Microsoft wants to stop the users from using Chrome

In recent days, a lot of people have reported about Microsoft’s attempts to keep the users on Microsoft Edge. The banner which appears in Microsoft Bing – the default search engine in Edge – tries to convince the users to stay on the default Microsoft browser.

Why you should stop using Chrome?

Microsoft Edge is an integrated web browser that is always present in Windows 10 and Windows 11¹. It appeared in 2015, together with the Windows 10 release. In 2020, that browser was converted into Chromium core – an open-source code base that is identical to the one used in Google Chrome. Hence, Edge and Chrome can be called brothers. So why does this fratricidal war happen?

Microsoft does its best in creating the ecosystem of its applications. After converting Edge on Chromium core, they did another step – added the additional networking protection feature powered with Microsoft Defender. Of course, it is pretty easy to do this when both browser and security tools are embedded deeply into the system. Microsoft tries to propagate using their browser, and it seems that they decided to launch a massive anti-Chrome campaign.

However, this “war” is not something new. The Albuquerque-based tech giant was blocking the downloading links for other browsers in Bing for a long time. While in Google you will see the main page and “Download – Google Chrome” link, in Bing you will see just a main page. And now, you will also see a banner that asks you to keep using Edge.

The default browsers in Windows were always an object of jokes and laughs. Internet Explorer, whose support ended on March 30, 2021, was known as a slow-as-snail browser placeholder, which is needed only to download a “normal” browser. Although early and current Edge versions are not so sluggish, they got their portion of ill fame, too.

Is Edge better than Chrome?

Microsoft Edge is quite OK to be a default browser. Its features attract certain categories of users, especially ones who use the whole Microsoft ecosystem. But the problem is pretty obvious – there are not too many people who use this ecosystem. It is an unsuccessful attempt to create a deeply-circled chain of devices, like it was done by Apple. But being the second-largest public company in the world² does not mean just a bit less success. Edge is not as functional as Chrome when you compare them “in the real world”.

People on Reddit are already mocking the further steps of Microsoft to keep their users on Edge. And detecting all other browsers as PUP by the Defender is not the worst step they are talking about. Sure, all of these are just jokes, but Microsoft took a really unprecedented step. Even all-proprietary Apple never did something like that.

1. Article about Microsoft Edge on Wikipedia.
2. Microsoft’s market capitalization is $2,477 billion, which gives this company second place in the world.