Microsoft seems to be getting more and more aggressive in forcing users to switch to the Edge browser.
As reported by Neovin, Microsoft Edge will prompt you to display a full-page ad that says, “Welcome back, we have new things for you to discover.” And since the page occupies the title bar, you can’t “X” out of it either. You need to click the “Get Started” button at the bottom of the page to proceed.
From there, it takes you to another page, which is another edge full-screen ad that tries to convince you to set it as your default browser. This time you can uncheck the box at the bottom that says “Use Microsoft recommended browser settings” and then click on the “Save and continue” box below.
Then you finally get to the page that thanks you for updating Edge to the latest version, pointing out that this whole process can occur after every update, not after a fresh install or first boot of the operating system. There’s a chance the frequency of this process may be wrong, but it’s hard to tell given Microsoft’s own history on the matter.
Microsoft needs to do more
Microsoft Edge is not a bad web browser. Unlike the extremely buggy and dangerous Internet Explorer Fortunately, Microsoft has retiredEdge is much safer, faster, and in some ways even better than Google Chrome (it doesn’t take up a lot of memory like Chrome, for example).
However, trying to drive people away from Chrome is a difficult task, especially given the current market share of the latter browser. Not to mention that Chrome has recently stolen one of Edge’s best features. And while I understand that Microsoft is desperate to have a bigger piece of the pie, imposing ads on users is not a good solution.
Edge has many advantages besides often better performance, such as online shopping features, excellent Collections feature, accessibility features including Read Aloud, and a very aesthetic layout. Not to mention, it also gets a Video Super Resolution (VSR) feature that will let you do just that high quality low resolution online videosand his ChatGPT tool.
So instead of displaying unavoidable full-page ads that are likely to discourage anyone from using the browser, Microsoft needs to better promote it by conveying all its benefits. Because for now, these ads don’t tell you anything about Edge other than that it’s new, and more importantly, they don’t give you any incentive to switch to it.
Get it together, Microsoft.