Google recommends switching to Chrome to use extensions securely

Now that Microsoft’s new browser has finally been released, the battle for the most popular Web browser continues.

Microsoft Edge offers similar user experience as the Chrome browser as it uses the same Chromium engine. With the same engine, the new Edge can use all of the extensions from the Chrome Web Store.

Even though the new Edge browser has its own extensions repository it still can’t compete with Chrome’s because it offers only a fraction from what’s available at Chrome’s Web Store. For this reason, Microsoft allowed the installation of third-party extensions including those from Chrome’s Web Store.

A couple of days ago, Edge users started receiving the following warning message when trying to install extensions from Chrome’s Web Store:

Google recommends switching to Chrome to use extensions securely.

Below the message, Google also posted a link to download Google Chrome.

Google did not explain why this is a security issue, but it might be related with the fact that in Chrome, extensions are being updated regularly and automatically to the latest version, while this can’t be done with extensions used in Edge since the Web store is a third-party download source.

It’s very interesting that both Opera and Brave browsers use Chromium engine and there is no warning message for their users when accessing Google’s Web Store.