I’ve been using Microsoft Edge for a little over two years, since the first preview of macOS was released. As with many other solutions, I arrived at this using a combination of fact-based arguments (it works on all platforms I use, it keeps Chromium engine speed and compatibility, its memory and battery usage, and privacy controls seemed to slightly better than Chrome), and an intuition that felt right to me, whether or not they were actually true (that giving more personal data to Microsoft worries me less than giving it to Google, and that the browser large company will be better supported in the long run than smaller, less used browsers such as Brave or Opera).
Ever since I switched, I’ve been happy living on Edge and I definitely don’t miss Chrome. But in the past few months, I’ve been increasingly annoyed by some of the extra features Microsoft has added to the browser, and how Microsoft is pushing Edge towards people using Windows (and Bing towards those using Edge). That annoyance became apparent after Microsoft added a buy-now-pay-later service called Zip to the latest version of Edge. The add-on feels redundant at best and predatory at worst, and has generated backlash from users, Microsoft -affiliated tech media, and IT pros.
I don’t like the Zip integration and don’t plan to use it, but I wouldn’t be so annoyed if it wasn’t part of the pattern that emerged (or at least made more obvious). in the last year or so. The price comparison and coupon features that Microsoft added a year or so ago generate a huge amount of automatic pop-ups by default, and when you disable these pop-ups or disable the features completely, they don’t sync to your other computers along with your bookmarks and other settings..
Windows also continued to use annoying full-screen messages that ask you to switch to Edge if you’re using a different browser after some operating system and browser updates , and ask you to use Bing in Edge if you’ve changed your default search engine (and many, many years later). Bing remains the worst of both worlds search engine, with less accuracy and usefulness than Google, but without any of the privacy benefits of DuckDuckGo). Microsoft has made switching browsers a little more annoying in Windows 11, and the company is disabling workarounds that were used to bypass the deep integration of Edge and Bing on Windows.
I understand that over time, new features need to be added to Edge. This is the plight of all Chromium-based browsers – you need to differentiate yourself from Chrome without affecting core Chromium engine compatibility or Chrome extension support, and layering new features and services on top of the browser is the easiest way to do that. I’m also not totally opposed to Microsoft reminding people of the existence of Edge and asking them to switch the first time they install a new Windows PC; all browsers have a popup about changing the default browser settings, and Edge is much more user-friendly and competitive than it was in the early days of Windows 10, when Microsoft was still trying to use its own rendering engine.
But the shopping and payment add-ons seem like a bridge too far. It’s one thing to offer these features as optional add-ons or as features that are disabled by default, which you can choose when you first install the browser or when you install a major update. Another thing is to offer them automatically, everywhere and to everyone, regardless of whether they have disabled these features on another computer.
And the constant reminders to switch to Edge and use Bing, even if you’ve already decided to use Edge in the first place, signals a fundamental disrespect for user preferences and their ability to make their own decisions. When you switch from Safari on macOS or iOS, Apple doesn’t throw popups at you begging you not to switch, or show you a full-screen message trying to force you back to the Google search engine when you set up a routine. system update. The financial considerations are different – Apple doesn’t have its own search engine that it tries to monetize, so the company doesn’t care what software you use as long as you do it on Apple hardware.
I still find Edge to be a good browser. I’m not ready to collect all my bookmarks and switch browsers again just yet. But because of the heavy-handed tactics that Microsoft uses to market Edge, and the kind of features the company adds, it’s increasingly difficult to recommend. Microsoft needs to rethink the kinds of features it adds to Edge and how it decides to promote and include them, and the company needs to trust that Edge’s market share will increase over time because of the browser’s merits, not because Windows pushed to users.