Google gives up trying to scare people off using Microsoft Edge
Chrome Web Store warning against installing extensions has been dropped
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Microsoft Edgeusers will no longer be warned about security issues when installing extensions from the Chrome Web Store.
Previously, upon looking to install an extension,Googlehad its store give the following warning to users of Chromium-powered Edge: “Google recommends switching to Chrome to use extensions securely.”
However, asTechdowsspotted, that warning has been removed, and now you simply get a message informing you that it’s possible to add extensions from the Chrome Web Store toMicrosoftEdge.
While the warning could be easily ignored before, and that’s doubtless exactly what the more tech-savvy browsers of the web did, less knowledgeable types might have found the message worrying, and potentially off-putting.
So, why has Google had a change of heart here? That’s not clear. In fact, it isn’t clear why the warning was issued in the first place, because there aren’t any obvious issues around security and installing Chrome extensions in Edge. And Google certainly didn’t explain what it felt any potential problems were – the warning was just delivered with no further explanation.
Notably, this warning wasn’t present on other Chromium-powered browsers, such as Opera.
As we’ve observed in the past, it simply felt like a scare tactic to keep people from potentially switching to Edge, and reinforced the notion that the new version of Microsoft’s browser feels like a threat to Google.
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Browser wars
This isn’t the first time Google has taken such pot-shots at Edge, either. When Microsoft’s browser was still in development, there were various glitches, warnings, and problems with Google’s services such as theonline word processor Google Docs, and the messaging service Google Meet (and more besides).
Although this isn’t a one-way street: Microsoft is hardly guilt-free when it comes to attempting to push its own services against rival tech giants in the past – remember whenWindows 10experimented with awarning against switching awayfrom Edge to Chrome or Firefox?
In short, none of this sort of jockeying for market share is anything new, and it’s hardly surprising that there’s been no explanation from Google as to the reason why the warning has suddenly disappeared (or indeed why it was there in the first place).
Google Chrome is still by far the most dominant browser, but nobody got anywhere resting on their laurels, and it would seem that the generally positive reception to the revamped Microsoft Edge has Google on, er, edge.
ViaWindows Central
Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).
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