read the information that the email is notifying me about! I'm already authenticated in MS Edge - when I decide that I need to follow a link in my emails, I need it to be followed in MS Edge, not in some mini-browser.