Google Docs Offline in works for Edge. Good news?

In a surprising turn of events, users of Microsoft Edge Canary have reported the automatic installation of the Google Docs Offline extension on their devices.

The discovery was made by Edge enthusiast @Leopeva64, who noticed the extension’s presence on Edge Canary but found it absent on the Dev, Beta, and Stable versions of the browser. It appears that this installation is part of another experimental feature being tested exclusively on Canary.

The “Google Docs Offline” extension has been automatically installed on one of my devices on Edge Canary, I checked on Dev, Beta and Stable and the extension is not installed on any of those versions, so it looks like this is another experiment on Canary. pic.twitter.com/eMyEDAqrJE

— Leopeva64 (@Leopeva64) June 14, 2023

The extension is DISABLED by default on Edge Canary.

This extension is also installed by default in Chrome (Canary and Dev in my case), so it seems that Microsoft has adopted this feature from Chromium. pic.twitter.com/vsK1O34VAP

— Leopeva64 (@Leopeva64) June 14, 2023

It is worth noting that the extension is disabled by default upon installation on Edge Canary, indicating that it may still be under development or being evaluated for compatibility. Interestingly, this is not the first time Microsoft has incorporated features from the Chromium project into their browser. The Google Docs Offline extension already comes pre-installed on Chrome Canary and Dev versions.

The Canary channel of Edge serves as a testing ground for the Redmond-based technology giant, allowing them to conduct experiments before implementing them for the general user base. As an exclusive feature available only to insiders, it is expected that the Canary channel may contain occasional bugs or glitches.

As we’ve also previously reported, it is worth noting that several PDF-related bugs have been identified in the latest release of Edge, version 114.

Are you excited about Google Docs Offline in Edge? Let us know in the comments!