Microsoft Edge, true to its name, may have found another way to gain an edge over Google Chrome The newly revealed browser change indicates that Microsoft is looking to combat the worst part of the Internet: annoying videos that play automatically on websites You know those clips that no one asked for that seem to scratch the record needle in your brain when they suddenly start playing?

The news comes from Techdows, which points out a change in the Canary (pre-beta) build of Chromium-based Edge: there are two settings for media autoplay in Edge: in new versions of the browser, the latter is the default The latter is the default in newer versions of the browser To try it yourself, make sure you have Edge build 9108410 or higher

As you may have guessed, "restrict" is not the same as "block There was a "block" option, but it is now locked behind a flag that must be enabled first And apparently it has never actually worked correctly Nevertheless, this may just be a test Beta versions of products often only show what a company is trying to do, not what it will do in the long run

That said, there is no reason why Edge shouldn't get serious about autoplay If Microsoft launches an ad campaign to disrupt Chrome's autoplay videos, it would probably be the biggest moment in the browser's current short history

On the other hand, as Chrome users know because they use Google's web browser on a daily basis, the software has no such default Perhaps this is because Google is no more than an online advertising-based company No one can say for sure, as Google itself has not revealed the reason for this

This is (apparently) the latest in a series of efforts by Microsoft to poke at Chrome's near monopoly in the browser market Recently, Edge added vertical tabs for more economical use of screen space and its own password manager

Nevertheless, Edge currently accounts for only 345% of the global browser market (according to statcounter) Put another way, Chrome has 1859 times Edge's market share This is a huge gap that must be recovered