Google's blocking new Microsoft Edge from accessing new design
Another accidental oops by Google that affects a competing web browser in a negative way; this time, users of the new Microsoft Edge browser are affected and the Google site that kicks Microsoft's browser this time is YouTube.
Microsoft Edge users may still access YouTube but they only get the old design at the time. Some may not mind, as the old design offers better performance than the new. Others may object to the blocking of the new layout on YouTube as it works perfectly fine in Microsoft's browser.
If you check out https://www.youtube.com/new/ in Microsoft Edge, you get a "your browser is not supported" message. That message is followed by the obligatory "get Google Chrome" instead message. Since there is no explanation as to why Edge is not supported while the classic Edge and other browsers are supported, some may switch to Google Chrome if the browser is not installed already.
Microsoft Edge users will notice that live chat is not working as well in the client at the time. YouTube displays a notification that the browser needs to be updated because it appears to be an older version.
There is no newer version, however.
The new Microsoft Edge browser is not available as a stable version at the time of writing and things may not work correctly in preview versions.
If a web browser supports features required to display a website on the other hand, that website should not go out of its way to block it from content or features.
If you change the user agent in the new Microsoft Edge, you will notice that you get access to the new YouTube design all of a sudden.
Live chat still does not work when you change the user agent though.
Closing Words
Microsoft has been anti-competitive in the past and some hold this against the company even today. My stance is that any form of anti-competitive behavior, especially from a position of power -- regardless if done on purpose, neglect, or accident -- is something that companies should be reprimanded for.
YouTube blocking Edge from functionality is not the first Google property that put a spoke in the new Microsoft Edge's wheel. Google Docs displayed an "unsupported browser" message to Edge users as well on any document page on the site.
Firefox was on the receiving end for a very long time and a former Mozilla executive accused Google recently of using a sustained pattern of "oops" and "delay" that hurt the browser immensely.
One interesting takeaway from this is that Google is still in a position to hurt competing browsers (be it actively or accidentally) even if these browsers use the same engine as Google Chrome.
Now You: What is your take on this development? Anything that can be done about it? (via Deskmodder)
Speaking of Google dominance regarding Chrome – read below (Boo! Hiss!)
https://9to5google.com/2019/05/29/chrome-ad-blocking-enterprise-manifest-v3/
If Alphabet feels that a specific Web browser should not have access, that’s fine. It’s a free world, right? Of course, commies don’t get it.
I don’t they are commies. I think they are spoiled Winblows brats who think that they are entitled to everything because of Winblows monopoly, everything has to be compatible with their Winblows programs.
this might be a non issue.
a common practice is indeed to check for version numbers, but the new egde is very low in version number, but is using chromium.
So Google sites might detect a chromium browser version 10.23.21848 (just typing something) and the minimum version is let’s say 65. thus the site shows a non supported version please upgrade.
that is why changing the agent version works. if you changed the version it might work too.
this is a common problem with version checks.
in the past programs checked for instance if you were running Windows 98 SP2? but then XP came out without a SP and programs would not run.
just to say it might not be intended by Google to do so, just a side effect of the new versioning
…which is also why Windows versions skipped from 8 to 10 (skipping 9), because of the lazy developers (mostly 3rd party) that just checked versions for Windows 9* and would assume that a brand new “Windows 9” was actually Win 95 or Win 98.
I’m sorry, but you either don’t know what a user-agent string is or never take a look at what the user-agent strings of Chrome and Edge say. Short answer is, no it is not about version check. The version number of Chromium Edge is same as Chrome Dev/Canary.
Chrome Canary user-agent string:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3800.0 Safari/537.36
Chromium Canary user-agent string:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3800.0 Safari/537.36 Edg/76.0.173.0
Now, do you see the difference? So please, do more study before you bring up 98/XP blahblahblah. It is totally irrelevant.
When will M$ integrate Chromedge/Edgemium into Win 10, in order to stop users uninstalling it.? *sarcasm*
I think it will disappear at some point, as it really has no point.
Could have been developed as ransom for some MS executive’s kidnapped poopdoodle dog.
In software, rationale is usually in your face obvious or hopelessly obscure. :)
“My stance is that any form of anti-competitive behavior, especially from a position of power — regardless if done on purpose, neglect, or accident — is something that companies should be reprimanded for.”
Oh, you’re pathetic. Your understanding of businesses and economics is so poor that you think a business refusing to support other businesses’ products and services is anti-competitive? No, that’s what competition is. Oh, yeah, it was an accident, doesn’t matter, bureaucrats still need to steal that money from the company, yeah! Typical socialist leftie.
After a little debugging I discovered that this is not Google blocking Edge, this is due to the MS Edge team typo-ing the user agent string. Instead of “Edge/76…” it is “Edg/76”. If you fix the user agent string in the development tools Edge will show the new UI.
People are all riled up, but come to find out that they’re riled up over nothing, and this isn’t Google or Microsoft being evil, it’s just a standard Developer fuck up.
It’s called Edg instead of Edge so that website won’t see it as the classic Edge which has “Edge” in the user agent string.
Payback time for Microsoft. They have corrupted the internet like no one else, except Google, in the bad old days. With the pairing of Windows XP and IE6 they gained more than 95% of both the PC and browser market shares. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/196170-microsoft-is-finally-allowed-to-once-again-set-ie-as-the-default-browser-in-windows
Childish behavior from Google, but it shows how low these tech giants will go. And that internet users have every reason to be worried. Decency has long since gone.
The amount of haters that turn to support monopoly on this site too much that I’m scared of the future.
Slightly off-topic, but I’m running Edge Canary builds on Windows 8. Is there ANY way of caching only in RAM, and placing tabs under the address bar?
We can haz your data?
For a site as big a YouTube I would expect a user agent whitelist to ensure certain user expectations are met. My guess is that it will be fixed before too long, assuming there aren’t actually things that broke because of changes that Microsoft made to their browser.
Hilarious. Why I can’t play 1080p Netflix in Chrome, Vivaldi, Brave and Opera?
Why it works only on Edge and the Chromium version of Edge?
They ALL are Chromium based now but it still keeps working only on Edge.
I have read that it uses Windows 10 DRM blob and only Microsoft has access to it and knows how to use it.
I have no sympathy for them, they get what they deserve.
I didn’t realize Chromedgium had been released beyond developer or preview builds. Google’s just stress testing it through all those previewers. Leave it to MS to build a browser that has user agent problems.
The most critical feature of Chromedgium is dark mode; no one will use it without that. MS should secure dark mode from any possible Google attack.
Chromium is owned by Google, so they can do whatever they want with it, “open source” (it’s not licensed fully open) or not. I doubt MS, a competitor, will sway Google even a tiny bit.
I don’t have the faintest idea what MS is doing in bed with Chromium; some herb concoction induced vision that yet another chrome-like browser, except with MS emblazoned on it, will displace Chrome’s dominance? Is MS’s corporate timeline memory so faulty they see this as revenge for events a decade before Chrome was launched?
Meanwhile Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla!
This too shall pass.
This is actually a good thing. Every new design Google rolls out gets slower and less user friendly. I’ll take ten year old Youtube over what it is today any day of the week.
I had a laugh in Windows subreddit reading all the Microsoft fanboys complaining and accusing Google for monopoly tactics. It’s always funny reading these fanboys accusing others for monopoly and at the same time defending Windows monopoly.
Just like the Googl€ fanboys who complain and accuse Microsoft of monopoly tactics while ignoring or defending Googl€’s monopoly that the EU has already punished Googl€ for.
Deal with it Anonee. You won’t be able to use YouTube in your M$ ecosystem. Like Linux users can’t use Photoshop because Abode is in bed with M$. The same way they have to use Windows to use the program, the same way you will have to use the supported browsers to use YouTube. They have survived, you will survive too.
@Anonymous, I don’t have to “deal with it” because I’m not invested into the MS or Googl€ ecosystem, thank god.
@Anonee, you are invested on M$ ecosystem, you are not fooling anybody. You type MS, not M$ and at the same time you type Googl€, not Google. You favour your sweet M$, when they are actually the same thing, large money grabbing corps. We don’t care about your youtube problems with the corp of your heart.
@Anonymous It’s MS, not M$ because that is the correct spelling. Clearly, you are using an inferior browser that has no spellchecker, probably one made by a money-grabbing outfit like Googl€.
If Adobe is in bed with Microsoft, why is it available on macOS?
Let me guess…Linux fanboy?
Nobody likes monopoly abuse. For rational people it’s not a question of being a fanboy. It’s simply good old fashioned good verses evil.
Why would Google have to buy out Canonical? Do you have a clue how your beloved open source actually works? Clue: they can just take Ubuntu and use it/sell it for free.
FYI Android didn’t kill off Windows 10 mobile. Android came many years before. Microsoft came to the market far too late and people were already deeply embedded with what they already knew.
Hongmeng is an android replacement not a desktop OS.
Don’t be a hater it clouds your judgement.
@ Womble
https://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-no-longer-provides-windows-licenses-to-huawei-526185.shtml
@ Womble
From newsdotsoftpedia – May 28, 2019:
Microsoft No Longer Provides Windows Licenses to Huawei
Huawei banned from using products from American firms
@ Womble
Again, “What is good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Free Ubuntu is not as user-friendly and fully GUI-based to the average masses as non-free Windows. Ubuntu needs further work to be palatable to the average masses.
Apple Lisa/MacOSX computers came out a few years before M$ Windows during the 1980s. How come Windows was not decimated by Apple MacOSX.?
Fyi, Huawei will have to replace both Android and Win 10 on her mobile devices(= smartphones/tablets/laptops) if the US ban holds.
Don’t be a hater, it clouds your judgment.
Are we expecting too much from a browser still in developer release? Edge Chromium hasn’t even made it to a beta release candidate yet so complaining about broken stuff is sort of what to expect when its at this phase isn’t it?
Since when a development product is prevented from access websites? How can people develop it when websites block it on purpose?
This exactly. It’s still just a development browser.
Edge 76.0.173 works great on every site, until I tried the link you posted. Maybe Google isn’t too happy with MS’s new Edge working a bit better and faster than Chrome does (at least for me, for now).
MS’s Edge is a Google product optimized by Microsoft. It’s not that hard for a corporation with the resources of Microsoft to optimize the work of others.
Just change user agent to this : Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/76.0.3800.0 Safari/537.36
Good. Google keep this copycat irrelevant. If Microsoft wants to promote Bing and their crap they should do it with their own code. Microsoft deserves this.
Just so you know, Chromium is an open source project.
Microsoft is hijacking Chrome and Firefox, launching Edge instead. Its not an accidental oops.
Microsoft’s Chrome and Firefox Security Extension Diverts Windows 10 Users To Microsoft Edge Instead
https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/05/25/microsofts-chrome-security-extension-diverts-windows-10-users-to-microsoft-edge-instead/#2bd3fd187c3b
If I were Google, I would buy up Canonical Inc and make Ubuntu to be as good and user-friendly to the average masses as Windows, in order to dethrone arrogant M$ once and for all from the world computer market, just like how Android has decimated Win 10 Mobile.
But maybe Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella have an Indian religious blood pact.
Or maybe Huawei’s new desktop OS “Hongmeng”(= Red People) will do the Job of decimating Win 10.
Hongmeng is a phone OS, so Googl€ will be dead very soon as Huawei kicks it out of the phone market.
lmao Groce, like Windows Phone OS, what a success haha. People want google apps and apps for twitter, facebook, messenger and instagram. Btw Hongmeng is going to replace Windows too in China. They may have success in replacing Windows, but a mobile OS with no popular apps is doomed to fail.
Do you sometimes have days when you don’t feel angry about trivial matters?
@ Anonymous
Do you sometimes have days when you don’t feel annoyed by Anonymous posters.?
Just use Invidious (https://invidio.us/) or any of its other instances (https://github.com/omarroth/invidious/wiki/Invidious-Instances) and let the wolves beat each other.
M$ demotes Chrome and Google Search while promoting Edge and Bing Search in Win 10. It is only just and fair for Google to demote Chromedge/Edgemium and promote Chrome in Youtube.
……. In fact, Google should do more to M$, eg demote M$ apps and services while promoting her own apps and services in Android.
“What is good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Microsoft should push an update that uninstalls Chrome from every Windows computer. Google needs to learn their place.
Google should block access to Google search, Gmail, Docs and Youtube in every computer that runs windows and allow them only in MacOS, ChromeOS, Android, iOS and Linux distros. Goodbye Windows….. Microsoft needs to learn their place.
Everyone is stupid and needs to learn their place. Oh wait…
What the hell are you talking about? Googl€ is always attacking other browser makers and has been for years before anything MS did to Google.
Furthermore, Googl€ is not allowed to do this stuff in the fire place as the EU has already found Googl€ of anticompetitive practices in the past for specifically doing stuff like this in the first place.
Also, what is with the weird “Chromedge/Edgemium” name? Do you also call the browsers Bravium, Operium, and Vivaldium?
@ Anonee
Microsoft is doing the same since the launch of Windows 10. Windows 10 launched years ago. Microsoft is using their power of controling the OS and constantly promotes Edge with lies like “Works better for Windows 10” when you try to select your browser of choice in settings.
@ Anonee
M$ has attacked other browsers since the 1990s by purposely integrating Internet Explorer into Windows, ie IE was built-in to Windows and cannot be uninstalled from Windows.
Eg when users bought a new OEM Win XP computer during the 2000s, they could not uninstall IE after installing Firefox. Most average users would remain using the built-in IE. By default, this disadvantaged other browsers.
Wow. I’m using the new Edge and YouTube has been working just fine, so when I saw this article I was confused. But yeah, suddenly YouTube is showing me the old layout all of a sudden. “Accidental” my arse. Funnily enough, I’ll get around this by using Google’s own user agent switcher extension. But still, this is stupid and Google are really pissing me off.
Get a browser that works or find another site to watch videos, like msn videos of your beloved microsoft.
Okay, I use Edge Chromium, not because I like Microsoft, but because it’s a genuinely good browser. Don’t be so hostile, because this user seems to use it for the same reason
Leon/Lisa there are genuinely better browsers which work everywhere. Not by greedy companies like Microsoft or Google. Use them and your problems will be solved.
Remember that brief and glorious time when web sties actually tried to adhere to HTML standards and avoided using browser-specific functionality or working around browser bugs?
Those were the days.
Short, sweet, and probably the best comment on this article. Yes, those were the days.
I’m not buying the “accidental oops.”
Bloomberg has an article today about Google doing things to harm other browsers: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-28/google-s-chrome-becomes-web-gatekeeper-and-rivals-complain?srnd=premium
I tried Edge on Windows 7 and the fact that Sync did not work was a huge turnoff for me. I eventually went back to Chrome.
I hope this misunderstanding gets cleared soon and maybe in the future Edge will become a fine browser.
Google forcing the old layout is not actually a bad thing, in fact it’s good, because it means I won’t have to install and extension to force the pre-photon layout.
It says right there in the article that’s it’s just useragent blocking. Doesn’t have anything to do with the removed features at all.
It also says: “Microsoft Edge users will notice that live chat is not working as well in the client at the time.” So there’s a definite issue beyond the user-agent blocking.
This is so ridiculous. The leaders of big companies are worse than children, and apparently have no spine whatsoever, all they see is money and power. You can only do this if you have lost touch with reality, as their decisions impact the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Google and Facebook are the worst. From what I know about google internals the entire company works with very dirty tricks to destroy the competition and even harm their own customers. (They have a very strange way of calculating ad-sense income. When you make >100k with adsense they may write you a thank you letter and you get personal phone support, but they still scam you out of a large percentage of your earnings with dubious claims)
With ad-blocking getting more prevalent, and competition like Brave and Edge emerging, Google tries every trick imaginable to stay on top. Let’s hope Microsoft manages to leverage its large Windows user base to become serious Chrome competition.
Google sabotaged Firefox for years, and Mozilla did nothing, knowing all too well that they are just a sub-division of Google.
They may think they can do the same with Edge, but I doubt it, Edge devs will quickly navigate around those attempts of Google to abuse their market power.
Apple selling access to google is another bad example of Google gaining power over other systems.
Today Edge 44.18362.1.0 works without redirection for me re
https://www.youtube.com/new/ .
Edge devs…. Is this a joke?
https://www.youtube.com/new/ using Internet Explorer 11.00.18362.113 also fails the same way under Windows 10 1903 (Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.18362.116]).
Or maybe it’s the result of Microsoft disabling every thing (dozens of ’em, remember) in Chromium Edge related to Google and its services?
Doubt that, worked just fine several days ago.
Works fine on my Edge, same info displayed as Chrome.
Oh the irony! A taste of their own medicine. Firefox is fine too. LMAO!