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Comment by beager | Hacker News Reader

> The problem has nothing to do with the Edge browser, it has to do with search results returned by Bing, which happens to be Edge's default search engine.

I think you're slicing this too thinly. This has everything to do with Edge, which is purposely configured to use a search engine that creates a liability for users.

I would agree that "stop using Edge to download Chrome" is not useful and probably clickbait-y. A better guide would be "Be careful when downloading a different browser on Windows 10."

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this same thing happened to my older co-worker who was using chrome and google to get firefox and he downloaded it from a top ad link that was a malware'd firefox...

This might be a bit obtuse of me to say, but:

> This has everything to do with Edge, which is purposely configured to use a search engine that creates a liability for users.

You could say the exact same thing about Chrome and not be lying.

(The obtuseness being likening Google tracking to malware ads)

Microsoft could just as well ship Firefox with Bing as the default search. The problem is Bing.

Except that Firefox blocked the site in question.

Does Edge not use the same safe browsing filters? I thought they were shared by all major browsers.

They could, but it looks like an in-house browser is the biggest boondoggle that Microsoft has.

Why would Microsoft do this?

> Why would Microsoft do this?

Because Google Chrome is a greater threat to them than Firefox, so promoting Firefox helps them even if it hurts Edge, as long as it also hurts Chrome.

Also because if they preload Firefox with Bing as the default search engine then Firefox users may leave it that way.

I'm really not clear why they don't. Apart from driving traffic to bing, what advantage do they gain by developing edge? How does edge drive more traffic than a customized firefox?

The only thing plausible thing I can think of is hoping to execute another round of embrace extend extinguish on the web, putting other desktop operating systems at a disadvantage. With google chrome's dominance that seems unlikely to work.

Besides being a stepping-stone to the desire for full vertical control of the user experience Edge components are also integrated into other portions of Windows. This is similar to the situation with Internet Explorer.

If I recall correctly UWP uses Edge's rendering engine (EdgeHTML) and JavaScript engine (Chakra). Edge integration/embeddability is also available to Win32/WPF/WinForms applications past a certain Windows 10 version. It makes some sense for them to develop something they have full control over if they use its technology in other core components/libraries of their operating system.

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