14 DAY TRIAL // It’s not a secret that Google isn’t quite the biggest supporter of Microsoft’s mobile efforts, but in addition to not offering any of its apps on Windows Phone (except for the search app, which is kind of useless), it turns out that the company has also made another unexpected change.
It’s not yet clear if this is a recent thing or not, but Windows 10 Mobile users browsing Google News with Edge browser are being served with what seems to be the WAP version of the service instead of the modern one that’s currently available on other platforms such as iOS and Android.
A post on Reddit reveals that when the user agent is set to Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 Mobile, Google News loads the classic version that was designed for old devices, and not the modern one that’s specifically optimized for smartphones.
Only on Windows 10 Mobile
As you can see in the photo attached to this article, this seems to happen only on Windows 10 Mobile, as the iOS version still looks fine, so it’s clearly a change impacting Microsoft users exclusively.
While it’s hard to tell why exactly Google is serving the WAP version of the news service to Edge users, this can only lead to more criticism from the Windows community, especially because the Mountain View-based company has until now refused to bring any of its apps on Windows Phone.
Everyone expected this to change with the arrival of Windows 10 Mobile, and there were even some rumors that Microsoft and Google might reach an agreement to bring apps such as Gmail and Google Maps on its new smartphone operating system, but so far, there’s no sign of such a partnership.
Right now, most Windows 10 Mobile users who can’t live with this version of Google News are expected to switch to Bing News or any other similar app available on the platform, including the built-in News or Flipboard.