Windows 10 Start Menu Suggests Firefox Users Switch to Edge

[Porthos]

Microsoft has started using the Windows 10 Start Menu to suggest that Mozilla Firefox users switch to their new Microsoft Edge browser.

With the release of Microsoft's new Chromium-based Edge browser, Microsoft has started promoting the new browser when typing various keywords in the Windows 10 Start Menu.

Based on a Reddit Post, Windows 10 is displaying a suggestion to switch to Microsoft Edge when Firefox is installed or configured as the default browser.

This promotion comes in the form of a suggestion at the top of the Start Menu that states "Still using Firefox? Microsoft Edge is here".

Promoting Edge to Firefox users
Another user also posted to the Reddit thread about seeing a promotion for Microsoft Edge when they searched for Internet Explorer in the Start Menu.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...t-menu-suggests-firefox-users-switch-to-edge/

 

[phaZed]

 

[Porthos]

View attachment 11468

I always turn off that as well but we shall see if it comes back after the next Feature Update.

 

[britechguy]

Well, this is about as unobtrusive as one could get. I don't mind this sort of nudge at all as opposed to pop-up notifications or similar. When you add in that you can turn this off (and once I've done that for the vast majority of settings, it sticks through feature updates, particularly over the last 2 years) it's really hard for me to scream that Microsoft is being offensively pushy.

The forced wedding of Cortana (which I don't use) and Bing way back when was much more troubling to me, and I was shocked when there wasn't an uproar from the Windows 10 user community about that one.

 

[Sky-Knight]

This isn't new, they've been pestering Chrome and Firefox users for years to switch to Edge. Now... well Edge is Chrome... so... we all know how well that worked.

 

[frase]

 

[britechguy]

This isn't new, they've been pestering Chrome and Firefox users for years to switch to Edge. Now... well Edge is Chrome... so... we all know how well that worked.

Edge appears to be Chrome without a lot of Chrome's nastiest data mining and user profiling aspects, though. Not saying it has zero, but I've stopped using Chrome mainly because I really had tired of "being the product." But I went to Brave, but do like new Edge (and hated Edge original).

 

[Sky-Knight]

Edge appears to be Chrome without a lot of Chrome's nastiest data mining and user profiling aspects, though. Not saying it has zero, but I've stopped using Chrome mainly because I really had tired of "being the product." But I went to Brave, but do like new Edge (and hated Edge original).

That does make sense, because New Edge isn't based on Chrome, but Chromium.

Chromium has no tracking, it's just a pure clean browser. So anything that's bolted in, would be at Microsoft's direction. If you're used to Brave, you've basically already converted to this sort of thing, albeit from a very different sort of developer.

For myself... I think I'll stick with Firefox.

 

[britechguy]

Well, Chrome itself is based on Chromium.

But even though Chromium was developed by Google, if memory serves, it's also open source, so there are no secrets about what's in there for anyone using the code base and, as you say, that code base is free of the data mining overlays that are part and parcel of the Chrome browser itself.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Correct, just about all of Google's core tech is open source. So yes, Chromium can be 3rd party audited and is known to be safe.

Chrome however, isn't open source... so we don't know WTF Google did with it specifically. Same stick with new Edge I suppose.

 

[Umbra]

Using ChromEdge (as i call it ^^) dev build since day 1; MS managed to make me remove my long friend Google Chrome.
ChromEdge on my system is faster than FF or Chrome, has all the extra security options Chromium offers (via various flags like Appcontainer) and built-in Smartscreen on top (unavailable in FF or Chrome).
Also since it is a Microsoft product, you can improve its security by protecting it via Windows 10 Exploit Protection (aka ex-EMET) and selecting Code Integrity Guard (option not possible with non-MS application).

So at the end you end up with a very fast and secure browser, integrated in the system and without to worry much about Google data mining.

 

[DRPCNZ]

CrEdge all the way for me