The FBI has just issued a new email attack warning, advising users how to stay safe, as holiday season attacks surge. Alarmingly, phishing emails and malicious websites are now aided by new AI tools that make everything more likely to trick users into becoming victims. Multiple warnings in recent weeks have confirmed this is the most dangerous holiday season ever for email and web attacks.
Against this backdrop, Microsoft is again pushing Windows users to switch to Edge, which it says “helps you stay protected while you browse by blocking phishing and malware attacks.” This has become a repeated theme—system messages that push Microsoft’s products under a security pretext. It’s a definite grey area.
As spotted by Windows Latest, “new references to some potential new pop-ups in Edge encourage users to get back to Microsoft Edge. One reference is titled ‘msNurturingDefaultBrowserBannerUX2OneBtn,’ and likely points to some button in the browser encouraging people to set it as the default browser.” This it says is “all part of the tech giant’s efforts to bring more people to Microsoft Edge.” Albeit these latest changes are still in development and have not been released yet.
While Edge has been creeping up on Chrome—to an extent, Google’s browser still dominates the Windows desktop market with four-times the number of Edge users, even as Microsoft’s browser has grown its market share a couple of points in 2024.
“Could this help change the tide and encourage more people to try Microsoft Edge?” Windows Latest asks. “It’s possible.” Yes, possible but unlikely. Despite campaign after campaign, and even with multiple privacy and security stories over recent years, Chrome’s user base has shown itself to be as hard to shake as Windows 10’s.
But there is potential change in the coming months, and it has nothing to do with Microsoft’s popups or its security and safety campaign. The biggest threat to Chrome remains a regulatory one, with the DOJ still threatening to force its divestment from Google. A move Google says would be an “extreme” remedy.
Meantime, Windows users will likely just have to ignore the latest popup campaign, even with the giant cursor per Windows Latest’s screenshots. “What even is that,” they say—and rightly so. The bigger issue even than the huge cursor is the button choice. ‘Confirm’ changes the default browser to Edge, while ‘Set Later’ means “you’re basically confirming your approval for another follow-up pop-up in Microsoft Edge. This doesn’t mean you do not want Edge as your default browser, and unfortunately, it’s not possible to remove these messages.”
Almost all Microsoft’s Edge pushes have used security as their driving theme. The same has been seen in the Chrome setup process on a new Windows install. While arguably there are security advantages in Edge over Chrome, Google is narrowing the gap. Its latest AI-powered scam detection echoes the same feature coming to Edge.
Where Microsoft is likely to find more success is the enterprise market, where it argues that a joined-up solution comprising its various security platforms and services is a safer bet for a CISO than a mixed bag of offerings. Clearly if people get used to Edge at work they may do the same at home.