Can I launch URLs from command line in Windows?

Can I launch URLs directly from the command line in Windows?

Solution 1:

Yes, with the start command. Example:

start http://www.google.com

That will use the user's default browser.
As stated by Joey, you should use a different format for URLs with special chars:

start "" "http://www.google.com"

Solution 2:

you can use

start http://www.google.com

Interestingly only following combination are working for above url :

start www.google.com
start http://google.com
start http://blog.google.com

But following is not working :

start google.com
start asp.net
start blog.google.com

I think it is because in the later example google.com and asp.net are treated as files and it tries to find google.com file and gives error on not finding it.

I think it is hardcoded for www. Any better guesses ?

Solution 3:

What's "launch" in this context? You can start http://www.foo.bar/ or the like, your default browser will come up and visit that URL -- is that what you mean?