1. Click on the menu bar, which is 3 horizontal bars one beneath the other at the top right of the Chrome window.
2. Select Settings.
3. Click on the Make Google the default browser.
4. On a Windows system, you may see a window asking "How do you want to open this type of link (http)?" which shows the other browsers on the system that can be used to access websites. Click on Google Chrome

   

When you do that, the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command is updated as shown below when the query was run before and after the default browser was changed from Internet Explorer to Google Chrome on a Windows Server 2012 Essentials system.

C:\>reg query HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command /ve

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command
    (Default)    REG_SZ    "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" %1


C:\>reg query HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command /ve

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command
    (Default)    REG_SZ    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" -- "%1"

If Firefox is the default browser, the value will be similar to the following, depending on where you installed Firefox:

"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe" -osint -url "%1"

References:

1. Determining the default browser from the command line
   Date: July 18, 2014
   MoonPoint Support

[/network/web/browser/chrome] permanent link