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Microsoft Edge gets "unfair advantage", browser makers claim (www.techradar.com)

submitted 1 month ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Some of the top browser makers around have issued a letter to the European Commission (EC) alleging that Microsoft gives the Edge browser an unfair advantage and should be subject to EU tech rules.

A letter seen by Reuters, sent by Vivaldi, Waterfox, and Wavebox, and supported by a group of web developers, also supports Opera’s move to take the EC to court over its decision to exclude Microsoft Edge from being subject to the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

As Edge comes pre-installed by default on Windows machines, users must navigate the Microsoft offering in order to download their browser of choice. The letter states that, “No platform independent browser can aspire to match Edge's unparalleled distribution advantage on Windows. Edge is, moreover, the most important gateway for consumers to download an independent browser on Windows PCs.”

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[–] dgmib@lemmy.world 92 points 1 month ago (19 children)

I’m not defending Microsoft… but if we’re going to go after a tech company for leveraging their other assets to give themselves an unfair advantage can we also go after Google?

In the first releases of Edge, Microsoft tried to build a new web browser from scratch to compete with Google Chrome. By google kept changing YouTube’s code so that videos would playback janky on Edge. Microsoft eventually gave up trying to fix for YouTubes ongoing changes and now Edge is based on Chromium (the same open source web browser maintained by Google, that chrome os built on). Google leveraged YouTube to prevent completion from Edge.

And now Google is blocking ad blocking extensions so that users are forced to see more google ads in their browser.

Microsoft’s has leveraged their unfair advantage to get a little over 5% market share.

Google’s leveraged their unfair advantage to get 66% of the market.

Both companies need a hard smack down, but I want to see Google taken down too.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 1 month ago (9 children)

The early versions of edge were absolutely terrible and didn't support modern standards. I fully believe that YouTube didn't work on Edge but I don't believe it was anything to do with Google and everything to do with Microsoft not being able to build a web browser.

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

History disagrees with you on this one.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

What do you mean history disagrees with me? If you look at reviews of Microsoft edge when it released pretty much all of them talk about how it lacked compatibility with modern standards and was nowhere close to feature complete. Large parts of the HTML5 spec were missing, including any support for webm or ogg encoding.

[–] sunbeam60@lemmy.one 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I mean that there is several indicators that Google did indeed try to sabotage other browsers on YouTube.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

That was a claim that was made yes, but never proven.

Meanwhile what I said is demonstrably verifiable. Early versions of Microsoft edge that they put out were an absolute travesty, and all of the criticism leveled at it was 100% earned, it had nothing to do with any machinations from Google. Microsoft made a terrible browser put it out to the general public and were rightfully criticized for it. They couldn't fix it so they switched to chromium.

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