A Microsoft Edge advertisement pleading with users to continue with the company’s browser has been seen being inserted into the Chrome download page on Google.com.
As reported this week by Neowin, when Chrome Canary and Edge Canary were attempted to be downloaded and installed simultaneously, a banner ad for Edge was displayed in the Edge browser window.
The banner that sits atop the “Browse securely now” button declares that “Microsoft Edge works on the same technology as Chrome, with the extra trust of Microsoft.”
It’s unclear how this advertisement appeared on a Google web page at google.com/chrome/canary/thank-you.html. When a user navigates to the Chrome download page on Google.com, Edge appears to display the advertising by itself, which is a touch pushy.
An individual familiar with browser development confirmed to The Register that he could reproduce the ad, which was said to be written in HTML but wasn’t placed “in” the page. He described the ad as its own browser window that, surprisingly, was viewable with Edge’s “Inspect” option for viewing source code.
Our source speculated the ad was implemented in a way that pushes down the “Content area” – the space where loaded web pages get rendered – to make space for a second rendering area that holds the ad.
The main content area and the ad content area do not interact with each other – they exist in separate worlds, so to speak. But the presence of the ad content area can be inferred by checking the main window’s innerHeight and outerHeight parameters.
Given two browser windows, one with the ad and one without, the main window with the ad will have an innerHeight value that’s less than a similarly sized window without the ad. The difference in the two measurements should correspond to the height of the ad content area.
