Microsoft's Malware-Like Aggressive Push To Promote Its Edge Browser Is Angering People

Tech giant Microsoft has been around longer than most others on the internet. But that doesn't mean that things are doing well on its side.

The company was once at the center of the web when it introduced Internet Explorer as the way for users to go online for the first time. Things were looking good for Microsoft, even after the first-ever browser war.

But that was until Google and others were born and stepped in to the competition.

Sooner than later, Internet Explorer started to be considered a relic. Microsoft again tried to regain its throne by betting its luck with the introduction of the Edge web browser. Later, knowing that it couldn't alone compete with Google Chrome, it started revamping Edge to use Chromium, the same software that powers Chrome and many other web browsers.

After officially rolling out the browser officially, Microsoft still didn't see that as enough.

The company started to automatically download the web browser to Windows 10 users’ computers.

Still not yet finished, Microsoft Edge started to 'sneakily' import user data from Chrome and Firefox without users' permission.

And again because all the above still weren't enough to boost the popularity of this Edge browser, Microsoft started going berserk by making Edge the browser of choice for Windows 10 users, automatically.

Previously, Microsoft Edge browser has been grabbing a healthy market share.

Back in April 2020 for example, Edge was second only to Chrome after surpassing Firefox. With similarities to Chrome due to using Chromium, Edge has been tweaked to have quirks and features its competitors kind of lack.

But to ensure that Edge gains as much share as possible, Microsoft is becoming overly aggressive.

Via an automatic update to Windows 10, users started seeing their entire computer screen taken over by Edge, to then have the web browser magically appear pinned on the desktop and taskbar.

Windows 10 can even force Edge to launch when users open a website, when competitors' browsers were still made the default browser on the operating system.

In other words, Microsoft has made Edge to become insanely intrusive in force-feeding users, in a way that the approach is malware-like and similar to pop-ads.

All that to ensure its Edge browser can grab all the share it can from Google Chrome.

“Microsoft has released a new Chromium-based version of Microsoft Edge,” the company said.

“This new version provides best in class compatibility with extensions and websites. Additionally, this new version provides great support for the latest rendering capabilities, modern web applications and powerful developer tools across all supported OS platforms."

In its defense, Microsoft said that Edge is simply replacing the old version of its browser that came with Windows 10.

Indeed, the Chromium-powered Edge comes with a lot of features, functionalities and security protections well beyond its previous iteration. But its aggressive approach is making users to have no option to say "no" to Edge if they don't want Edge, without force-closing the browser when it pops up, reaffirming the default browser choice, and to delete the unwanted junk Microsoft has automatically put.

According to reports, this issue does appear to be widespread.

As a result, Microsoft is simply angering users and started to again put off potential new Edge users. Many of those people were probably already against the aggressive Windows updates the company has made in the past and present.

But still, some avid Microsoft fans and some other people may not see this strategy as overly aggressive.

Either way, Microsoft relentless strategies to promote Edge by pulling off this increasingly intrusive marketing, is showing how the company is having a hard time in making people trust its product.