Home Technology New Windows update automatically installs Edge browser onto machines

New Windows update automatically installs Edge browser onto machines

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Microsoft has a poor history with its software updates that can often be quite frustrating as they force them upon users, at often frustrating times and often for completely inconsequential features and fixes. And while the company claims that its forced updates are mostly to do with security fixes, it appears that its latest update that has started hitting some people’s machines may show that the company has not quite escaped its poor reputation in this area just yet.

According to quite a few tweets posted by many people, it appears that Microsoft’s latest update has automatically installed Microsoft’s new Chromium Edge browser. This alone is enough to frustrate most people who perhaps don’t want to make the change to Edge, but the update makes it even worst by not just pinning it to your taskbar at the bottom, but apparently automatically launching itself to see if you want to make it the default browser. And without an option to uninstall the browser too.

While I do actually like Microsoft’s new Edge browser and think it is definitely superior to Google’s default Chrome browser, these type of tactics should definitely not be accepted from the software company and people should have the freedom to choose to download it and try it out, rather than being forced into doing so.

Microsoft has yet to officially respond to any of this, but hopefully they will revert their approach to getting Edge onto customer’s machines and rather spend more effort in showcasing Edge’s better features to users than thrusting it upon them.

Last Updated: July 6, 2020

7 Comments

  1. Guz

    July 6, 2020 at 19:38

    https://media3.giphy.com/media/5qPacKVznXUvC/giphy.gif

    Microsoft wants its piece of the browser market

    Reply

  2. Lu

    July 7, 2020 at 07:35

    Sigh. The forced updates only occur when you don’t update your pc regularly.
    End users are the worst.
    The way Microsoft did this may seem sneaky, but it’s advertising its new product.
    It’s the equivalent of those mobile game ads, but only happens once.
    Also, Edge is part of windows “core apps”, even if you don’t use it. That’s why you can’t delete it. This way you always have a browser to install Chrome or Firefox with.
    How much admin is it really to right click it and remove it from the task bar?

    Everybody whinges about updates without realizing the need for them.
    In this day and age, if you are connected to the internet, you should always keep your software updated.
    It goes for Windows, iOS and Linux.

    Side note: I once left my Ubuntu (with gnome installed) updates for over 2 months. When I finally updated, I had an entirely new UI and most of the stuff that kept crashing actually worked (This was 12.4 lts).

    TLDR: UPDATE yer damn PC!

    Reply

    • For the Emperor!

      July 7, 2020 at 11:40

      User: Oh noes, I got malware.
      IT: Did you update with the updates that has the anti malware tool to stop that?
      User: No, updates are for fools!
      IT: And getting infected is for noobs…

      Hehe. Yeah, I keep mine up to date. It irritated me that it opened automatically, but that was it and I felt no need to become an internet man-baby over it 🙂

      Reply

      • Lu

        July 7, 2020 at 13:12

        Haha facts.

        Reply

  3. MalicE_ZA

    July 7, 2020 at 10:08

    Don’t know what people are complaining about, I installed Edge Chromium when it launched just to try it out and it’s all I use now

    Reply

  4. Conan the Barbarian

    July 7, 2020 at 13:00

    Browsers MUST install updates regularly.
    Edge is now effectively an update for IE.

    Thus this is a good thing. People should stop complaining about nonsense.

    As for the person losing an hours worth of drawing… ever heard of saving?

    The update was so quick and easy, I didn’t even register that it happened.

    Reply

  5. SpeakingTruthNotPC

    July 7, 2020 at 17:08

    I have been using Windows since the very first version that 4 icons on the screen and a mouse pointer you could see from 200mtrs away. Microsoft has since then made it quite clear they see users and morons and does not care about their rights to what is installed on the hardware they purchased, their privacy with MS blatently snooping and stealing information off your machine and selling this information on, to their bully boy tactics with competitors in the software world like Netscape. Their tactics are the same used by Apple and seems that Facebook is following their tactics.

    If anyone dared read teh T&Cs of these products, one would realise that Microsoft windows may be purchased but by clicking accept, you actually give away your rights to own the overpriced product you shelled out a lot of money or bought pre-installed on your hardware. You give them the right to manipulate the hardware in anyway they want including changing settings, switching on microphones and cameras when they chose to. Several years ago wikileaks published a Powerpoint presentation given by Microsoft to Interpol and other police forces on how to use an SDK to extract data that stored and hidden on your computer by a super user. You cannot access the data without their SDK but it will reveal the extent that MS uses your hardware to track everything you do from all your rival software, who you email, message, web sites etc

    Windows has gone one better since then. They are now open that they are a super user on your PC and have locked large portions of the functionality from the user’s ability to change these. This may be simple tasks like disabling the Windows Update service (a new service was installed last month to stop this and it now repairs changes you make and re-enables it). Some updates are also not removable after they have been installed. Many faults have to involve the assistance of the MS help desk where a tech will access your machine as the super user and repair what they buggered up in the first place. It is something that users like myself would have done in 2 minutes ourselves but are now blocked from doing.

    Reply

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