Microsoft Edge, the Chromium-based browser that retired the classic Internet Explorer, has been one of the great joys for Microsoft, which saw more and more people adopt its program instead of the all-powerful Google Chrome. A rich cake to which it recently put the icing on the cake, when it decided to integrate the AI of the popular ChatGPT into both its browser and its search engine: Bing.
A few days ago, we told you that the new AI-powered Bing can be used by downloading one of the three versions of Edge available in the Microsoft Edge Insider program: Beta, Dev or Canary. Now, it seems that Microsoft is giving a “little” push to the use of Edge Canary, encouraging the user to download this browser and not use its competitor: Chrome.
According to Neowin, users who try to install Google Chrome while using Microsoft Edge Canary will get two warnings: the first, the smaller of the two, will appear on the screen once the website loads, while the other, a highly visible megabanner, appears once you start downloading the browser.
With the text “Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft”, both the small ad and the megabanner, which appears below the address bar and is part of the google.com/chrome website (inserted by the browser, of course), try by all means to prevent the user from switching browsers and continuing to use Edge.
Google itself already uses a similar strategy, but its method is much less “violent” for the user. If a person opens the Google search engine in a browser other than Google’s (such as Edge or Mozilla Firefox), a small banner will appear in the upper right corner with the text “Google recommends using Chrome”.
Moreover, while Google does this on a website it owns, Microsoft inserts these two ads via its browser on the Chrome website. We do not know to what extent this practice may or may not be legal, but it is far from a morally acceptable action.
