Google Now Forces Microsoft Edge Preview Users to Use Chrome for the Modern YouTube Experience
- Mehedi Hassan
- May 28, 2019
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49
Microsoft started testing a new Microsoft Edge browser based on Chromium a little while ago. The company has been releasing new canary and dev builds for the browser over the last few weeks, and the preview is actually really great. In fact, I have been using the new Microsoft Edge Canary on my main Windows machine and my MacBook Pro for more than a month, and it’s really good.
But if you watch YouTube quite a lot, you will face a new problem on the new Edge. It turns out, Google has randomly disabled the modern YouTube experience for users of the new Microsoft Edge. Users are now redirected to the old YouTube experience, which lacks the modern design as well as the dark theme for YouTube, as first spotted by Gustave Monce. And when you try to manually access the new YouTube from youtube.com/new, YouTube simply asks users to download Google Chrome, stating that the Edge browser isn’t supported. Ironically, the same page states “We support the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and Edge.”
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The change affects the latest versions of Microsoft Edge Canary and Dev channels. It is worth noting that the classic Microsoft Edge based on EdgeHTML continues to work fine with the modern YouTube experience.
The weird thing here is that Microsoft has been working closely with Google engineers on the new Edge and Chromium. Both the companies engineers are working closely to improve Chromium and introduce new features like ARM64 support to Chromium. So it’s very odd that Google would prevent users of the new Microsoft Edge browser from using the modern YouTube experience. This is most likely an error on Google’s part, but it could be intentional, too — we really don’t know for now.
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Conversation 49 comments
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dontbe evil
<p>what a surprise /s</p><p><br></p><p>"don't be evil"</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<p>You guys are using alpha software, and are whining about how it doesn't work as expected. Seriously, stop all this bitching. Edge on Chromium is not even stable yet. Bitch when it's stable and Google breaks things. Jesus Christ! </p><p><br></p><p>There are other Chromium and non-Chromium based browsers that work just fine with Google services. Why hasn't Google broken their services for these browsers.</p><p><br></p><p>Google makes money when you use their services. It's the reason they invested in a their own browser and open sourced it. It's the reasons they've invested in the web the last 20 years. It's the reason they've invested in Open Source, in general. </p><p><br></p><p>It's makes no goddamn reason for them to deliberately block a browser accessing their services, unless said browser is not standards compliant, is in development, is insecure, or is misconfigured.</p><p><br></p><p>Making a big scene about how alpha software isn't working as expected is just idiotic and irresponsible.</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><em><a href="#430901">In reply to RM:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Windows Phone failed because it was shit. It had nothing to do with Google. The market made their choice. You Windows fanboys are delusional. </p><p><br></p><p>Is Google also responsible for Tizen's failure? How about WebOS? Of course, not. Why? Because Google is under no obligation to support a proprietary platform that doesn't benefit them.</p><p><br></p><p>Windows Phone was shit that why it failed. Get over it. Blaming Google for Microsoft's ineptitude is silly.</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><em><a href="#430903">In reply to jbinaz:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>It's not pretty stable if websites are getting confused by it. This Google is the boogeyman trope is getting played out. If ya'll hate Google so much, how both you stop fucking using their shit. Yes, that include Microsoft. </p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><em><a href="#430906">In reply to RobCannon:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>That's BS. I've been accessing Google services on alternative browsers for the past 20 years. So what pattern of abuse are you talking about? The only company with a pattern of abuse as far as the Web is concerned is and has always been Microsoft. So spare me.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#431017">In reply to mystilleef:</a></em></blockquote><p>Below you say "Google is under no obligation to support a proprietary platform that doesn't benefit them." It seems to me that the only "abuse" that Microsoft was guilty of with respect to the web was a failure to support other platforms that didn't benefit them. We realize you prefer Google to Microsoft, but I suggest trying to judge them using the same criteria. </p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><em><a href="#430906">In reply to RobCannon:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Of course it was working fine. But what if an update to Edge broke something. What if an update to YouTube that wasn't tested on Edge broke something. Web services are not static, a service like YouTube could deployed multiple times a day. And I doubt any company has a continuous integration test suite for Edge, a PRERELEASE software, that isn't even officially available.</p><p><br></p><p>Pattern of abuse my ass. The only company with a pattern of abusing the web is Microsoft. Microsoft and its fanboys need to get off their high horses now that they've found Jesus. After all, it was only a couple of years ago, that you'll thought everything Google did or made sucked.</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><em><a href="#430907">In reply to crfonseca:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>In your perfect bubble sure. In the real world, that's impractical. You test your website against the major browsers and blacklist against browser you haven't tested for. That's the responsible thing to do. Edge is prerelease software, anyone expecting devs to test against prerelease software is delusional.</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><em><a href="#430913">In reply to nbplopes:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Well, your experience is unique, because it works on every browser I've thrown at it.</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><em><a href="#430959">In reply to falken:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>And without Google there will be no Edge. So who needs who.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#431027">In reply to mystilleef:</a></em></blockquote><p>What? Without Google IE would probably still be the dominant browser, so MS got no favors from Google. </p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><em><a href="#430899">In reply to mystilleef:</a></em></blockquote><p>Using your logic, there was never a reason for Google to create Chrome because people could access their services just fine with the browsers already available. They knew that having their own browser would enhance their ability to make money which is the only reason they created one.</p>
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Bats
<p>Stuff like this happens when a component in Chrome is not working or disabled. Being that Microsoft stripped a lot of processes out of their version of the Chromium browser, I wouldn't be totally surprised.</p><p><br></p>