Microsoft Windows has been a huge success on the PC market, and with Windows 10, Microsoft also has high hopes in the internet market.
The company has had power when controlling people's ability to browse. It was back in the days when Microsoft shipped the Windows 95 Plus! pack with the famous Internet Explorer.
This started the first browser war in the late 1990s, that pitted the Microsoft's browser against Netscape's Navigator.
It happened because Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with every copy of Windows, which had an over 90% share of the desktop operating system market, and turned on the browser as default on every Windows installation.
This allowed the company to reach much more audience than Netscape.
And when Netscape the company was acquired by America Online, Microsoft quickly filled the gap and became the new dominant browser, attaining a peak of about 96% of the web browser usage share during 2001.
Later, when other browsers were created, like Google Chrome, Mozilla's Firefox and others, the free web browsers alternatives started to eat away Microsoft's market share. The browser war continues when Microsoft saw the decline in Internet Explorer usage.
This is why when Microsoft switched to the Chromium-powered Edge, the company started to have high expectations through this browser.
The Chromium-powered Edge browser was born after Microsoft ditched the proprietary EdgeHTML browser engine for Chromium.
After introducing the browser officially, the browser was still a far cry from Chrome, the most popular web browser.
Slowly and steadily, Microsoft then started sneakily promote Edge over its competitors on Windows 10, and even started implementing a malware-like marketing strategy.
And since those methods aren't enough, the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge is made to be impossible to uninstall from Windows devices once it is installed.
According to a Microsoft blog post, once finished automatically pushing the Chromium-based Edge to Windows 10 users, users won't be able to remove the browser from their computers.
That at least not through traditional ways of uninstalling.
In a blog post, Microsoft said that:
"The new version of Microsoft Edge gives users full control over importing personal data from the legacy version of Microsoft Edge. The new version of Microsoft Edge is included in a Windows system update, so the option to uninstall it or use the legacy version of Microsoft Edge will no longer be available."
It has for many years, right from the time it was born, until becoming a matured browser capable of surpassing Mozilla Firefox in usage, Edge is still very far from Google Chrome.
According to statistics from StatCounter, Edge Legacy holds only 0.98% share of the browser market (as of the end of July 2020), compared to Chrome's massive 65.89%.
By shifting to a new and improved, Chromium-based version, Microsoft is hoping to gain a foothold in the market. And by 'forcing' the browser to be upon Windows by default as part of a system update, Microsoft simply wants the browser to be ever-present on Windows.
In its defense, Microsoft said that the Chromium-powered Edge can deliver a number of speed, security and performance upgrades, bringing the experience in line with what users might expect from a modern web browser.
While the updated browser has generally been well-received, the inability to uninstall the new Edge may annoy some users, which can again further cement Microsoft's browser as an unwanted bloatware.