Microsoft plans to incorporate an ad-blocking feature within the next version of the Edge browser.
At the recently concluded Microsoft Build conference held in San Francisco, the company showed a slide confirming that it is indeed building ad-blocking features into the browser. These features should launch with the next browser version. The company added that the browser with the ad-blocking features built in will have version number 4682811.
If things will go as planned, Microsoft Edge will be the second major browser that has an ad blocker baked in. It also confirms one of the road maps that Microsoft has for Edge, as it aims to eliminate the need for an ad-blocking extension, something that most power users are eagerly waiting for.
In addition to Microsoft Edge, Opera also announced recently that it is testing its desktop browser with an integrated ad-blocking feature in order to deliver a faster browsing experience. The move has made Opera the first browser in the world to have ad-blocking software. Since the feature natively runs within the Opera browser's Web engine, it brings faster speeds than any other third-party ad-blocking extensions.
Microsoft, meanwhile, touts the Edge browser as something that delivers new ways for users to "find stuff, read and write on the Web." Some of its notable features include Hub (a repository of all the things the user collects on the Web); faster searching right from the address bar; Reading List (a place for saving articles and other content for future reading); Reading View (a clean and simple layout to deliver the best reading experience); Web Note (direct writing, typing and doodling on the Web page) and easy sharing of notes to others.
Microsoft is yet to announce when exactly it plans to launch the ad-blocking software on the future versions of Edge. Recently, the company started seeding the Edge browser with a couple of supported extensions to Windows Insiders.
