14 DAY TRIAL // We’ve known for a while that Google isn’t really the biggest supporter of Microsoft products, but you’d think that the software giant moving its browser from EdgeHTML to Chromium would change this rather hostile approach.
And after previously listing the Chromium-based Microsoft Edge as unsupported on a series of services, like Google Docs, Google is now going a step further and blocking the browser completely from connecting to the new version of YouTube.
As reported on Twitter, Edge can’t be used to load the refreshed YouTube interface, of course, not without changing the user agent to emulate Google Chrome.
“Your browser is not supported. Try it with the latest Google Chrome,” a message displayed on YouTube reads when the page is loaded in the new Microsoft Edge browser.
As a result, Windows 10 and macOS users who installed Microsoft Edge preview on their devices are stuck with the old version of YouTube.
Google says it’s just a bug
Restricting access to the new YouTube isn’t necessarily surprising, not because of Google trying to favor its own browser, but because Edge itself is a work in progress. However, since the whole purpose is to test both the service and the browser, such a restriction makes no sense, as users would pretty much be blocked from trying out the new YouTube if this limitation stays in place.
In a statement, however, Google says the whole thing is just an accident and promises to resolve it as soon as possible.
“We're aware that users of a preview version of Chromium-based Edge are being redirected to the old version of YouTube. We’re working to address this issue. We're committed to supporting YouTube on Edge and apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing,” Google says.
Microsoft Edge is currently available in preview for Windows 10 and macOS, and a testing version for older Windows releases is expected in the coming months.