Microsoft Edge Picks Up Two Additional Extensions This Week

Earlier this week we introduced you to the 20th Microsoft Edge extension uBlock Origin, a popular open source ad blocker, and the third different ad blocker to join the slowly growing collection of extensions for Microsoft's latest browser.

Those 20 extensions grew by two more on Wednesday when the Microsoft Edge Developer Twitter account (@MSEdgeDev) revealed that Ghostery and RoboForm Password Manager have been added to the stable of Microsoft Edge extensions bringing the total to 22.

Before we talk about the seemingly slow growth of this library of extensions, let's take a closer look at these two new additions.

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Ghostery

Increase your browsing speed, privacy, and protection.

Ghostery detects and blocks tracking technologies on the websites you visit to speed up your page loads, eliminate clutter, and protect your data and privacy for a cleaner, faster, and safer browsing experience.

Significantly speed up the web by minimizing trackers weighing down your system.

Get the content you want without the page clutter you don’t.

Be informed and take control of your data and browsing experience.

Trackers connect you and your browsing data to companies across the internet so that they can target you with ads and communications. These trackers slow down page load time as they transmit your data via third-party technologies, increase clutter on websites with ads and pop-ups, and put your information at risk as they share your browsing behavior with other companies. Using Ghostery to block trackers makes browsing faster, cleaner, and safer enables you to focus on the content you really want.

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RoboForm Password Manager

RoboForm is a password manager that automatically remembers your passwords so you'll never have to remember or type your passwords again. It also can fill long registration and checkout forms from personal profiles called Identities. Password Generator is included. This is a version of RoboForm that allows you to use your Logins from your RoboForm Everywhere account in Edge browser.

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Ghostery is the first privacy management extension for Microsoft Edge while RoboForm is now the second password management app for the browser.

So why, after almost five months are there only 22 extensions available to Microsoft Edge users?

Well, as many of you know, I keep an eye on diffrerent discussions and developments on social media and earlier this week I came across this conversation between Zac Bowden from Windows Central and Kyle Pflug who works on the Microsoft Edge Web Platform team.

So as you can see above, the Microsoft Edge extension store is not completely open to developers so they can begin submitting their own extensions. Apparently the extremely curated collection is going to remain small as they continue to pace its growth until some point in the future.

In a later tweet Pflug indicated there was not any news to announce concerning when the Store would open up for public submissions.

Extensions have been enabled for users since the release of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update back in August of this year and the toolkit for converting existing Chrome extensions to Microsoft Edge has been available as a Universal Windows Platform app since that same time frame.

That has been over four months and for right now there is no sign that public submissions are going to become possible anytime in the near future.

Maybe this will happen in conjunction with the Creators Update release which is expected in Spring 2017.

More to follow.

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.