Microsoft Edge Sucks Up Chrome Data Without Permission

If you’re tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Most of those who use Microsoft products – Windows, and the Edge browser included – must by now be well conditioned to accept that the software they run and the data they believe they own isn’t really something they control. And perhaps this is why a “feature” as astonishing as Edge automatically importing tabs open in Google Chrome – even when Microsoft browser’s import tool is disabled – has been known for months, without getting fixed (assuming it was a bug). But it looks like a “bug” in the company’s thinking, one of many – not exactly a software one. It’s definitely a feature, after all. Both Edge and Chrome are based on the same Chromium engine, which should make the “operation” easier; and Microsoft and Google are birds of a feather when it comes to invasive and controversial practices and behavior toward end-users. And when they feel they have to be, they’re not particularly nice to each other, either. Some reports suggest that this “tab-stealing” feature is in fact “just” Microsoft’s way of trying to steal users from Chrome and get them to, willy-nilly, switch to Edge. A Verge reporter and a Windows and Chrome (and occasionally Edge) user described the ordeal, the gist of which is that the tabs left open in their default Chrome browser got imported to Edge after a Windows update and a reboot. No surprise that the user…Microsoft Edge Sucks Up Chrome Data Without Permission