Microsoft Edge doesn’t want its users to switch to ‘so 2008’ Google Chrome – Times of India

In the past few months, Microsoft has made scores of changes that reflect that it wants Windows users to stick to its Edge web browser. As per a report by Neowin, the tech giant has now stepped up its campaign as the Edge browser now displays new prompts when users visit Chrome browser download page. These prompts are not like any other pop-ups that are usually seen on various websites. The new prompts are rendered natively by Edge and are quite different from the ones that users see when they open Google Search or Gmail on the native browser.
Here are the messages that the new prompts read: “Microsoft Edge runs on the same technology as Chrome, with the added trust of Microsoft.”, “That browser is so 2008! Do you know what’s new? Microsoft Edge.” and others.
Recently, Microsoft also started to block third-party apps like EdgeDeflector. Whenever users search anything through the search box in the Start menu, Microsoft takes them to Edge browser and Bing search engine. Apps like EdgeDeflector are used to avoid these curbs and see the search results in their preferred browser. As per the tech giant, the move was necessary to support its end-to-end encryption features on the OS. “Windows also offers certain end-to-end customer experiences in both Windows 10 and Windows 11, the search experience from the taskbar is one such example of an end-to-end experience that is not designed to be redirected” said a Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to The Verge.
With the launch of Windows 11, Microsoft also changed the way users assign default apps. On the new operating system, users have to set default apps according to the type of file or link type instead of a single switch. This means that for changing the default browser, users have to change the default file type for FTP, HTTPS, HTTP, HTML, HTM, PDF, SHTML, SVG, WEBP, XHT and XHTML.