Is GOOGLE creating some problems for Edge on Chromium

[Somesh Bagadiya]

Hey Dani,

I am using the Edgeium browser(Chromium Edge:winktongue and noticed this(Check the screenshot attached). Can you answer this...?. After all, Edgeium is also based on chromium same as others mentioned in here.

#AskDanWindows

 

[pkcable]

Perhaps this is something that will be fixed before it's officially released. It's mostly just a developer preview right now.

 

[Drael646464]

Hey Dani,

I am using the Edgeium browser(Chromium Edge:winktongue and noticed this(Check the screenshot attached). Can you answer this...?. After all, Edgeium is also based on chromium same as others mentioned in here.

#AskDanWindows
View attachment 140799

There was an article about this. Google is checking the browser variable to basically see 'Is this edge', and if it is, blocking. Maybe someone can write an extension that spoofs, so the answer is 'this is chrome'.

But in answer to your question, yes google are being typical anticompetitive asshats, as per usual.

 

[tgp]

There was an article about this. Google is checking the browser variable to basically see 'Is this edge', and if it is, blocking.

My understanding is that it's more of a whitelist, browsers that have been verified to work. "Is this Chrome? Is it FireFox? Are you Safari? OK, you're good to go."

Edge Chromium is new and not even officially released yet. It makes sense that it would not be on a whitelist yet. I have no idea about the current Edge though.

Maybe someone can write an extension that spoofs, so the answer is 'this is chrome'.

Isn't this what the user agent does? This feature has been built into browsers since like forever.

 

[Drael646464]

My understanding is that it's more of a whitelist, browsers that have been verified to work. "Is this Chrome? Is it FireFox? Are you Safari? OK, you're good to go."

Edge Chromium is new and not even officially released yet. It makes sense that it would not be on a whitelist yet. I have no idea about the current Edge though.

Could be. We all know Google won't be falling over themselves to accommodate Microsoft either way. They used to be all about 'open', but not so much now.

Isn't this what the user agent does? This feature has been built into browsers since like forever.

IDK. Can you change it right now in edge, so that it works? Can you make a webpage think that Chrome is Firefox?

 

[tgp]

Could be. We all know Google won't be falling over themselves to accommodate Microsoft either way. They used to be all about 'open', but not so much now.

If you don't know, then I recommend not making assumptions.

IDK. Can you change it right now in edge, so that it works? Can you make a webpage think that Chrome is Firefox?

Yes, that is exactly what a user agent does. Like I said, the ability to change the user agent has been built in to browsers for a long time. I thought everyone on this forum would know about them. It's quite basic. I'm surprised you're not familiar with them. Check it out.

 

[pkcable]

Microsoft probably just needs to throw some cash at them! lol

 

[nate0]

Hey Dani,

I am using the Edgeium browser(Chromium Edge:winktongue and noticed this(Check the screenshot attached). Can you answer this...?. After all, Edgeium is also based on chromium same as others mentioned in here.

#AskDanWindows
View attachment 140799

If you want google services and to use them just use them. However you hit the nail on the head.

 

[nate0]

Yes, that is exactly what a user agent does. Like I said, the ability to change the user agent has been built in to browsers for a long time. I thought everyone on this forum would know about them. It's quite basic. I'm surprised you're not familiar with them. Check it out.

You can do if from the console tool or a couple other ways...when there is no work around it is a lower level of code that you can't alter directly. I thought duo was almost dead anyway.

 

[Ryujingt3]

@Somesh Bagadiya:

I've been through all this already and solved the issue. I even tipped of this site, but they never printed it.

Try again in Edge Chromium 76.0.152.0 and see if it works properly. For me it does, whereas sites like Google Meet in previous versions gave the same error message as in the original post.

Here's how I got around it:

1 - Install User Agent Switcher from the Chrome Web Store here

2 - Edit the Google Chrome Windows user agent string to be:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/73.0.3683.86 Safari/537.36

3 - Set the option inside the User Agent Switcher extension to remember the selected user agent at start-up.

 

[Drael646464]

If you don't know, then I recommend not making assumptions.

I've got no past experience to recommend charity towards Google's motivations. If this gets altered in favour of Edge, I'd be fairly surprised. Almost shocked.

After all, Edge running chromium lowers motivation to install chrome, and it also runs app-ized PWA's like googles PWA's (maps for eg), offering a google app experience to windows, something Google has fought for about a decade actively.

If they came out and helped Edge in like any way, it would be a complete reversal of a long-standing pattern of anti-competitive behaviour.

God, if Microsoft ever purchased DuckDuckGo, which internationally is at least as good as Google search, arguably better in terms of being free of tracking and results sculpting, I think Google would go nuclear.

Search after all, is by far Google's biggest revenue stream, hence why they push chrome and android, to get users into their search, and should it ever die, the company could fade into obscurity.

Yes, that is exactly what a user agent does. Like I said, the ability to change the user agent has been built in to browsers for a long time. I thought everyone on this forum would know about them. It's quite basic. I'm surprised you're not familiar with them. Check it out.

I worked in IT for 2 years, did a diploma in computing, but no I've touched it. Guess I'm no expert on browsers or web standards. The name rings a bell.

 

[tgp]

I've got no past experience to recommend charity towards Google's motivations. If this gets altered in favour of Edge, I'd be fairly surprised. Almost shocked.

I realize that the Google hate here is strong. However, it should not be hard to rationalize a browser in beta not making the whitelist.

None of these competitors like each other. Microsoft doesn't like Google any more than Google likes Microsoft, and they try to hobble Google every bit as much as Google tries to hobble Microsoft. That's the nature of competing business. Each of them do whatever they feel will give them the edge.

Because they play in somewhat different arenas, their actions will differ. However, switch Microsoft and Google's positions, and Microsoft would probably do exactly what Google is doing, and vice versa.

Now let me make a speculation: Remember when Microsoft didn't provide Office apps for iOS and Android? The assumption was that it was to promote Windows Phone. However, instead of users dropping iPhone and Android for Windows Phone, they were dropping Office. Hence the iOS and Android Office apps. Microsoft did not do it to be charitable to Apple and Google, although it could have appeared that way. They did it because they had no choice.

 

[fatclue_98]

I realize that the Google hate here is strong. However, it should not be hard to rationalize a browser in beta not making the whitelist.

None of these competitors like each other. Microsoft doesn't like Google any more than Google likes Microsoft, and they try to hobble Google every bit as much as Google tries to hobble Microsoft. That's the nature of competing business. Each of them do whatever they feel will give them the edge.

Because they play in somewhat different arenas, their actions will differ. However, switch Microsoft and Google's positions, and Microsoft would probably do exactly what Google is doing, and vice versa.

Now let me make a speculation: Remember when Microsoft didn't provide Office apps for iOS and Android? The assumption was that it was to promote Windows Phone. However, instead of users dropping iPhone and Android for Windows Phone, they were dropping Office. Hence the iOS and Android Office apps. Microsoft did not do it to be charitable to Apple and Google, although it could have appeared that way. They did it because they had no choice.

Chicken or the egg? You could argue Google is being the sour puss because of the licensing fees Google has to pay Microsoft for Android. On the PC side of things I’m sure Google would whatever it could to stick it to Microsoft and get away with it.

 

[tgp]

On the PC side of things I’m sure Google would whatever it could to stick it to Microsoft and get away with it.

Certainly, Google does stick it to Microsoft in any way they can. Microsoft does the same to Google.

Google likely would never have been able to get off the ground without the PC, so one could argue that they owe their very existence to Microsoft. But there is no benevolence on either side.

On both sides, it's a case of "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em."

 

[Drael646464]

I realize that the Google hate here is strong. However, it should not be hard to rationalize a browser in beta not making the whitelist.

None of these competitors like each other. Microsoft doesn't like Google any more than Google likes Microsoft, and they try to hobble Google every bit as much as Google tries to hobble Microsoft. That's the nature of competing business. Each of them do whatever they feel will give them the edge.

Because they play in somewhat different arenas, their actions will differ. However, switch Microsoft and Google's positions, and Microsoft would probably do exactly what Google is doing, and vice versa.

Now let me make a speculation: Remember when Microsoft didn't provide Office apps for iOS and Android? The assumption was that it was to promote Windows Phone. However, instead of users dropping iPhone and Android for Windows Phone, they were dropping Office. Hence the iOS and Android Office apps. Microsoft did not do it to be charitable to Apple and Google, although it could have appeared that way. They did it because they had no choice.

My experience as that the company that lags or is still growing, tends to remember it's values. MSFT doesn't lag in general, but it lags in some areas. Of course the profit models differing also makes for different practice. Personally, google's anticompetitive practice isn't what bugs me most. It's their idea of telling people what to think, or what search results they are 'supposed to want'.

I'm under no illusion thinking that corporatism fosters a sense of unbridled principle and charity. I just happen to favour where MSFT 'sits', as someone who's revenue has stuff all to do with search and who's PR outreach is a tad more connected to disability and AI ethics than politics.

 

[tgp]

I just happen to favour where MSFT 'sits', as someone who's revenue has stuff all to do with search and who's PR outreach is a tad more connected to disability and AI ethics than politics.

I couldn't care less about this stuff, personally. I use a product for what it is. I don't care who or what is behind it. I save these passions for the loved ones in my life, not some faceless (to me) company.

 

[Drael646464]

I couldn't care less about this stuff, personally. I use a product for what it is. I don't care who or what is behind it. I save these passions for the loved ones in my life, not some faceless (to me) company.

I can't personally restrict my concern for humanity to a handful of people. It's not in me. Maybe I'm overly principled. But, MSFT just signed the christchurch accord, so forget what I said, they are just the same as the others. Literally no different. So good timing, for what you said being completely right.

 

[tgp]

I don't know much about the Christchurch accord, but to me its one of those things where a tech company cannot win. Do you make a conscious effort to reduce online crime, or do you allow unrestricted free speech? You kind of lose either way.

 

[Drael646464]

I don't know much about the Christchurch accord, but to me its one of those things where a tech company cannot win. Do you make a conscious effort to reduce online crime, or do you allow unrestricted free speech? You kind of lose either way.

Online crime is certainly complex. There has been drug dealing, black market organs, weapons, assasination traded online for awhile; there are child slave rings, and sexual black mail porn rackets, as well as terrorist networks operate like ISIS. Most of it on the deep web, but some in quite mainstream places.

This accord isn't targeting them though, it's targetting 'online extremists' particularly of the white nationalist persuasion (hence the name, Christchurch call). You might consider it a sort of hunt.

Me? It baffles me that it isn't obvious to people how to increase the fundamental humanity of online interactions; which is IMO the issue that actually leads to lost empathy, tribalistic conflict, bullying and cultures of antagonism BEHIND the rise in say, white nationalism (or equally soon to be terrorist groups like antifa). This massive rise in political polarisation did not occur before the rise in the internet, and to lesser degree physical globalism. They are in a way, problems of societies at impersonal, anonymous scale. Things we have known about the internet since the 70s in scientific studies, have no once been intergrated into our social media; like the empathy inducing effect of seeing a live face, rather than a wall of text. The positive impact of a smaller community with a culture of ettiquette.

Or maybe they realise that the WAY we interact online is the fundamental problem and they just don't care because a corporation given orders to censor speech and rifle through peoples underwear drawers is a free pass to profit and power.

Either way, there's no good outcome to further disenfranchishing the sorts of people they are targetting (and the ones they are not).

There's using solid evidence to go knock on a door, and then theirs armed me knocking on doors with no real evidence, and asking pointed questions. The former is fine, for online crime. The later is not (and it's already happened here in NZ due to tweets and timeline posts post christchurch where actual armed police have shown up intimidating and asking about online posts)

It's quite clear people are already being disenfranchised by online bans, shadowbans, language policing and so on. To take that up and notch, encode it into law, to have all big tech co operating and sharing data about it.....

I'm sure the CEO's and representatives in boardrooms all feel like they are doing a good thing, motivated by right, rather than fear. There's often vast applause to some of the most fool hardy courses of action.

The world might be better off, if we simply had a psychologist in every room making major decisions about human life to inform people as to how we tick, when emotion blinds the obvious.

They could be like "have you considered that white nationalists already have a victim complex, and that's their entire motivation?" "Don't you think living up to the delusional paranoia of fringe identitarians might set them off?" "And what about ordinary people that get caught up in the filter, won't they be resentful?"

It reminds me a little of how we bush went to war in iraq, and went after osama. There was a chorus of people saying 'you'll kill people, make them resentful, and produce more terrorism'. Today, we have ISIS, and we'd probably gladly swap them for al qaeda.

The voices are saying the same here "You'll make people resentful, and produce more extremists", and like then, no one is listening. I guess in that way, due process, and things like 'rights' that we have when it comes to govt agencies and police, don't just make things fairer, they prevent antagonism between the people and the state. Which is always a delicate balance.