Google Chrome Blocked on Some Windows PCs—Blame Microsoft

Microsoft is reportedly pulling out a neat trick to block Google Chrome on Windows 11 PCs. Several users have reported not being able to use Chrome on Windows because Microsoft’s Family Safety feature—which is aimed at parents and schools as part of parental controls—blocked Google’s browser. The first case of Microsoft blocking Google Chrome through its parental controls was reported earlier this month, and yet, no fix in sight.

Citing user complaints and discussions on the Windows 11 forum, The Verge has said a bug in the Family Safety feature could be stopping Google Chrome from starting and running on Windows 11. According to Ellen T, Chrome support manager, Google’s team “has investigated these reports and determined the cause of this behaviour. For some users, Chrome is unable to run when Microsoft Family Safety is enabled.”

Since this bug has remained active for about a month, people have resorted to workarounds to get Chrome up and running on their PCs again. While some have tried renaming Chrome.exe to Chrome1.exe, a few users dived into the Family Safety settings to find out that Chrome has been included in the list of “inappropriate” websites. Turning off the “filter inappropriate websites” setting has worked, but at the cost of exposing children to websites they are not meant to visit.

What is surprising is that the same Family Safety bug has not affected other browsers, such as Opera and Firefox. Microsoft’s Edge—a Chromium-based browser—also remains unaffected. Microsoft has not acknowledged why the bug has impacted only Google Chrome. It has not even so much as acknowledged the issue. “We’ve not heard anything from Microsoft about a fix being rolled out,” said a Chromium engineer in a thread that tracks the bug. Although the engineer said Microsoft has provided “guidance” on how to resume using Chrome again, that is simply a way to circumvent the Family Safety restriction.

The latest incident may sound like an unintentional attempt to block Google Chrome, but Microsoft has a history of urging users to use Edge over Chrome. It has previously shown prompts on Windows 11 machines, sent out fake AI answers through Copilot, and even injected a poll on Google Chrome’s download page within the Edge browser.

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