Microsoft is hell-bent on keeping people using its Edge web browser, resorting to overly-aggressive ads to accomplish its goal.
Edge is the company’s default browser and successor to Internet Explorer. By all rights, Edge is a very capable browser, but Microsoft seems intent on pushing it as much as possible, even resorting to ads within Windows.
According to Windows Latest, the company is displaying a popup whenever a user visits the Google Chrome website from within Edge. Interestingly, the popup seems to engage in a bit of false advertising.
“By continuing, you will set Microsoft Edge as your default browser. Offer valid for 1 person/account within first 14 days of joining,” the popup reads.
Microsoft Edge Ad – Credit WindowsLatest.com
It’s unclear why the popup says the offer is only valid for 14 days, since a user can obviously use Edge as their default browser any time they want. The popup was likely recycled from another promotion, and someone forgot to clean up and change the verbiage.
Clicking on the “Browse securely now” button doesn’t do anything — evidently another bug — but clicking the “X” in the upper right corner closes the dialog box.
While it’s good to see Microsoft playing nice with other companies, unlike how the company behaved under Gates and Ballmer, it’s more than a little disconcerting to see the company cluttering up its product with ads — especially after users have paid a premium to use those products.
Microsoft has expanded its AI-powered Bing preview, incorporating it in Bing and Edge mobile apps, as well as Skype.
Microsoft announced a version of Bing powered by AI on February 7. The AI is the next-generation version of the OpenAI tech used in ChatGPT. The response to the new Bing has been all over the spectrum, but one thing is clear: Bing is getting more attention than it has in years, if ever.
As a result, it’s not surprising that Microsoft is continuing to roll out the new search engine, bringing it to Skype, as well as the company’s mobile apps. Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer, announced the news in a blog post:
We’re beginning to roll out the incredible capabilities of the new Bing and Edge on your smartphone along with some exciting new features, such as voice input. In addition, we are creating a new chat experience, beginning with Skype, to enhance your social communications with your friends and family.
The company also sees Bing as being a copilot for users in their Skype chats:
Imagine having a copilot for your friends and family as you stay connected and plan your next get together. Simply add Bing to the group, as you would any Skype contact, and now you can ask Bing to answer questions and provide information for the entire group. For example, if your family is chatting about the next family reunion, you can simply ask Bing for suggestions on travel destinations, expected weather forecasts and interesting events around your time of travel, and everyone in the chat will get access to the results. When you are catching up with friends, you can ask Bing to simply fetch information from the web, for example, the latest news or last night’s award shows to add to your conversation.
Everyone in the preview will automatically have access to the new Bing on both mobile and Skype.
Microsoft is disabling Internet Explorer from most Windows 10 installations today, putting another nail in the old browser’s coffin.
Microsoft has been moving users to Edge for some time. In all respects, Edge is a far superior browser to IE. Given that Microsoft has stopped supporting IE, Edge is also a more secure option.
Today, the company will be rolling out an update to Edge that will disable IE on most Windows 10 computers.
The out-of-support Internet Explorer 11 (IE11) desktop application was permanently disabled on certain versions of Windows 10 on February 14, 2023 through a Microsoft Edge update. Note, this update will be rolled out over the span of a few days up to a week, as is standard for Microsoft Edge updates.
All remaining consumer and commercial devices that were not already redirected from IE11 to Microsoft Edge were redirected with the Microsoft Edge update. Users will be unable to reverse the change. Additionally, redirection from IE11 to Microsoft Edge will be included as part of all future Microsoft Edge updates.
Microsoft Edge is getting a major upgrade, incorporating Adobe Acrobat PDF capabilities — with one major catch.
Microsoft Edge has a PDF viewer built in, but it is fairly basic, in terms of the features it offers. Microsoft and Adobe have announced an agreement to bring Acrobat PDF capabilities to Edge, with many of them remaining free, as Microsoft explains in a blog post:
Together, the two companies are updating the PDF experience and value users have come to expect in Microsoft Edge by powering the built-in PDF reader with the Adobe Acrobat PDF engine. This will give users a unique PDF experience that includes higher fidelity for more accurate colors and graphics, improved performance, strong security for PDF handling, and greater accessibility—including better text selection and read-aloud narration. These capabilities will continue to be free of cost.
The catch, however, is that more advanced features will require a subscription:
Users who want more advanced digital document features—such as the ability to edit text and images, convert PDFs to other file formats, and combine files—can purchase an Acrobat subscription that enables access to these features anywhere, including directly inside Microsoft Edge via a browser extension. Microsoft Edge users with existing Adobe Acrobat subscriptions can use the Acrobat extension inside Edge at no extra cost.
Executives from both companies emphasized the productivity gains the collaboration will make possible.
“Bringing Adobe and Microsoft closer together is good for productivity and good for customers,” said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President, Modern Work & Business Applications at Microsoft. “Adobe’s PDF technology in Microsoft Edge means users will have fast and secure access to critical digital document capabilities.”
“PDF is essential for modern business, accelerating productivity in a world where automation and collaboration are more critical than ever,” said Ashley Still, SVP and GM, Adobe. “By bringing the global standard in PDF experience to Microsoft Edge and the billion-plus Windows users worldwide, Adobe and Microsoft are using our joint heritage and expertise in productivity to take an important step forward in making modern, secure, and connected work and life a reality.”
As expected, Microsoft has taken the wraps off of the latest version of Bing, one that relies on artificial intelligence to provide answers.
Since the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft has been working to incorporate the technology in its search engine in an effort to challenge Google. Thanks to its multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI, Microsoft has access to the company’s tech, providing it with a major opportunity.
Today, we’re launching an all new, AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser, available in preview now at Bing.com, to deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content. We think of these tools as an AI copilot for the web.
“AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all – search,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “Today, we’re launching Bing and Edge powered by AI copilot and chat, to help people get more from search and the web.”
Microsoft confirmed that the AI technology it has incorporated into Bing and Edge is the next generation of OpenAI’s research.
We’re excited to announce the new Bing is running on a new, next-generation OpenAI large language model that is more powerful than ChatGPT and customized specifically for search. It takes key learnings and advancements from ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 – and it is even faster, more accurate and more capable.
The company also touted its “Prometheus model,” a proprietary way of interacting with the OpenAI model for best results.
Users can experience the AI-powered Bing today in a limited preview.
The new Bing is available today in a limited preview on desktop, and everyone can visit Bing.com today to try sample queries and sign up for the waitlist. We’re going to scale the preview to millions in the coming weeks. A mobile experience will also be in preview soon.
Teams may be one of the most popular messaging platforms, but it’s not so popular with users wanting streamlined performance, using extra RAM if the icon is visible.
Teams is included on all copies of Windows 11, occupying a spot once taken by Skype. While the service has grown incredibly popular, recently crossing 270 million active monthly users, some users have noticed some odd RAM usage.
Over at his Out of Office Hours blog, Michael Niehaus details the problem here, and here. In short, Teams and Widgets use Edge’s WebView2, Microsoft’s version of Electron. This allows the apps to make use of Edge’s underlying rendering engine, without launching the full browser. This is a common practice in development, as it’s much easier to use the system’s browser for rendering than it is to come up with a custom solution.
Unfortunately, while WebView2 is supposed to be more efficient than Electron, it still can take quite a toll on the system, with Teams and Widgets using hundreds of megabytes of RAM just from their icons being open.
Niehaus’ recommendation? Hide the icons.
Let’s say that you hide both the Chat and Widgets icons. Does that get rid of all of those processes? Well, it certainly prevents the Widgets set from being created, but does it keep the Teams client and its set from launching? Yes, as a matter of fact it does (at least after you log out and back in again after turning off those icons).
So there’s another reason to consider turning those icons off: saving system resources.
Microsoft is in the hot seat from none other than one of its Windows Pioneers, over aggressive advertising in its Edge web browser.
Microsoft Edge has replaced Internet Explorer as the main web browser shipped with Windows. Based on Chromium, Edge offers a number of improvements over its predecessor.
Unfortunately, Microsoft has been in the habit of dropping “suggestions” — who are they kidding…they’re ads — in the Start Menu almost since the debut of Windows 10. The “suggestions” push the company’s software, such as Edge, over rival options.
The company appears to be taking that approach to a new level, using popups within Edge to make recommendations to users. Charles Petzold — a programmer, author of Programming Windows and one of the seven Windows Pioneers recognized by Microsoft for their contributions to the platform — is one such individual.
In a blog post entitled “Screw You, Microsoft Edge,” Petzold describes shopping for a book online, only to have Edge display a popup recommending the same purchase from a different store.
Microsoft Edge Popup – Credit Charles Petzold
Needless to say, he wasn’t impressed. Mr. Petzold describes his take:
Excuse me? The assumption that I need help buying a book is the biggest insult I’ve encountered on Windows since the days of Clippy.
A further insult is the implication that I make buying decisions based solely on price. There might be numerous reasons why I choose one retailer over another for my book purchases. I might prefer a retailer that focuses solely on books, or a retailer that is not a large chain. More generally, I might make a decision based on the company’s carbon footprint, or perhaps their reputation in paying fair wages, or what political candidates and movements they support, or whether the CEO uses his wealth to launch himself into space.
Dealing with advertising in free platforms and services is one thing, and an expected trade-off for free. It’s incredibly hard to imagine any legitimate justification for advertising, or “suggestions,” in a platform individuals and businesses have paid for.
Microsoft is putting auto-play web videos in its crosshairs, turning off the feature by default in an upcoming Edge update.
One of the most frustrating aspects of browsing the web is videos that start auto-playing as soon as you land on the site. Especially if you have music or other programming playing in the background, the videos can be unwelcome intrusions.
An upcoming update to Microsoft Edge will tackle the problem, turning off video auto-play by default. First spotted by TechRadar, the feature is listed in Microsoft’s 365 roadmap.
To help you maintain your focus online, we have changed the default for auto playing media to Limit from Allow, beginning with Microsoft Edge version 92.
Microsoft and Google are resuming open hostilities, following a five-year cease-fire.
Microsoft and Google had an agreement, beginning five years ago, to stop suing each other and work out their differences behind closed doors. During that period, the two companies worked closely together on some projects, not the least of which is Microsoft adopting Chromium as the rendering engine for its Edge web browser. The company has become one of the biggest contributors to the open source rendering engine, with many of Microsoft’s improvements making their way into Google’s Chrome, also based on Chromium.
Despite the benefits of the two companies’ non-aggression pact, that pact has ended, driven largely by Microsoft’s growing frustration with Google’s approach to its ad business and the debate around paying content creators.
According to Bloomberg, tensions started building over Google’s reluctance to pay news publishers for content. In contrast, Microsoft has been a proponent of reimbursing news publishers and content creators. The breaking point, however, was Microsoft’s frustration about marketers not having equal access to search engines when using Google’s ad campaign tools.
“If you want to advertise, if you want to sell advertising or buy advertising on the internet, you have to use Google’s tools, and when they make their tools in a manner that fails to interoperate easily with others, it impacts everybody,” said Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith, in April, in a Bloomberg television interview. “We raised the concerns with them and they just turned a deaf ear.”
The two companies already compete on vast array of fronts, not the least of which is the cloud. Now that the gloves have come off, it will be interesting to see just how far the hostilities go.
Mozilla has announced the latest version of Firefox, sporting a new look and improved user experience.
Once the second most popular browser, Firefox is now a distant third, behind Google Chrome and Apple Safari. Microsoft Edge is in fourth place, nipping at its heals. Mozilla has been working to reverse its fortunes in an effort to regain market share.
As part of that effort, the company has released the latest update, a major overhaul of the user experience. According to the company, it analyzed more than 17 billion clicks to better determine how to streamline the browsing experience.
Going into the Firefox redesign, our team studied how people interact with the browser, observing their patterns and behaviors. We listened to feedback and gathered ideas from regular people who just want to have an easier experience on the web. We obsessed over distractions, extra clicks and wasted time. The resulting new design is simple, modern and fast and delivers a beautiful experience to support what people do most in Firefox.
One of the most visible changes is a redesigned tab bar, more rounded and floating above the toolbar. The new update also includes new icons, crisp typography, streamlined menus and improved spacing in the UI.
Privacy features also received a major boost, building on Firefox’s already stellar reputation in that area.
All browsers have a private browsing mode, but none match Firefox. The popular Total Cookie Protection moves from the optional strict setting to always-on in private browsing. This feature maintains a separate “cookie jar” for each website you visit while browsing privately. Any time a site deposits a cookie, Firefox locks it up in its own cookie jar so that it can’t be shared with any other website.
The new version is available for all major platforms, including desktop and mobile.
Microsoft is adding sign-in and sync support to the Linux version of its Edge web browser.
Microsoft Edge is the company’s web browser that replaced its long-lived Internet Explorer. While Edge was originally powered by Microsoft’s own rendering engine, the company transitioned it to Chromium, the open source rendering engine that powers Google’s Chrome. Unlike Internet Explorer, Edge is available for several of the most popular Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian and openSUSE.
In a post on the company’s Dev channel, Microsoft’s Josh Bodner announced that sign-in and sync are available in dev build 91.0.831.1.
We’re also starting to roll out sign-in and sync for Linux users! Please note that this is only supported for personal Microsoft Accounts at the moment, and you may need to enable a flag in order to see this setting.
The company does warn that there may be issues, given this is still a development feature.
Users interested in more information can read the full release notes here.
Microsoft has announced that an upcoming Windows 10 update will replace Edge Legacy with the new version.
Microsoft Edge is the company’s replacement for Internet Explorer. Originally, Edge used Microsoft’s own in-house rendering engine. As part of the Windows 10 October 2020 Update, Microsoft unveiled the new version of Edge. The new version is based on Chromium, the same open source foundation for Google’s Chrome. This allows Edge to take advantage of Chrome’s popularity and compatibility.
Microsoft has announced it is ending support for Edge Legacy on March 9. As a result, to prevent users from using an outdated, insecure browser, Microsoft is removing Edge Legacy and replacing it with the Chromium-based version.
To replace this out of support application, we are announcing that the new Microsoft Edge will be available as part of the Windows 10 cumulative monthly security update—otherwise referred to as the Update Tuesday (or “B”) release—on April 13, 2021. When you apply this update to your devices, the out of support Microsoft Edge Legacy desktop application will be removed and the new Microsoft Edge will be installed. The new Microsoft Edge offers built-in security and our best interoperability with the Microsoft security ecosystem, all while being more secure than Chrome for businesses on Windows 10.
While some users may be put off by the thought of Microsoft removing a copy of their program, in this case the company is doing the responsible thing. Web browsers are one of the most commonly exploited attack vectors, so Microsoft removing an outdated and unsupported browser will likely go a long way toward protecting user security.
AT&T’s streaming video service HBO Max is at a huge disadvantage to tech companies in the streaming video market says AT&T CEO, John Stankey.
“There’s no doubt that we really should be focused on equality of access from the edge providers and those that are owning operating systems or have incredibly powerful platforms that have aggregated huge amounts of the customer base,” said AT&T CEO John Stankey. “Our focus needs to be on equity of rules and engagement to ensure that anybody who wants to innovate can take these platforms that have over 50% of share in many instances and everybody can equally get out to it.”
John Stankey, CEO of AT&T, Inc. says that the focus should be on edge providers now. He chuckles about the huge amount of debate that went into the net neutrality debate:
I certainly hope it’s a sustainable model. I’m trying to remember when we were last a gatekeeper… it’s been a long time. If I think about what happens moving forward right now and the dynamic there’s no doubt that we really should be focused on equality of access from the edge providers and those that are owning operating systems or have incredibly powerful platforms that have aggregated huge amounts of the customer base. I chuckle and I think back about all the calories that were expended over something like net neutrality.
When you look at this moment we’ve come through where networks have been absolutely so critical moving through this pandemic there has not been a single instance of somebody talking about my network provider blocking me or preventing me from doing what I wanted to do. In fact, the policy that’s in place has allowed for remarkably scaled broadband networks to perform incredibly well. That’s a bit different than what we’ve seen in other parts of the world.
Where the bottlenecks are sometimes occurring are in these commercial agreements and dynamics that are happening between say an Amazon Fire distribution platform or to what’s happening in IoS and maybe a gaming player on it. Our focus probably needs to be on equity of rules and engagement to ensure that anybody who wants to innovate can take these platforms that have over 50% of share in many instances and everybody can equally get out to it. This is a debate about the Edge, not a debate about network neutrality, which we are going to have to be mindful of.
“Today starts a new chapter in our close collaboration with the telecommunications industry to unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever,” said Microsoft Azure Executive Vice President Jason Zander in a blog announcement. “We’re building a carrier-grade cloud and bringing more Microsoft technology to the operator’s edge. This, in combination with our developer ecosystem, will help operators to future proof their networks, drive down costs, and create new services and business models.”
Jason Zander, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure, announces new collaborations with the telecommunications industry that will unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever:
The increasing demand for always-on connectivity, immersive experiences, secure collaboration, and remote human relationships is pushing networks to their limits, while the market is driving down price. The network infrastructure must ensure operators are able to optimize costs and gain efficiencies, while enabling the development of personalized and differentiated services. To address the requirements of rolling out 5G, operators will face strong challenges, including high capital expenditure (CapEx) investments, an increased need for scale, automation, and secure management of the massive volume of data it will generate.
Today starts a new chapter in our close collaboration with the telecommunications industry to unlock the power of 5G and bring cloud and edge closer than ever. We’re building a carrier-grade cloud and bringing more Microsoft technology to the operator’s edge. This, in combination with our developer ecosystem, will help operators to future proof their networks, drive down costs, and create new services and business models.
In Microsoft, operators get a trusted partner who will empower them to unlock the potential of 5G. Enabling them to offer a range of new services such as ultra-reliable low-latency connectivity, mixed reality communications services, network slicing, and highly scalable IoT applications to transform entire industries and communities.
By harnessing the power of Microsoft Azure, on their edge, or in the cloud, operators can transition to a more flexible and scalable model, drive down infrastructure cost, use AI and machine learning (ML) to automate operations and create service differentiation. Furthermore, a hybrid and hyper-scale infrastructure will provide operators with the agility they need to rapidly innovate and experiment with new 5G services on a programmable network.
More specifically, we will further support operators as they evolve their infrastructure and operations using technologies such as software-defined networking, network function virtualization, and service-based architectures. We are bringing to market a carrier-grade platform for edge and cloud to support the operator’s goals to future proof their infrastructure with disaggregated, and containerized network architectures. Recognizing that not everything will move to the public cloud, we will meet operators where they are—whether at the enterprise edge, the network edge, or in the cloud.
Our approach is built on the acquisitions of industry leaders in cloud-native network functions—Affirmed Networks and Metaswitch and on the development of Azure Edge Zones. By bringing together hundreds of engineers with deep experience in the telecommunications space, we are ensuring that our product development process is catering to the most relevant networking needs of the operators. We will leverage the strengths of Microsoft to extend and enhance the current capabilities of industry-leading products such as Affirmed’s 5G core and Metaswitch’s UC portfolio. These capabilities, combined with Microsoft’s broad developer ecosystem and deep business to business partnership programs, provide Microsoft with a unique ability to support the operators as they seek to monetize the capabilities of their networks.
Your customer, your service, powered by our technology
As we build out our partnerships with different operators, it is clear to us that there will be different approaches to technology adoption based on business needs. Some operators may choose to adopt the Azure platform and select a varied mix of virtualized or containerized network function providers. We also have operators that have requested complete end-to-end services as components for their offers. As a part of these discussions, many operators have identified points of control that are important to them, for example:
Control over where a slice, network API, or function is presented to the customer.
Definition of where and how traffic enters and exits their network.
Visibility and control over where key functions are executed for a given customer scenario.
Configuration and performance parameters of core network functions.
As we build out Azure for Operators, we recognize the importance of ensuring operators have the control and visibility they require to manage their unique industry requirements. To that end, here is how our assets come together to provide operators with the platform they need.
Communication Service Providers
Interconnect
It starts with the ability to interconnect deeply with the operator’s network around the globe. We have one of the largest networks that connect with operators at more than 170 points of presence and over 20,000 peering connections around the globe, putting direct connectivity within 25 miles of 85 percent of the world’s GDP. More than 200 operators have already chosen to integrate with the Azure network through our ExpressRoute service, enabling enterprises and partners to link their corporate networks privately and securely to Azure services. We also provide additional routes to connect to the service through options as varied as satellite connectivity and TV White Space spectrum.
Edge platform
This reach helps us to supply operators with cloud computing options that meet the customer wherever those capabilities are needed: at the enterprise edge, the network edge, the network core, or in the cloud. The various form factors, optimized to support the location in which they are deployed, are supported by the Azure platform—providing virtual machine and container services with a common management framework, DevOps support, and security control.
Network functions
We believe in an open platform that leverages the strengths of our partners. Our solutions are a combination of virtualized and containerized services as composable functions, developed by us and by our Network Equipment Provider partners, to support operators’ services such as the Radio Access Network, Mobile Packet Core, Voice and Interconnect services, and other network functions.
Technology from Affirmed and Metaswitch Networks will provide services for Mobile Packet Core, Voice, and Interconnect services.
Cloud solutions and Azure IoT for operators
By exposing these services through the Azure platform, we can combine them with other Azure capabilities such as Azure Cognitive Services (used by more than 1 million developers processing more than 10 billion transaction per day), Azure Machine Learning, and Azure IoT, to bring the power of AI and automation to the delivery of network services. These capabilities, in concert with our partnerships with OSS and BSS providers, enables us to help operators streamline and simplify operations, create new services to monetize the network, and gain greater insights into customer behavior.
In IoT our primary focus is simplifying our solutions to accelerate what we can do together from the edge to the cloud. We’ve done so by creating a platform that provides simple and secure provisioning of applications and devices to Azure cloud solutions through Azure IoT Central, which is the fastest and easiest way to build IoT solutions at scale. IoT Central enables customers to provision an IoT app in seconds, customize it in hours, and go to production the same day. IoT Plug and Play dramatically simplifies all aspects of IoT device support and provides devices that “just work” with any solution and is the perfect complement to achieve speed and simplicity through IoT Central. Azure IoT Central also gives the Mobile Operator the opportunity to monetize more of the IoT solution and puts them in a position to be a re-seller of the IoT Central application platform through their own solutions. Learn more about using Azure IoT for operators here.
Cellular connectivity is increasingly important for IoT solutions and represents a vast and generational shift for mobile operators as the share of devices in market shifts towards the enterprise. We will continue our deep partnership with operators to enable fast and efficient app development and deployment, which is critical to success at the edge. This will help support scenarios such as asset tracking across industries, manufacturing and distribution of smart products, and responsive supply chains. It will also help support scenarios where things are geographically dispersed, such as smart city automation, utility monitoring, and precision agriculture.
Where we go next
Our early engagement with partners such as Telstra and Etisalat helped us shape this path. We joined the 5G Open Innovation Lab as the founding public cloud partner to accelerate enterprise startups and launch new innovations to foster new 5G use cases with even greater access to leading-edge networks. The Lab will create long-term, sustainable developer and commercial ecosystems that will accelerate the delivery of exciting new capabilities at the edge, including pervasive IoT intelligence and immersive mixed reality. And this is just the beginning. I invite you to learn more about our solutions and watch the series of videos we have curated for you.
Whatever goodwill Microsoft has earned in recent years by playing nice is rapidly evaporating, thanks to a particularly aggressive update.
Multiple users around the internet are reporting that Microsoft is forcing the latest Windows 10 upgrade on them. The upgrade appears to run, install and restart the computer automatically, often while people are actively using the machine.
To make matters worse, once the computer reboots, Microsoft’s Edge web browser automatically starts. The accompanying dialog boxes try to convince the user to switch to Edge, and don’t provide a clear way of saying no. The update also pins Edge to both the taskbar and desktop, and still verifies if the user wants to continue using their previous default browser the next time they launch a website.
“If I told you that my entire computer screen just got taken over by a new app that I’d never installed or asked for — it just magically appeared on my desktop, my taskbar, and preempted my next website launch — you’d probably tell me to run a virus scanner and stay away from shady websites, no?
“But the insanely intrusive app I’m talking about isn’t a piece of ransomware. It’s Microsoft’s new Chromium Edge browser, which the company is now force-feeding users via an automatic update to Windows.”
For a company that once had one of the worst reputations in the industry for these kind of strong-arm tactics, it’s disappointing to see it returning to this kind of behavior.
Some things are too good to last, and it appears Google and Microsoft’s BFF cooperation on the browser front is one of them, as both companies are taking swipes at the other.
Microsoft’s current browser, Edge, uses Google’s Chromium rendering engine. Chromium is an open-source rendering engine that a number of browsers, including Chrome, are powered by. Microsoft retired its own HTML rendering engine in favor of the move to Chromium in an effort to improve compatibility and reliability. Basing Edge on Chromium also lets Microsoft focus more resources on the browser’s front-end and user experience. Microsoft has even added a number of significant features to Edge that have made, or are making, their way into Chrome.
The cracks started to show up when Google began using user agents to warn Microsoft Edge users they should “upgrade” to Google’s Chrome. User agent strings are the method by which web browsers identify themselves. In the early days of the web, when Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator were vying for dominance, webmasters would routinely code their websites to primarily work with one or the other browser. Webmasters would check a visiting browser’s user agent, or identity, and warn users they needed to “upgrade” if they weren’t running the browser their website was designed to support. Eventually, as the web started becoming more standards-compliant, the practice largely fell out of favor, with webmasters focusing on creating websites that adhered to standards and worked for everyone.
Now Google seems intent on going back to those dark days of the early web. According to Windows Latest, “Google services are still targeting Edge with scary warnings. In the past, Google has displayed a warning when users opened services such as Google Teams, Gmail, Google Docs and YouTube Music in Edge.”
Interestingly, if Edge users change their user agent to Chrome, the warning goes away. Google is also not targeting other Chromium-based browsers, such as Opera.
Microsoft, in turn, has been warning individuals who try to download extensions from the Chrome Web Store that downloaded extensions from “unverified” sources may not be safe.
Chris Matyszczyk, with ZDNet, reached out to both companies, as well as did a bit of his own investigating.
“My sniffings around Google suggest the company may have been taken aback by the positive public reaction to Edge,” writes Matyszczyk. “Oddly, Google doesn’t seem to be offering these scary messages to users of, say, the Opera browser.
“My nasal probings around Redmond offer the reasoning that, well, Microsoft hasn’t tested or verified extensions that arrive from places other than they Microsoft Edge add-ons website. Why, they’re far too busy to do that. And, well, it’s the Chrome web store. Who knows what you’ll find over there? Oh, and Edge gives you more control over your data, so there.”
Whatever the motivations of both companies, the back-and-forth, tit-for-tat needs to stop. Dragging users back to the ‘90s-style browser wars that emphasized protecting turf over supporting standards is a losing recipe for everyone involved—especially the end user.
Artificial intelligence (AI) on the edge is a critical factor to widespread AI adoption and ARM is tackling the problem head-on with a pair of new chips, according to The Verge.
Edge AI is the ability to run AI locally, on-device, rather than offloading to a remote server. The obvious benefits are increased speed, since there’s no latency back and forth between the remote server, as well as increased privacy.
According to The Verge, ARM is working on “the Arm Cortex-M55 and the Ethos-U55, a neural processing unit meant to pair with the Cortex-M55 for more demanding use cases.” The Cortex-M55 provides up to 15 times better machine learning performance and up to 5 times better digital signal processing performance than previous Cortex-M processors.
Unlike Intel or AMD, ARM doesn’t manufacture its own processors. Instead, it designs them and then licenses those designs to other companies, such as Apple, who go on to manufacture and use them. With these new chips, however, ARM isn’t targeting phones and tablets. The goal is to use the chips to “develop new Internet of Things devices, bringing AI processing to more devices that otherwise wouldn’t have those capabilities.”
If the Cortex-M55 lives up to the hype, it should help usher in a whole new generation of AI-enabled devices and services.
Once bitter rivals in the browser wars, Microsoft and Google are now cooperating like never before, with a major Chrome feature originating with Microsoft, according to The Verge.
Microsoft recently moved its Edge browser over to Chromium, the open-source rendering engine that serves as the basis for Chrome. Since the move, Microsoft has been responsible for some 1,900 changes and improvements to Chromium, according to CNET.
While many of these changes are under-the-hood, the latest is a very visible one. CNET says “the tab management feature in Edge lets you right-click on a single tab or a group of tabs you’ve selected then send them to a new or different Edge browser window. It’s useful if you like to group related tabs into a single window.”
The feature caught the eye of Google software engineer Leonard Grey and, as The Verge points out, “now Microsoft is helping bring it directly to Chromium and Chrome.” This is an excellent example of the overall benefit that comes from tech companies working together around open standards and open-source software.
According to ZDNet, Google’s Chrome web browser will soon receive error codes similar to those shown on the Windows blue screen of death (BSOD) display.
The feature was proposed by Eric Lawrence, a software engineer working on the Chromium-based version of Microsoft Edge. The goal is to provide users with a convenient way to diagnose issues by giving them an error code they can research and learn about.
The feature is currently being tested in Chrome v81, but there has been no confirmation that it will make the final build of v81, or be included in the next release. Either way, all indications are this is a permanent addition to the browser.
As ZDNet highlights, since it was an engineer working on Microsoft’s browser that suggested the feature, it will likely make its way to other Chromium-based browsers, such as Opera, Vivaldi and Brave.
Microsoft’s Edge web browser has received generally positive reviews, and has proven to be a worthy successor to Internet Explorer and a solid contender among modern browsers.
In December 2018, Microsoft announced its intention to abandon EdgeHTML as the browser’s rendering engine in favor of Chromium, the same rendering engine Google Chrome uses. In the months since the announcement, Microsoft has worked on versions of Edge for Windows 7, 8 and 10, as well as Xbox One, macOS, iOS and Android.
Now, Microsoft has teased the possibility of Edge making its way to Linux as well. Sean Larkin, a member of the Edge development team, took to Twitter to solicit feedback from Linux developers:
“We on the @MSEdgeDev team are fleshing out requirements to bring Edge to Linux, and we need your help w/ some assumptions!”
Larkin went to say that “if you’re a dev who depends on Linux for dev, testing, personal browsing, please take a second to fill out this survey!”
If Microsoft successfully brings Edge to Linux, it could make life for Linux web developers easier, allowing them to natively test how their sites and web applications work in Microsoft’s latest browser.
“The surprise outcome ten years from now is there’ll be something much bigger than the private cloud and the public cloud,” says Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell. “It’s the edge. I actually think there will be way more computed data on the edge in ten years than any of the derivatives of cloud that we want to talk about. That’s the ten-year prediction.”
Data Has Always Been at the Center of How the Technology Industry Works
We feel great. Our business has really grown tremendously. All the things we’ve been doing have been resonating with customers. We’ve been able to restore the origins of the entrepreneurial dream and success of the company and reintroduce innovation and risk-taking into a now $91 billion company growing at double digits last year. Certainly, the set of capabilities that we’ve been able to build organically and inorganically, with the set of alliances we have, the trust that customers have given us, we are super happy about the position that we’re in and the opportunities going forward. I think all this is really just a pregame show to what’s ahead for our industry and for the role that technology is going to play in the world.
Data has always been at the center of how the technology industry works. Now we just have a tsunami, an explosion of data. Of course, now we have this new computer science that allows us to reason over the data in real time and create much better results and outcomes. That combined with the computing power all organizations have to reimagine themselves given all these technologies. Certainly, the infrastructure requirements in terms of the network, the storage, that compute, the build-out on the edge, tons of new requirements, we’re super well-positioned to go address all that.
Predicts in 10 Years More Computed Data on the Edge Than Cloud
The surprise outcome ten years from now is there’ll be something much bigger than the private cloud and the public cloud. It’s the edge. I actually think there will be way more computed data on the edge in ten years than any of the derivatives of cloud that we want to talk about. That’s the ten-year prediction. That’s what I see. Maybe nobody’s predicting that just yet, but let’s come back in ten years and see what it looks like.
Really what we’re doing is we’re bringing to customers all the resources they need to operate in the hybrid multi-cloud world. First, you have to recognize that the workloads want to move around. To say that they’re all going to be here or there is in some sense missing the point because they’re going to move back and forth. You’ve got regulation, cost, security, performance, latency, all sorts of new requirements that are coming at you and they’re not going to just sit in one place.
This is All Super Important As We Enter This AI Enabled Age
Now with the VMware cloud foundation, we have the ability to move these workloads seamlessly across now essentially all the public clouds. We have 4,200 partners out there, infrastructure on-premise built and tuned specifically for the VMware platform and empowered also for the edge. All of this together is the Dell Technologies cloud. We have obviously great capabilities from our Dell UMC infrastructure solutions and all the great innovations at VMware coming together.
Inside the business, the first priority was to get each of the individual pieces working well. But then we saw that the real opportunity was in the seams and how we could more deeply integrate all the aspects of what we’re doing together. You saw that on stage you know in vivid form yesterday with Pat and Jeff and Satya and even more today. Of course, there’s more to do. There’s always more to do. We’re working on how we build a data platform bringing together all of our capabilities with Boomi and Data Protection and VMware. This is all going to be super important as we enter this AI enabled age of the future.
We’ve Created an Incredible Business
I think investors are increasingly understanding that we’ve created an incredible business here. Certainly, if we look at the additional coverage that we have as they’re understanding the business, some of the analysts are starting to say hey this doesn’t really feel like a conglomerate. It’s a direct quote. If you think about what we demonstrated today and yesterday and will demonstrate in the future we’re not like Berkshire Hathaway. This is not a railroad that owns a chain of restaurants. This is one integrated business that fits together incredibly well and it’s generating substantial cash flows.
I think investors over time are figuring out the value that’s intrinsic to the overall Dell Technologies family. We’ve got lots of ways to invest, we got VMware, SecureWorks, Pivotal, and of course the overall Dell Technologies.
Michael Dell Predicts in 10 Years More Computed Data on the Edge Than Cloud
