Microsoft has revealed a new tactic in its campaign to persuade Windows 11 users to switch to the Edge browser – and it’s a 3D banner, no less.
I suppose that’s a bit different from the usual nags I’ve seen from Microsoft, which has tried so hard, for so very long, to cajole users into switching to Edge. And honestly, some of these attempts have gotten rather tiresome.
This most recent move to entice new users is a pop-up banner that appears when you open Edge directly (or when opening a file, like a PDF, which is set to fire up Edge), and it features a prompt to get you to set Edge as your default browser.
Going by the screenshot taken by Windows Latest, the banner tries to sway you by stating that Edge will protect you against phishing and malware attacks while employing some kind of a limited three-dimensional effect with the visuals here.
In the past, Microsoft has made many attempts to get people to switch to Edge. A classic example is the experience when you’re trying to download Google Chrome on a new machine – you’ve got to use Edge as it’s there by default in Windows 11 – and a banner pops up letting you know that Edge is just as good, if not better and that there’s no need to download Chrome.
While I can’t comment on the effectiveness of these kinds of banners and pop-ups, I can say that it’s not a concept that works for me. Personally, having multiple nag panels trying to get me to do something is not an approach that works – in fact, it kind of makes me more determined to never open Edge ever again.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t think Edge is an explicitly bad browser by any means, and with the recent AI improvements and features implemented by Microsoft, it has become more popular. However, by now, Microsoft should know that nobody likes a nag, and every little nudge and push makes me – and probably others, too – less likely to give Edge a try.
For now, I’ll stick with Google Chrome and dismiss these prompts out of principle.