Microsoft is pushing Edge with soiled tips, once more

Microsoft Edge, the default net browser that comes pre-installed on roughly 1.4 billion Home windows PCs, is fairly darn good. Over the previous couple of years Microsoft has invested a whole lot of money and time in increasing its options to compete with Chrome. So it’s a disgrace that I’ve to inform you, as soon as once more, that Microsoft is abusing its place because the writer of Home windows to attempt to pressure its customers onto its first-party browser.

Earlier this week, some Home windows customers discovered that each time they opened Chrome, the Home windows default app settings window would open too. A few of them reported that the window would open each time they clicked a hyperlink within the browser, as long as Chrome was set to the default. The difficulty appeared to be particularly widespread for Home windows Enterprise customers. Apparently it was an issue with the KB5025221 Home windows replace issued in April, which broke Chrome’s one-click choice to vary the default browser, a characteristic Google launched final yr. Gizmodo stories that merely altering the title of the Chrome executable was sufficient to keep away from the difficulty, indicating that Microsoft’s replace particularly focused Chrome’s default button habits.

However that’s not the tip of the story. Simply this morning Microsoft introduced {that a} new replace to the desktop variations of Outlook and Groups will pressure hyperlinks to open within the Edge browser, ignoring the person’s default settings in the event that they’re assigned to a different browser. Not solely is it a flagrant abuse of Microsoft’s place because the writer of Home windows and its related instruments, it’s blatantly ignoring Home windows’ customers potential to set customized app associations with information and hyperlinks.

Michael Crider/Foundry

Pushing Edge (and previously Web Explorer) on customers with these passive-aggressive techniques is nothing new for Microsoft. In actual fact it tried exactly the identical tactic with the default Mail program 5 years in the past. The Settings menu for apps nonetheless begs you to attempt Edge the primary time you alter the default browser, and making net searches from the Begin menu will ignore your default browser setting if it isn’t Edge. Edge nonetheless periodically nags you to vary your default if you open it, which is especially cheeky since apparently Microsoft has deliberately hamstrung Chrome’s potential to do precisely the identical factor.

However there’s a sure irony in these newest makes an attempt to push Edge on customers, only a few weeks after a Microsoft consultant mentioned, “We now have taken and can proceed to take steps to mitigate unrequested modifications to a person’s selections.” It doesn’t assist that final week Edge was caught sending person site visitors information to Bing — an alleged bug that Microsoft patched rapidly, however not rapidly sufficient to provide a black eye to the corporate’s boasts of safety and privateness on the browser’s promotional page.

Microsoft, within the clever if uncouth phrases of my Texan grandpa, “Don’t piss on my boots and inform me it’s raining.” Eight years after its introduction, and regardless of being put in on over a billion machines, Edge has simply 10.95 % of the desktop browser market — even lower than Apple’s Safari as of this month. It’s clear that no quantity of manipulative tips are going to pressure Home windows customers off of their most popular browser, so it could be clever to cease making an attempt.

To paraphrase one other nice Texan thinker, “You’re not making Edge higher, you’re simply making Home windows worse.”