WTF?! Google and Microsoft have spent years engaging in dirty tricks campaigns designed to push people onto their respective browsers, Chrome and Edge. The latest tactic is one employed by the Windows maker: Edge hides Chrome's download links for some users when they perform a Bing search for the browser.
As noticed by Windows Latest, searches for Chrome using Edge and via Bing (when signed out of your Microsoft account) on Windows 11 result in a "promoted by Microsoft" banner appearing at the top of the search results.
The banner is a recommendation by the Redmond firm, advising users there's no need to download a new web browser and highlighting that Edge offers a fast, secure, and modern web experience that saves time and money. It also comes with the obligatory "Try now" button.
Forcing obtrusive ads for its products down people's throats isn't new territory for Microsoft, of course. But this one arguably goes a little further by hiding the Chrome download links that are beneath the banner, and the small portion of the top Google result that is visible appears mostly blurred out.
It's easy to see the search results by clicking on the "See more" button further down the screen, and most people who do a search for Chrome likely intend to download it, no matter what Microsoft claims. However, less tech-savvy users may be persuaded by the banner's claims.
The other thing to note is that few people are likely to encounter this banner. Google has an almost 90% share of the global search engine market, whereas Bing has 4%. It's a similar story in the browser market: Chrome has a 68.3% share, Edge has just under 5%.
It appears that not everyone is seeing the banner. I couldn't get it to show, so it might be limited to a small set of users or certain locations.
Microsoft's war against Chrome goes back a long way. Some examples of its pushiness include the company telling people in 2021 that the rival browser was "so 2008" and Edge was better. There were also full-size Edge ads that appeared on the Chrome website, and Edge was accused of stealing data from Chrome without users' consent in January.
Google isn't a stranger to using such tactics, either. The company shows prompts to Edge users recommending Chrome, and in 2020 it showed a message that read "Google recommends switching to Chrome to use extensions securely" whenever Edge users visited the Chrome Web Store, though Google quickly removed that message.
Bing search results in Edge are obscuring Chrome links, promoting Microsoft's browser
