[German]Don't use Microsoft Edge – and boycott people who use this browser. This is the message of developer Rafael Riviera, which just came to my attention on Twitter. Therefore, a small detour to this topic area.
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The Edge browser, which Microsoft deploys to the people on all occasions and with Windows, is nothing more than malware that harvests users' personal data and otherwise keeps users and administrators busy. Here in the blog you can find numerous articles that trace the "accidents of Microsoft developers" in the matter of Edge. Here are a few "tastes":
- In the blog post Problems with Edge 114.0.1823.41, update to .43 available a few days ago, for example, I reported about crashes. An administrator also complained about "useless stuff" that was included in Edge in his corporate environment and could not be disabled via GPO.
- In the blog post Outlook and Teams to open links soon in Edge by default, I outlined Microsoft's plans to open web links in the Outlook for Windows app in g and in Microsoft Teams in the Edge browser by default in the future – regardless of which browser was specified as the default.
- In April 2023, in the blog post Microsoft Edge feature "Follow creators" sends nerly all visited website URLs to Bing API, I pointed out that the Microsoft Edge browser transmits the URLs of all web pages visited by the user to the API of the Microsoft search engine Bing. The "Follow" function, which was rolled out more broadly for users at the time, is probably responsible.
- In the German blog post WTF von Ryan Ries: Edge verwendet eigene TLS-Zertifikatsprüfungen I mentioned a post by Microsoft employee Ryan Ries who stumbled upon the fact that the Edge developers have decoupled the verification of TLS certificates from the host starting with Edge version 110.
- And there are the blog posts Microsoft's annoying Windows ads: Edge suggests Bing, PC training notifications, and Windows 11: Microsoft tries to stop users from downloading Chrome, shining lights on Microsoft's behavior, to annoy users.
- The German blog post Rauscht der Edge mit seiner VPN-Funktion in eine DSGVO-Problematik? I had hinted that users or Microsoft will soon have a privacy problem because the browser sets up a VPN network after browser updates.
You could continue the list – the Edge sucks and also transfers data to Microsoft – in the German blog post Chrome 110 wird ausgerollt, synchronisiert Edge mal wieder automatisch? I addressed reports from German users, that the disabled synchronization is suddenly activated by Edge update.
I just came across the above tweet from developer Rafael Rivera, who among other things is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) and developed EarTrumpet for Windows. I need no more to say …
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Microsoft is abusing its monopoly, pure and simple. The EU needs to investigate it.
Monopoly? Oh, brother.
What a ridiculous listing.
No one is forced to use Edge.
Administrators love the Edge browser.
Yess Fritz, but your theory has some flaws. In Windows 10/11 Edge is default browser – and Microsoft goes ballistic to trick users into forcing to use Edge. Why?
BTW: Some admins told me, they are still able to uninstall Edge on Win LTSC – why they evaluate this?
PS: And a lot of admins in closed German FB groups told me, they hate Edge and the MS way to force them to check their GPOs each time an update arrives. Fear, I'm living on another galaxy …
but hey, for me as a tech blogger MS & Edge are gems – each day I have a new opportunity for a rant ;-)
Got some bad news for you, son. ALL browsers track you and have some form of data feed from your machine back to them. Edge isn't unique. So if you're going to badmouth Edge, then please do the same for Chrome (even worse that Edge) and Firefox.
I guess, I have good news for your dad … if you use Ungoogled, most of your data tracking is gone ;-) BTW: And if you try to run your browser offline, no one in the nasty internet is able to track you. BTW: Naively I thought, dass Tor also prevents sites from tracking me …
I think most users see Edge as not being much different than Chrome in terms of privacy anymore. Can't trust Microsoft any differently than Google. Never thought I would be more annoyed by Microsoft than Google but I am. I don't see any browser analytics that show Edge gaining a whole lot of Users. That in itself should be enough for Microsoft to change direction with Edge. It's obvious Chrome has a good formula so why hasn't some of these other browsers tried to copy some of that?