Microsoft wants Windows users to stop using Google Chrome and switch to Edge. This browser battle will only end when new AI browsers disrupt the market. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s latest Windows upgrades have just given users two reasons to change their browser. One is unsurprising, but the other is much more critical for millions of users.
Microsoft has frequently used its control of Windows to market Edge to users installing or updating Chrome. It has even hidden Chrome and changed the look and feel of Edge to match. But above all, it has promoted Edge as a better, safer alternative.
It has just done so again, hyping Edge as “the only browser built for Windows, offering the most seamless PC browsing experience with AI-powered tools, productivity features, and built-in performance and security features that help you browse quickly and safely.”
Security messages are controversial — in the past Microsoft has even used attack warnings to push Edge over Chrome as a better means to protect Windows. But the primary focus here is AI, and the seamless integration between Edge and Windows.
And AI is also behind the second “change your browser” message. This is all about Recall. The Windows 11 photographic memory that continually screenshots everything a user does on screen and then optically reads and indexes all that content, which is then stored in a searchable repository stored on the local device.
Recall V1 was itself recalled due to security and privacy concerns. It has now relaunched with better redaction for sensitive data and storage protection, but still with huge gaps.
Even secure messages on a Windows screen will be screenshot and stored, which is highly controversial. Signal has manipulated Microsoft DRM technology to prevent its own app from being captured by Recall’s all-seeing eye.
And on the browser front Brave has done the same. “Recall is back, and Brave is ready for it,” the secure browser’s developers have just posted. “We will disable it by default for Windows 11+ users, with a toggle to turn it back on for users who really want Recall.”
One of the protections Microsoft has added to Recall covers private browsing. “Many web browsers support a concept of “InPrivate” browsing, where the user’s history does not get saved.” And so “to make sure that Recall doesn’t save a user’s browsing history,” Microsoft offers developers a “SetInputScope” function to mark windows as privacy.
And Brave has done exactly that. “We’ve extended that logic to apply to all Brave browser windows” its developers explain. “We tell the operating system that every Brave tab is ‘private’, so Recall never captures it.”
Brave has just under 2% of the desktop browser market, whereas Chrome has just under 70%. If Google really wants to send a privacy salvo over to Microsoft, it could now do the same. Absent that, users who actually want Recall but also want to protect their browsing from its gaze, now have an option to do exactly that.
