Did Microsoft Play a Prank? Google and Other Search Engines Missing in Edge

Microsoft, notorious for pushing its products and services in Edge, seems to have removed Google and other search engines such as DuckDuckGo, Yahoo. We noticed this yesterday in the Canary version, which coincidentally falls on April 1st. But with today’s update, Edge Canary has restored these search engines, so was that a possible bug that only affected me or others, or did Microsoft make some fun of its users?

Microsoft Edge, irrespective of which version you use—release/stable, beta, Dev, and Canary—comes with Bing as the default search engine, with SEs also available for users to make default, such as Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Google.

With the new Edge settings, you can see the main search engine used in the address bar by visiting Settings > Privacy, search, and services > Search and connected Experience > Address bar and search. No surprises here: Microsoft favors its own Bing and it is the search engine used by users unless they change their search engine to others, which is also easy—they can select one from the dropdown and set as default.

Microsoft Edge also shows all address bar search engines in the same section when you click Search engines.

What surprised or quizzed us was yesterday’s, except Bing, other search engines were missing. Since we heard no chatter about this from others, we thought we were only affected but were interested to know what happens with the Edge Canary update. With today’s update, Version 136.0.3234.0, Microsoft Edge restored those search engines and they are available.

So what could’ve gone wrong? We have not removed any search engines intentionally nor played with flags for that outcome. In case you have still not updated Edge Canary today or noticed this change, let us know your thoughts on this in the comments below.

Apart from this mishap, Microsoft will soon let users personalize Edge with dual themes—image and color—from its appearance settings. Additionally, Edge could replace the Tab Actions menu with a dedicated Tab Search button, similar to Chrome.