Has anybody at Microsoft actually used the Edge Bar?

I recently opened Microsoft Edge (97) and it is now promoting a new feature (Edge Bar) that seems to duplicate much of what the Windows 11 widgets already do.

Anyway, the experience has been abysmal that I wonder if anybody at Microsoft actually used it before foisting a half-baked product on Edge users.

So as you can see here, I'm logged into Outlook which is linked to my Windows account - but the Edge bar forces me to log-in to Outlook again...  It also does not work correctly with my corporate account.

It gets better!  The LinkedIn button opens a LinkedIn log-in -- and tells you that LinkedIn is better on the app...

So, if you click "Open App", it directs all that Microsoft Bing traffic to... you guessed it...  Google Play!  

And it even asks you to sign in with a Google account HAHAHAHAHA

Curious as to what is happening - it looks like the Edge Bar has a odd user-agent masquerading as an Android device... which results in Microsoft's own LinkedIn not dealing with it correctly.  (Indeed, Bing also asked me to install a Google Play app, but I cannot recreate that anymore).

What needs to be fixed?  Ideally, please get rid of the Edge Bar, it is terrible, and is not needed.  But if marketing is intent on forcing this monstrosity on loyal Edge users, please, at least, make it work properly instead of funnelling traffic to Bing's biggest competitor!

Thank you 🙂