Google has been having what appears to be a bit of a love/hate relationship with its new cousin, Microsoft’s Edge Insider browser, ever since Edge made the move to Chromium. Most recently, Google’s YouTube blocked Edge Insider users from its new interface, which it later fixed. As it turned out, although Google engineers only admitted to a “bug in the detection logic,” it appeared to be a bit more than that:
Things I enjoy seeing on https://t.co/ZxEZpO95zj when loading using Microsoft Edge Canary:
html5_vp9_live_blacklist_edge=true
you would think an unsupported browser wouldn't get proper detection on the javascript code itself and also not get dedicated feature flags (see pic) pic.twitter.com/PyBgshO58A
— Gustave Monce (@gus33000) May 28, 2019
Now, a new warning is popping up for Edge Insiders using Google Drive, flagging the browser (for the first time in months) as unsupported:
A quick check shows that this too is a user-agent detection issue, changing the UA to Google Chrome makes the warning go away.
To be clear, flagging a browser as unsupported is not that unusual, but given Google’s rather unsavory history in messing with competitors, this may be yet one more indication that although they share a common browser engine, Google isn’t quite ready to welcome Edge with open arms.
Thanks for the tip, Kunal!
