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Google Chrome's fear of Microsoft Edge is revealing its bad side
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jmisavage 7y agoThey'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.
- scumbert 7y agoThe sad thing is when Google websites refuse to work on Edge Chromium. Switch your user agent to match Chrome's, you're all set.
- Santosh83 7y agoOut of curiosity, which sites are these? Do they also similarly break with Firefox or other non-Chrome browsers or only MS Edge?
- cpeterso 7y agoGoogle Stadia was one example: https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/why-stadia-access-blocked-on-microsoft-edge-3966491 https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/why-stadia-access-blocke...
- scumbert 7y agoNon-Chromium derivatives are blocked as well, yes, but neo-Edge is a Chromium derivative.
- smnrchrds 7y agoSame with Firefox.
- scumbert 7y agoThey shouldn't be blocking Firefox either, but let's be clear-- Chromium Edge makes even less sense given it's a "cousin" of Google Chrome.
- zzzcpan 7y agoI wonder why Microsoft isn't doing that, they could just use Chrome user agent for all Google websites.
- deelowe 7y agoWhich websites?
- kc0bfv 7y agoI agree. Perhaps the old user agent sniffing, from that recent age when Edge was NOT Chromium, is still mostly in place. This seems like the more likely reason to me.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoThese are new changes. Edge based on Chromium has been available for over a month publicly and in beta much longer. And these examples have just happened, and been introduced in the past week. Google is actively writing checks for the new Edge and implementing new scare tactics claiming their nearly identical browser that gives them data on you is more secure.
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- enitihas 7y agoTo be fair, even Microsoft does UA sniffing for their own products. I remember there being a post on HN about onedrive website not working in Firefox, but working with a different user agent.
- TsomArp 7y agoI don't get why promoting your product would be an anti-competitive behavior. Anti-competitive behavior would be not letting Edge users use google or gmail.
- enitihas 7y agoYup, search for "Google Chrome" on bing and a loud Edge promotion awaits you.
- oblio 7y agoIt's anti competitive for the same reason auditing companies are not allowed to have consulting arms or if they do, they should not both work for the same customer at the same time. Channel 1 (auditing) vs channel 2 (consulting). At least in theory. There's a conflict of interest at the heart of the issue. Google offers a service which is supposed to be neutral (search) and then on top of that it also sells another (ads) which is at odds with search. Good search results should bring the best result but ads are a way to bypass that with cash. Microsoft had the same problem with Windows (level playing field) + Microsoft made apps on top of Windows (which didn't want a level playing field).
- lallysingh 7y agoThat's a conflict of interest, not anti-competitive.
- sebazzz 7y agoThe user agent is equal to Chrome with "Edg" (not a typo) appended: > mozilla/5.0 (windows nt 10.0; win64; x64) applewebkit/537.36 (khtml, like gecko) chrome/76.0.3800.0 safari/537.36 edg/76.0.167.1 Certainly not an accident, unless they tried to save one byte by not checking on the full "Edge" token.
- lallysingh 7y agoVery well could be an internal project/component name in MS.
- cpeterso 7y agoMicrosoft's purposely changed Chromium Edge's User-Agent string to say "Edg" [sic] instead of "Edge". They wanted to give sites a way to identify Chromium Edge without accidentally treating it was the old Trident Edge (whose User-Agent string says "Edge"). No one would have written User-Agent string sniffing code that searches for "Edg" instead of "Edge" before Chromium Edge was released. Thus, Google sites are explicitly targeting Chromium Edge because the only way to differentiate Chrome from Chromium Edge is for the server is to search the User-Agent string for "Edg". If they just searched for "Chromium", then Chromium Edge would be successfully match.
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- jmcphers 7y agoThey serve this UA on purpose to some sites to prevent being detected as the "old" Edge (which was not Chromium-based).
- Ciantic 7y agoBack 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.
- slantyyz 7y agoEdge's ability to convert any site to a PWA is pretty awesome too. I haven't spent much time with the new Collections feature, but it appears to be useful.
- sf_rob 7y agoI agree. While I'm primarily a Firefox user, Edge Beta is the best experience on my Windows machine. I'm surprised that it seems faster than Chrome when they're utilizing the same rendering engine (probably the built-in tracker blocking?).
- daxfohl 7y agoI can't get used to edge's lack of information on slow loading sites. No spinner, the url bar goes blank when you click on it, acts like it didn't even send the request yet.
- lowdose 7y agoHealthy 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.
- Ericson2314 7y agoUm, More like Google embraced extended exstinguished the original gangster! Microsoft would have been much better off being Mozilla's patron than capitulating to Google.
- robbyt 7y agoI don't think engineering costs are an issue for msft. Empirically, the source of msft's quality issues seem to be managerial / organizational.
- 300bps 7y agoI called for Microsoft to fork Chromium in their next browser over 5.5 years ago. I'm not surprised Google is worried. My HN comment from over 5.5 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7909383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7909383
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoIt 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-sabotaged-firefox-for-years/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...
- thaumasiotes 7y agoPretty interesting article. > "Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms. Gmail & [Google] Docs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as 'incompatible'," he said. > "All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say 'hey what gives?' And every time, they'd say, 'oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks.' > "Over and over. Oops. Another accident. We'll fix it soon. We want the same things. We're on the same team. There were dozens of oopses. Hundreds maybe?" > "I'm all for 'don't attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence' but I don't believe Google is that incompetent. I think they were running out the clock. We lost users during every oops. And we spent effort and frustration every clock tick on that instead of improving our product. We got outfoxed for a while and by the time we started calling it what it was, a lot of damage had been done," Nightingale said. You can do a lot more damage as a trusted friend than you can as a known enemy.
- amelius 7y ago> Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms Why don't webdevs fight back and put "best viewed on Firefox" pop-ups on their pages (whenever the user is using Chrome).
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoMicrosoft can and does do this now in retaliation, they own enough web properties that this makes a difference. Firefox doesn’t have a huge web presence though, nothing anywhere on par with Google advertising their browser in their search engine and email client. Unfortunately, from my experience many third party web developers only test in Chrome, and hence actually encourage Chrome use even when there’s no incompatibility with Firefox or Edge.
- kapsteur 7y agoMicrosoft do the same tricks to push users to switch back from Firefox/Chrome to Edge : https://twitter.com/WindowsLatest/status/1226184938552098817 https://twitter.com/WindowsLatest/status/1226184938552098817
- enitihas 7y agoYup, Microsoft won't be left behind in shady practises by these comparatively young web companies. /s
- user8391 7y agoWe kind of expect this from Microsoft. But we're still in denial about Google
- dehrmann 7y agoThey reinstated "don't be evil," so we're all good.
- Dylan16807 7y agoAlso the effects are worse when the actor doing those ads has more than 30%, 50%, 70% market share.
- dehrmann 7y agoI'm surprised MS doesn't get into more trouble for this, especially after US v Microsoft. They only defense for MS is Edge isn't the dominant browser. Google's only defenses are freedom of speech, and no one's forcing you to go to Google properties. Some of this is tricky, though. If you're Google in 2009, it's not unreasonable to tell IE6 users that their browser is a drag on the internet, and not in a way to drive users to Chrome--IE6 was just shit. Or if you're MS, Windows needs to ship with a browser, but what do you ship? Is there a setup option to switch to Chrome? How do you qualify to get on that list? What types of applications should this apply to? Did Windows Explorer unfairly kill Norton Commander? What about third-party solitaire developers?
- vxNsr 7y agoCouldn’t edge just turn on “ad blocking”?
- Santosh83 7y agoIf 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.
- ptah 7y agoi think they take their lesson from industry experience of microsoft embrace and extend strategy to take open standards and lock users into their proprietary extensions. as an example do you not remember IE? EDIT: because of microsoft decades long behaviour, they have good reason to be wary
- mc32 7y agoYes... but their whole spiel was that they were the anti-MS. But now they are becoming a more insidious version of the MS they railed against.
- oblio 7y agoI don't get why you're being downvoted. They're just out-microsofting Microsoft :-)
- ptah 7y agoare they taking open standards and putting extensions on them that are proprietary so users can only access certain services with chrome? if not, then they are not doing any microsofting of any kind
- SXX 7y agoGoogle don't need to keep their in-home standards proprietary. For them it's enough to pump as much different features into Chrome as possible. No one except them can implement those standards simply because no one have development team of comparable size. Then they just going to state something like: our service dont support Firefox because Chrome-only feature X is not fully implemented.
- user8391 7y agoThe hardest part of leaving Google is admitting: I was wrong about Google, but it's OK, everybody makes mistakes.
- excalibur 7y agoThere are people using Microsoft Edge with Google Docs? What sort of logic puts one in this position?
- bovermyer 7y agoYou ARE aware that a world of users outside of tech exists, right?
- slantyyz 7y agoI'm a user in tech who uses Edge with Google Docs. I don't use the offline feature, so to me, the user experience is no different than it was with Chrome.
- bergie 7y agoI'm often using Google Docs with Edge for Android (in DeX), and while everything works, every tab gets a "your browser is not supported" nag dialog
- ErneX 7y agoOf course, why not?
- jug 7y agoHuh? Edge integrates better with Windows in various ways. So it makes sense to use Edge on Windows. Google Docs is one of many online office suites like Office 365. Google Docs came before Office 365 Web so people may already be used to that one. I fail to see the mental gymnastics necessary to have this all make sense.
- ropiwqefjnpoa 7y agoMicrosoft 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.
- fergie 7y agoPSA: 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.
- chapium 7y agoIts still not great though :( (relatively speaking)
- airstrike 7y agoI had been a hardcore Chrome user since the comic book days and switched back to Firefox last year. Imported my passwords and bookmarks and the transition couldn't have been smoother. I still have Chrome installed but haven't opened it more than a handful of times since. What about your experience hasn't been great?
- WalterSobchak 7y agoWhy do you choose to use the built-in web browser password manager?
- zamalek 7y agoI'm still using 1Password, but the built in one is starting to look pretty good. They even have an Android app for your passwords now. It's not just "browser passwords" like practically everyone else.
- firefoxbitching 7y agoReally convenient. I use KeepPassXC, but Firefox PW is streamlined very well.
- Nannooskeeska 7y agoI can't speak to the experiences of chapium, but my issue with Firefox is that I always experience a slowdown of some sort after it's been open and in use for a few hours. I have to go into about:profiles and "restart normally" to make it go away for another few hours. I never had this problem with Chrome. I'm on my third or fourth attempt to switch to Firefox in the last year and it's still happening. I'm tempted to switch back to Chrome, but I really, really don't want to. It's not my computer either - my work PC, at least, is a powerhouse. Also, I find Chrome's dev tools to be marginally better - but I'm not sure if that's just my familiarity with them over Firefox's. Quick edit: there are some other problems I have with Firefox, but they're all relatively minor and don't bother me nearly as much as the random slowdowns and short freezes.
- JumpCrisscross 7y agoHow is the default ad blocking on Edge? I imagine that's the leverage Google fears.
- ocdtrekkie 7y agoEdge has tracking protection like Firefox and Safari do. Chrome is the only major browser without it on by default.
- lern_too_spel 7y agoTracking prevention as it is implemented in Safari helps Google. It does not block first party cookies. If Google implemented that, it would face antitrust investigations. Firefox and Edge have tracking prevention that harms Google. Edge implements the same default ad blocking as Chrome, which helps Google.
- jmkni 7y agoRemember 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.
- wayneftw 7y agoThis is an ongoing change in the extension manifest v3. You can keep track of it here - https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/migrating_to_manifest_v3#timeline https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/migrating_to_manifes... This is not the default yet, even in Chrome. I hope Edge does not adopt this feature or, if they do, simply continue supporting the extension manifest v2.
- jmnicolas 7y agoThe author said that the best platform to run ublock origin is Firefox, why not use it ? I only use Chrome for Goggle related stuff anyway, all my browsing goes through Firefox.
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- BLanen 7y agoI 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.
- dmos62 7y agoLet's remember that you still can't make Google Hangouts calls from Firefox.
- hndkeielfl 7y agoYouTube 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.
- baryphonic 7y agoI 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
- 1337n008 7y agoFF 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.
- 32gbsd 7y agobut they can't be ALL bad.
- bagacrap 7y agoI don't see a problem with advertising your product, and clearly laptopmag doesn't see a problem with advertisements either.
- caiobegotti 7y agoAs 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.
- Yizahi 7y agoMicrosoft 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).
- freeone3000 7y agoThey did maintain their own browser. It was called Edge.
- Yizahi 7y agoThat was my point - they have real experience creating and maintaining browsers, unlike most other corporations.
- dehrmann 7y agoChrome was originally based on Webkit, and that's a fork of KHTML, so Google at least knows all about building on a competitor's platform.
- Yizahi 7y agoYes, but now Google took over and did so very thoroughly. Chrome=Google now.
- HendrikR 7y agoA 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.
- petilon 7y agoI 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.
- meddlepal 7y agoI've been using Edge on macOS since Beta and I really like it.
- wkey 7y agoSomewhat related but: has anyone heard of/ used the Brave browser?
- jaywalk 7y agoI've been using it for a while now. I like it, but they're starting to get a little too pushy with their Brave Rewards program for my liking. But for now, it's great.
- ldiracdelta 7y agoBatting aside "Brave Rewards" is a minuscule amount of work compared to the cognitive work that Brave reduces by blocking ads. I've been using Brave for ~6 months and I've only had to bat "Brave Rewards" aside ~4 times.
- talal7860 7y agoAs far as I remember, this has always been the case. I don't see anything new in this story.
- AaronFriel 7y agoThis 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/ https://mashable.com/2013/01/05/google-maps-windows-phone/ [2] https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/16/4627342/microsoft-google-battle-over-youtube-windows-phone https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/16/4627342/microsoft-google-...
- KorematsuFred 7y ago> Microsoft now finds themselves in the same position their competitors found themselves in the IE6 era. Could you please give some examples ? Did windows ever blocked a competitors product ?
- msla 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AARD_code > The AARD code was a segment of code in a beta release of Microsoft Windows 3.1 that would determine whether Windows was running on MS-DOS or PC DOS, rather than a competing workalike such as DR-DOS, and would result in a cryptic error message in the latter case. This XOR-encrypted, self-modifying, and deliberately obfuscated machine code used a variety of undocumented DOS structures and functions to perform its work, and appeared in the installer, WIN.COM, and several other executables in the OS.[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_incompatibility/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_i... > Microsoft had several methods of detecting and sabotaging the use of DR-DOS with Windows, one incorporated into "Bambi", the code name that Microsoft used for its disk cache utility (SMARTDRV) that detected DR-DOS and refused to load it for Windows 3.1. The AARD code trickery is well-known, but Caldera is now pursuing four other deliberate incompatibilities. One of them was a version check in XMS in the Windows 3.1 setup program which produced the message: "The XMS driver you have installed is not compatible with Windows. You must remove it before setup can successfully install Windows."
- dcow 7y agoI’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.
- terminaljunkid 7y agoYou are one of those privacy warrior tinfoil hat idiots aren't you?
- dcow 7y agoNope. Mostly I just got bored of the Google flavor. Plus it’s been getting progressively worse over time. Variety is the spice of life, they say.
- walrus01 7y agoFor 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.
- 32gbsd 7y agoI am confused with this article. google does this with every browser not just edge.
- globular-toast 7y agoIs this new? Isn't this what they did to get all their users in the first place? Surely people haven't forgotten?
- Shorel 7y agoRight 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.
- LaineHerron 7y agoDo you remember when Google used to have the motto "don't be evil"? Those were the days.
- rk06 7y agoSince 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
- shirshak55 7y agogoogle has always been disappointing except the source code they give to opensource lol. Long live firefox .
- shirshak55 7y agoMicrosoft 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.
- adultSwim 7y agoSomeone call the Justice Department