Microsoft Edge (the Chromium version) is an excellent browser for use in I.T. scenarios. Particularly better than Google Chrome when it comes to resource management, IE-mode with the enterprise-mode site list, direct single-sign-on integration with Windows’ “Access Work or School” within the Microsoft 365 suite, and near-infinitely customisable with group policy. Even the surf game is much better than Chrome’s aging dinosaur hop game. What’s not to like?
Oh yeah, Bing…
Bing is awful. Perhaps we’re all spoiled with Google’s PageRank search engine. They might be a huge problem when it comes to privacy, but in any case the search engine works and works very well. I’ve tried riding the DuckDuckGo train as it aligns closer with my privacy mindset of “opt-in first”, and it’s not the same. Bing is of course much worse than that though, which makes it the Achilles heel (or rather hell) in the otherwise excellent browser.
Unfortunately because Bing is so in-your-face within Edge, it’s the main reason people use it as a “launchpad browser” to download Chrome or Firefox, and avoid the Edge experience altogether from then on.
That’s why I recently spent a bit of time taking advantage of the group-policy controls available for Microsoft Edge to completely replace the Bing experience with Google
Running the attached REG file will set Google as your default search engine Edge-wide and includes functionality to replace the search-by-image option and auto-complete search results as you type. It will also allow you to install add-ins from the Chrome Web Store.
If you need to undo this, you can simply change the settings within Edge or remove the keys that are set by the registry file by reviewing these individually.