by AaronFriel on 2/26/20, 5:46 PM
This is just like when Google Maps was blocked on Windows Phone[1] and when they decided to block YouTube as well[2]. Microsoft now finds themselves in the same position their competitors found themselves in the IE6 era. Google is behaving, if anything, worse, and using its massive reach and user base to stifle competition.
This is deeply disappointing, and all the more reason Microsoft never should have adopted Chromium. They will eventually have to maintain a hard fork, the differences will grow such that they eventually have to increase their engineering spend on it to keep pace with just managing the rebases and patches or reimplement features themselves, and despite all the good will they had for the Chromium team they will see none of it returned by the larger Google/Alphabet corporation.
They should have based Edge on Gecko and invested money in taking marketshare away from Chromium so that the W3C/WHATWG can operate as intended with multiple implementations for a single specification. Instead they embraced the Chrome monoculture and were either treated in bad faith or the Chromium team mistakenly believed everything would be fine with a reset in relations. The result will be that Google retains a veto on web technology that competes with them for the next decade or more.
Use Firefox, everyone.
[1] https://mashable.com/2013/01/05/google-maps-windows-phone/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/16/4627342/microsoft-google-...
by ocdtrekkie on 2/26/20, 1:41 PM
It was incredible to me how aggressively Microsoft came out supportive of the Chrome team and how loudly they discussed the wonderful amount of collaboration the two companies had been up to since starting work on the new Edge.
I've seen Googlers responding to Edge developers about how they'll get some mishandling of Edge fixed internally at Google. But really, this is just the same story as before:
The "oops" have begun: https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...
by Santosh83 on 2/26/20, 1:50 PM
If Google were truly behind open web standards then they would have nothing to fear and no need to promote one standards conforming browser (Chrome) over another (Edge, Firefox or whatever). This just shows that the ultimate desire of all these corporate backed browsers is some degree of vendor lock in, which is why they feel the need to advertise their browser when their competitor's is almost 99.9% identical in functionality and a drop-in replacement.
by fergie on 2/26/20, 2:20 PM
PSA: if you are not already using it, and you care about the future of humanity, then give Firefox a(nother) go. Its actually quite good these days.
by kapsteur on 2/26/20, 1:44 PM
by lowdose on 2/26/20, 1:40 PM
Healthy check and balance Microsoft is performing. Strategically this has been a master move, not paying for the engineering costs while profiting from labor fruits. It is admirable for a company to admit the technology of the main competitor is superior and the only way forward is improving their output. Sets a great example for everybody.
by Ciantic on 2/26/20, 1:38 PM
Back when Google Chrome came out I switched from Firefox to Google Chrome because the scrolling felt better and more responsive.
Microsoft Edge with Chromium engine has better scrolling in my opinion: it is relative to size of window. If I have smaller window it scrolls less. I switched to Microsoft Edge.
It's about the product for me, although I have turned all the knobs to prevent trackers etc.
by jmisavage on 2/26/20, 1:36 PM
They're probably just user agent sniffing for non-Chrome browsers. I see this plenty when using Firefox or Safari. That said I wonder if all the State and DoJ investigations about anti-competitive behavior will force Google to stop promoting their own browser on their properties.
by dcow on 2/26/20, 5:46 PM
I’m honestly surprised people still tolerate Google. Just stop using shitty software from a shitty company that treats its users like shit. I did and so can you.
by Yizahi on 2/26/20, 3:51 PM
Microsoft may experience firsthand what can happen when you build your business on competitors platform. I'm exaggerating of course but essentially it may happen. The good news is that MS is probably the only company which can actually maintain its own browser in a case if Google goes completely hostile on them. Then this mythical thing called Chromium may materialize as an independent entity from Google, making different decisions and implementing different core features (which is not true today).
by jmkni on 2/26/20, 2:23 PM
Remember when Google deprecated an API used by uBlock Origin in Chrome, does anybody know if this same API is deprecated in the new Chromium based Edge as well?
If it isn't, I'd actually choose Edge over Chrome on Windows as my daily driver.
by ropiwqefjnpoa on 2/26/20, 1:57 PM
Microsoft has turned Google's own weapon against them, crazy. Once they bundle it with W10, it's really going to take off. It's smart they changed the logo too.
by hndkeielfl on 2/26/20, 3:26 PM
YouTube and Google Maps are much slower for me in Firefox versus Chrome. Many times the page basically freezes for half a second, and then suddenly continues. It looks like they intentionally are doing something to make this happen, I can't think of any other site where I've seen this obvious difference.
by user8391 on 2/26/20, 1:51 PM
The hardest part of leaving Google is admitting: I was wrong about Google, but it's OK, everybody makes mistakes.
by BLanen on 2/26/20, 2:54 PM
I really really hope Microsoft can push for a sort of Chromium-foundation.
Google owning the chromium development is what is going to make any sort of protocol-level privacy impossible, while Microsoft doesn't care much about internet add revenue.
It's really really concerning to have an internet ad company have this much control over the web.
by petilon on 2/26/20, 4:05 PM
I switched to the new Edge because of Google's abusive practices such as logging me into the browser when I log in to Gmail. There is a settings option to prevent this, but it is FAKE. It doesn't change anything.
by HendrikR on 2/26/20, 4:01 PM
A comparable behaviour can be seen for years now on iOS. Chrome for iOS is advertised where possible, even if you would like to open a hyperlink from the show notes of a YouTube movie: You are offered to open this link with Chrome ("download"), Google App ("download"), or even with Safari ("open"). There's no real use for the user having Chrome on iOS as long as it has to use WebKit as a rendering engine, the same engine Safari uses. But there is surely a usage for Google, monetizing the user's browsing profiles.
by dmos62 on 2/26/20, 3:25 PM
Let's remember that you still can't make Google Hangouts calls from Firefox.
by shirshak55 on 2/27/20, 11:50 AM
Microsoft is also not cool to be honest their product skype still don't work on firefox. Both are bad players to me . Slowing down youtube and google product on firefox, not allowing skype on firefox are cheap strategy used by both company.
by bagacrap on 2/26/20, 3:34 PM
I don't see a problem with advertising your product, and clearly laptopmag doesn't see a problem with advertisements either.
by Shorel on 2/26/20, 10:17 PM
Right now Microsoft is the lesser evil.
Reducing Chrome market share is something we all should strive to achieve.
I personally use and recommend Firefox to everyone.
by vxNsr on 2/26/20, 1:47 PM
Couldn’t edge just turn on “ad blocking”?
by caiobegotti on 2/26/20, 3:34 PM
As an user I am pissed of about these actions from Google but I can't really switch otherwise I would fall in the same oopses traps.
Is there a way to use Firefox and have some add-on or something that fixes those oopses? I suppose it's not only a matter of masking up user-agent strings.
by JumpCrisscross on 2/26/20, 2:23 PM
How is the default ad blocking on Edge? I imagine that's the leverage Google fears.
by rk06 on 2/27/20, 4:16 AM
Since Edge is using chromium, Googl would be using user agent to sniff the browser.
As such, wouldn't it be smarter for edge to use impersonate chromium to bypass the checks?
As shady as it sounds, this approach has tremendous precedent
by walrus01 on 2/26/20, 5:46 PM
For anyone who remembers the IE vs Netscape browser wars, it is funny to think the positions of Google and Microsoft are now reversed. Google is using some of MS's own historical tactics against it.
by meddlepal on 2/26/20, 4:28 PM
I've been using Edge on macOS since Beta and I really like it.
by baryphonic on 2/26/20, 3:30 PM
I can't imagine this will play well in court in the seemingly inevitable antitrust case. Microsoft's lawyers will point out that Edge is literally the same
by globular-toast on 2/26/20, 8:06 PM
Is this new? Isn't this what they did to get all their users in the first place? Surely people haven't forgotten?
by talal7860 on 2/26/20, 5:31 PM
As far as I remember, this has always been the case. I don't see anything new in this story.
by 32gbsd on 2/26/20, 6:02 PM
I am confused with this article. google does this with every browser not just edge.
by wkey on 2/26/20, 4:52 PM
Somewhat related but: has anyone heard of/ used the Brave browser?
by adultSwim on 2/28/20, 3:57 PM
Someone call the Justice Department
by shirshak55 on 2/27/20, 11:34 AM
google has always been disappointing except the source code they give to opensource lol. Long live firefox .
by LaineHerron on 2/27/20, 1:09 AM
Do you remember when Google used to have the motto "don't be evil"? Those were the days.
by 1337n008 on 2/26/20, 3:32 PM
FF f'd up when they banned Dissenter extension and with their welcome screen full of google tracking. Not to mention a ton of "metric" requests FF is doing in the background.
As we've learnt, Chrome has a ton of google-specific code built into it(most notably the tracking id on youtube that was exposed few weeks ago) and a ton of background requests.
MS Edge is not that different. Sure it is cleaner Chrome but MS is the big daddy of tracking, just like google. they just call it "telemetry" instead of spying. their edge won't be any different.
Any other web browser out there is essentially derived from chrome. So I put zero trust in any of them. If mozilla would make FF into OS work that others could use to build web browsers off of, like chrome, it would be much better environment because there are no options left. Webkit has been superseded by chrome these days, gecko is slow and outdated(is it even public?) and so on. So the only way to sort of safely use your god damn web browser these days is to filter all the traffic manually(pihole, host file or advanced firewall) and use a ton of adblocking extensions that allow you to spoof referrer header and clean up headers and cookies altogether(google cdn, google captcha, google analytics, goodle dns, google this and google that).... even then google has so much data that just by ip address they have your persona pinpointed to a byte.
If you look at how much external resources the websites pull in these days, most if it has some sort of tracking in it, even if you do not see it directly(mostly cdn stuff).
tl;dr they are all bad. if it is free, you are the product. it's as simple as that. and they will make opting out so impossible that you just give up.
by excalibur on 2/26/20, 1:57 PM
There are people using Microsoft Edge with Google Docs? What sort of logic puts one in this position?