5 ms·

Microsoft Edge is now the second most-used desktop browser

60 points by Garbage 6y ago

Neil44 6y ago
It was bound to happen, since it's been the default on W10 for so long now.
lolc 6y ago
> But all of these show that Microsoft Edge is now a fully-featured alternative to Google Chrome Given that it uses Chrome's engine, Edge isn't an alternative to Chrome. It's just an alternative version of Chrome. Sure, from a user perspective, it's an alternative. From a dev perspective, it adds to the dominance of Chrome.
- err4nt 6y ago
  From a dev perspective it also loosens Google's grip on Chromium, the #1 rendering engine :D Having Microsoft collaborate and diversify that project is a major win for all of us. I am hoping/wishing that Mozilla will drop gecko development and repackage WebKit - it would be great for them to join forces and pool resources with the #2 engine!
  - timw4mail 6y ago
    No, absolutely not.
  - alunchbox 6y ago
    It's not just a drop in replacement and since Firefox quantum the rending engine has felt butter smooth. Overall Firefox personally 'feels' faster than Chrome, just a personal view but I do love Chrome's developer tools. Not sure if there's a way to improve Firefox's developers tools to bring it in line with a similar experience.
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
      It's such a shame that failing to test on Firefox became acceptable in dev communities right around the time that Quantum happened and Firefox got back into the fight. Just a year of acceleration on Quantum's timeline, or a year of slippage in Chrome's, could have made such a difference.
  - Yizahi 6y ago
    There is no such thing as Chromium, it is just a Chrome-lite. Nobody took Chromium and made a separate browser with a separate code from what Google pushes in the trunk. All others do is just add or remove whatever Google allows them, while accepting all serious commits coming down from Chrome. Webkit on the other hand had produced truly different engines - Chromium and Safari, developed differently and making different decisions. If Mozilla with switch to Chrome engine it will be yet another Chrome with mods.
    - judge2020 6y ago
      That's only because all of these alternatives want to benefit from the free labor Google is putting into Chrome. If Microsoft wanted to, they could actually fork the entire project but then they would need to divert a lot of manpower to the effort.
  - lolc 6y ago
    I think that would be a precarious situation for Mozilla. Not to say the current situation is a good one. So I'm sure they're weighing this. But let's assume they switch to Webkit. In itself that is a huge investment. Then either they track whatever Google wants to do with Webkit, or they fork. But once they fork, they're pretty much on their own again. So there was no gain. To profit from Google's dev, they have to track whatever Google does, and maintain patches for their own things that Google doesn't want to merge. In some important ways, they'd be dependent on Google. Their direct competitor.
    - err4nt 6y ago
      Mozilla is kept alive by Google funding, without Google Mozilla simply wouldn't even exist right now to be building anything. They are direct collaborators, not enemies.
      - lolc 6y ago
        True, I forgot about that part.
- sys_64738 6y ago
  M$ Edge will dilute the Chrome brand to the extent that corps will simply use Edge instead. Eventually Edge become the defacto 'Chrome' browser to the extent that everybody refers to Chrome as Edge. M$ is very clever.
  - jsjddbbwj 6y ago
    Go back to Slashdot with your "M$" bullshit
    - jjoonathan 6y ago
      This kind of evil cleverness evokes the Slashdot-era Microsoft. It seems appropriate to resurrect the nicknames. Bill-Bashing can stay buried now that he has moved on to charity, though.
prophesi 6y ago
This doesn't seem to be the case? I visited NetMarketShare myself, and showed the market share stats for all browsers, excluding bots/spiders. It then shows Chrome > Safari > Firefox > IE11 > Edge. Pardon the large, ugly URL, but this is the filter I used: https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24nin%22%3A%5B%22Bot%20or%20spider%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222019-04%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222020-03%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22... Edit: I see now that softpedia is talking about desktop browsers only. Even then, Edge is in fourth place. https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222019-04%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222020-03%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22... Edit #2: forthefuture found the filter they're using, so you can disregard the above.
- forthefuture 6y ago
  It's an aggregate of the months you're selecting (2019/04 - 2020/03). If you select just March you can see what they're seeing: https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Custom%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222020-03%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222020-03%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22...
  - prophesi 6y ago
    Ah, thank you. I wish they included the URL, or shown the entire filter they used.
chrisseaton 6y ago
I can't understand how Safari is on only 3.6%. Why aren't all those iPhone users pushing it up?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- taffer 6y ago
  The article is about desktop browsers.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
vijaybritto 6y ago
Why is it so hard for a mammoth company like MS to maintain their own browser?! Is this because gaining market share with an alternate browser is simply impossible?
- err4nt 6y ago
  These technologies are very deep, and the pool of developers with the skill, time, desire, and understanding to hack on these things is a very shallow pool to pull from. It seems like a lot of companies working on browsers are under-staffed so we seem to be experiencing more cross-company teamwork and collaboration than ever before - which is _great_ for standards and pushing us forward at a faster pace than before!
  - rightbyte 6y ago
    I don't want more internet standards or faster pace.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I would have thought most developers would absolutely jump at the chance to work on something as core as a browser! Having Chrome or Safari on your resume seems like it'd be golden.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- foepys 6y ago
  I think the product management was bad. The browser was always full of quirks on how to use it and configuring felt bad. It lacked features and the feature that were there were always bad. They also never were innovating except for some DRM stuff. IT savvy people just installed all their friend and family Chrome because they were also using it and it works.
- xenocratus 6y ago
  https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.html https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.... This is why
err4nt 6y ago
This doesn't seem to reflect the stats I look at [1], which are - 1/3 people people using Chrome - 1/10 people using Safari - 1/20 people using Firefox - 1/50 people using Edge - 1/50 people using IE Firefox hasn't been #2 browser in a LOOOOOOOONG time 1: https://caniuse.com/usage-table https://caniuse.com/usage-table
- lucideer 6y ago
  This article is about desktop browsers.
nma18 6y ago
It's important to note that the article says that Edge is the 2nd most used desktop browser. Including mobile, Edge lags far behind Chrome, Safari and Firefox.
- SimeVidas 6y ago
  Wikipedia’s analytics say it’s the 5. most used desktop browser: https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop-site-by-browser/browser-family-and-major-hierarchical-view https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop...
DeathArrow 6y ago
The most important thing is not Edge surpassing Firefox, but the fact that Edge switched to Chromium, so Firefox is the only alternative to Chrome. And FF market share is tiny. That is bad for end users and businesses alike.
- bad_user 6y ago
  Firefox and Safari. Safari may be proprietary, but its engine remains OSS and you could fork it, which is what Google did. That said I'm a happy Firefox user.
- rubber_duck 6y ago
  Not really - if Microsoft is unhappy with how Google is handling Blink they can just fork, just like Google forked WebKit - there is a sufficient number of big players competing in this area - having a shared open source rendering engine is a good thing. I like Mozilla because of Rust efforts and I recently tried switching on OSX since Chrome is a CPU hog and I was looking in to alternatives - Firefox was the most unstable experience I had in years - I had a news site consistently crash the browser tab which also caused audio in other tabs to get screwed up, occasional redraw issues (flickering when resize), developer settings that are trivial to find in chrome (disable localhost CORS with SSL) - just a subpar experience.
Semaphor 6y ago
Germany, desktop, statcounter: chrome 44.65%, ff 25.5%, safari 8.8% and edge just below it (can't get it to show the exact number on mobile). and fwiw, I think new Firefox installs since last year block most of those trackers by default
purple-again 6y ago
Side effect from all the Windows VM's spun up by IT departments trying to lift and shift into the cloud ASAP due to COVID?
SimeVidas 6y ago
According to Wikipedia’s traffic analytics, Firefox has 13% and Edge has 5% on desktop. https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop-site-by-browser/browser-family-and-major-hierarchical-view https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop...
h91wka 6y ago
Edge is packaged with Windows. Chrome used Trojan horse tactics to get into the computers. Back in the 2010s when it just appeared, almost any popular freeware installer got sneaky "Also install Google Chrome and make it the default browser" checkbox. So, underhanded tactics are extremely efficient. Therefore, I expect that Firefox will keep losing shares. Making a better browser won't help them.
garkin 6y ago
I personally use Edge almost daily for their awesome in-browser TTS and reading-mode feature. I inspire you to try it. For general purpose Google account integration convinience grip is yet overweights their constant effort to ruin UI and extensions. Also Edge App Store still lacks uMatrix, but already has uBlock Origin.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > I personally use Edge almost daily for their awesome in-browser TTS and reading-mode feature. I inspire you to try it. Why should I use Edge for that, instead of Firefox (which also has TTS in its reader-mode)?
  - garkin 6y ago
    I just tested it. They use built-in Microsoft Sam as TTS (at least in Windows), old and awfull. TTS in the Edge is pretty close to the bleeding edge. It's good. Both English and Russian. And Edge is still a gorgeus Chromium without recent time UI degradations and without ad- and privacy- blocker intolerant management. Personally i have a prejudice against Firefox for subjectively poor and ugly UI and old scars from their rendering issues.
    - catalogia 6y ago
      Well you'd not catch me dead using Windows to be frank. MacOS has the best offline TTS available to consumers right now, so that's what I use for TTS.
Ylodi 6y ago
NetMarketShare? They have been loving Microsoft for a very, very long time. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
formercoder 6y ago
Anyone else anecdotally notice that Edge's power usage is much better than Chrome's?
danso 6y ago
Another datapoint: according to analytics.usa.gov [0], and ignoring Safari (which counts iOS users), Edge (4.1%) is the 3rd most used browser behind IE 11 at 4.7%. Firefox is at 3.5%. [0] https://analytics.usa.gov/ https://analytics.usa.gov/
tssva 6y ago
Mozilla lost any chance of me switching to Firefox the moment they spammed me about switching. Something Google, Microsoft nor Apple have done regarding their browsers.
- the_other 6y ago
  Your loss.
40four 6y ago
For anyone who comes straight to the comments, I recommend passing on this article. If you already clicked through, I'm sorry :) It it misleading, the writer is only considering desktop usage, and then constraining the data the the month of March. The 'evidence' is in the form of a single screenshot, from his lone data source NetMarketShare. He is trying to hype it up as some sort of 'grand' milestone. Here is another data source that says otherwise - https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-202003-202003-bar https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl.... Other commenters have also pointed out data that conflicts this premise. It is poorly written, and over the top. The poster used the subtitle here, but the real title of the article is 'History in the Making: Microsoft Edge Overtakes Mozilla Firefox'. Also making points such as "While some expect Microsoft Edge to become the world’s top desktop browser...". Come on man. Finally, it is just not that interesting. The real story should be, some Firefox/ IE users decided to try out the new Edge in the month of March, after a flashy new version was released. Maybe Edge really will continue to claw a few points of market share, let's follow up in a few months. But this particular article is really poor.
- zrm 6y ago
  It's hardly even the right story on the desktop. It was obviously going to be the case that Edge would take market share from IE over time, because it acquires users in the same way that IE did (by being the default on Windows), and they're the same users. At one point IE was the number one desktop browser. So this is really just a continuation of the story about how Microsoft lost its browser dominance to Chrome, and then conceded defeat by adopting its engine.
  - wayneftw 6y ago
    Well, I was there and during the first browser wars and I saw users and developers choosing IE because it was faster and had more features than Netscape. Thanks to Microsoft we got XMLHttpRequest (AJAX) and Web 2.0 (DHTML, iframes). IE was just a better browser and that's how it gained market share - the same way Chrome did. The fact that IE was the default was secondary. If being the default was all that was needed, IE would have never lost any market share. Having your competitor do all the work and then using it to your advantage sounds like a win to me though. Also as a user and a developer I consider it a win on multiple levels. I'm happy that every desirable target platform now has a default embeddable browser engine derived from a common high-quality WebKit heritage. I also now have a major non-Google fork of Chrome to choose from, one that I know will be there for the next decade.
kazinator 6y ago
Another Windows thing Microsoft needs help from Google now is multilingual input. The Japanese IME in Windows 10 is borked. The solution? Install Google Japanese Input, never look back. (It must be working somehow in Japanese Windows 10 sold in Japan, but it's broken in English Windows.)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
butz 6y ago
Microsoft Edge is now the second most-used desktop browser ... to download alternative browser after installing Windows. First is still IE11.
DigitallyFidget 6y ago
Meanwhile I'm using Vivaldi, which has been a great experience ever since leaving Firefox behind.
non-entity 6y ago
I used edge for a while when I did a fresh install of windows and was too lazy to install anything else. It was overall fine but had a few issues that annyoed me. For one a ton of sites or malls would block me from using an "unsupported browser". I'm sure the sites would have worked just fine, and that it was lazy whitelisting of UA strings and not Edge's fault itself. It also still seemed to crash a lot for me, although not as much as when it was first released. And, of course, there was that article posted on here a few weeks(?) back that mentioned how edge has the most intrusive "telemetry".

60 points by Garbage 6y ago

It was bound to happen, since it's been the default on W10 for so long now.

lolc 6y ago

> But all of these show that Microsoft Edge is now a fully-featured alternative to Google Chrome Given that it uses Chrome's engine, Edge isn't an alternative to Chrome. It's just an alternative version of Chrome. Sure, from a user perspective, it's an alternative. From a dev perspective, it adds to the dominance of Chrome.

err4nt 6y ago
From a dev perspective it also loosens Google's grip on Chromium, the #1 rendering engine :D Having Microsoft collaborate and diversify that project is a major win for all of us. I am hoping/wishing that Mozilla will drop gecko development and repackage WebKit - it would be great for them to join forces and pool resources with the #2 engine!
- timw4mail 6y ago
  No, absolutely not.
- alunchbox 6y ago
  It's not just a drop in replacement and since Firefox quantum the rending engine has felt butter smooth. Overall Firefox personally 'feels' faster than Chrome, just a personal view but I do love Chrome's developer tools. Not sure if there's a way to improve Firefox's developers tools to bring it in line with a similar experience.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    It's such a shame that failing to test on Firefox became acceptable in dev communities right around the time that Quantum happened and Firefox got back into the fight. Just a year of acceleration on Quantum's timeline, or a year of slippage in Chrome's, could have made such a difference.
- Yizahi 6y ago
  There is no such thing as Chromium, it is just a Chrome-lite. Nobody took Chromium and made a separate browser with a separate code from what Google pushes in the trunk. All others do is just add or remove whatever Google allows them, while accepting all serious commits coming down from Chrome. Webkit on the other hand had produced truly different engines - Chromium and Safari, developed differently and making different decisions. If Mozilla with switch to Chrome engine it will be yet another Chrome with mods.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    That's only because all of these alternatives want to benefit from the free labor Google is putting into Chrome. If Microsoft wanted to, they could actually fork the entire project but then they would need to divert a lot of manpower to the effort.
- lolc 6y ago
  I think that would be a precarious situation for Mozilla. Not to say the current situation is a good one. So I'm sure they're weighing this. But let's assume they switch to Webkit. In itself that is a huge investment. Then either they track whatever Google wants to do with Webkit, or they fork. But once they fork, they're pretty much on their own again. So there was no gain. To profit from Google's dev, they have to track whatever Google does, and maintain patches for their own things that Google doesn't want to merge. In some important ways, they'd be dependent on Google. Their direct competitor.
  - err4nt 6y ago
    Mozilla is kept alive by Google funding, without Google Mozilla simply wouldn't even exist right now to be building anything. They are direct collaborators, not enemies.
    - lolc 6y ago
      True, I forgot about that part.
sys_64738 6y ago
M$ Edge will dilute the Chrome brand to the extent that corps will simply use Edge instead. Eventually Edge become the defacto 'Chrome' browser to the extent that everybody refers to Chrome as Edge. M$ is very clever.
- jsjddbbwj 6y ago
  Go back to Slashdot with your "M$" bullshit
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    This kind of evil cleverness evokes the Slashdot-era Microsoft. It seems appropriate to resurrect the nicknames. Bill-Bashing can stay buried now that he has moved on to charity, though.

prophesi 6y ago

This doesn't seem to be the case? I visited NetMarketShare myself, and showed the market share stats for all browsers, excluding bots/spiders. It then shows Chrome > Safari > Firefox > IE11 > Edge. Pardon the large, ugly URL, but this is the filter I used: https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24nin%22%3A%5B%22Bot%20or%20spider%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222019-04%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222020-03%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22... Edit: I see now that softpedia is talking about desktop browsers only. Even then, Edge is in fourth place. https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Trend%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222019-04%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222020-03%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22... Edit #2: forthefuture found the filter they're using, so you can disregard the above.

forthefuture 6y ago
It's an aggregate of the months you're selecting (2019/04 - 2020/03). If you select just March you can see what they're seeing: https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22%24and%22%3A%5B%7B%22deviceType%22%3A%7B%22%24in%22%3A%5B%22Desktop%2Flaptop%22%5D%7D%7D%5D%7D%2C%22dateLabel%22%3A%22Custom%22%2C%22attributes%22%3A%22share%22%2C%22group%22%3A%22browser%22%2C%22sort%22%3A%7B%22share%22%3A-1%7D%2C%22id%22%3A%22browsersDesktop%22%2C%22dateInterval%22%3A%22Monthly%22%2C%22dateStart%22%3A%222020-03%22%2C%22dateEnd%22%3A%222020-03%22%2C%22segments%22%3A%22-1000%22%7D https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%22...
- prophesi 6y ago
  Ah, thank you. I wish they included the URL, or shown the entire filter they used.

chrisseaton 6y ago

I can't understand how Safari is on only 3.6%. Why aren't all those iPhone users pushing it up?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
taffer 6y ago
The article is about desktop browsers.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

vijaybritto 6y ago

Why is it so hard for a mammoth company like MS to maintain their own browser?! Is this because gaining market share with an alternate browser is simply impossible?

err4nt 6y ago
These technologies are very deep, and the pool of developers with the skill, time, desire, and understanding to hack on these things is a very shallow pool to pull from. It seems like a lot of companies working on browsers are under-staffed so we seem to be experiencing more cross-company teamwork and collaboration than ever before - which is _great_ for standards and pushing us forward at a faster pace than before!
- rightbyte 6y ago
  I don't want more internet standards or faster pace.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  I would have thought most developers would absolutely jump at the chance to work on something as core as a browser! Having Chrome or Safari on your resume seems like it'd be golden.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
foepys 6y ago
I think the product management was bad. The browser was always full of quirks on how to use it and configuring felt bad. It lacked features and the feature that were there were always bad. They also never were innovating except for some DRM stuff. IT savvy people just installed all their friend and family Chrome because they were also using it and it works.
xenocratus 6y ago
https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.html https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.... This is why

err4nt 6y ago

This doesn't seem to reflect the stats I look at [1], which are - 1/3 people people using Chrome - 1/10 people using Safari - 1/20 people using Firefox - 1/50 people using Edge - 1/50 people using IE Firefox hasn't been #2 browser in a LOOOOOOOONG time 1: https://caniuse.com/usage-table https://caniuse.com/usage-table

lucideer 6y ago
This article is about desktop browsers.

nma18 6y ago

It's important to note that the article says that Edge is the 2nd most used desktop browser. Including mobile, Edge lags far behind Chrome, Safari and Firefox.

SimeVidas 6y ago
Wikipedia’s analytics say it’s the 5. most used desktop browser: https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop-site-by-browser/browser-family-and-major-hierarchical-view https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop...

DeathArrow 6y ago

The most important thing is not Edge surpassing Firefox, but the fact that Edge switched to Chromium, so Firefox is the only alternative to Chrome. And FF market share is tiny. That is bad for end users and businesses alike.

bad_user 6y ago
Firefox and Safari. Safari may be proprietary, but its engine remains OSS and you could fork it, which is what Google did. That said I'm a happy Firefox user.
rubber_duck 6y ago
Not really - if Microsoft is unhappy with how Google is handling Blink they can just fork, just like Google forked WebKit - there is a sufficient number of big players competing in this area - having a shared open source rendering engine is a good thing. I like Mozilla because of Rust efforts and I recently tried switching on OSX since Chrome is a CPU hog and I was looking in to alternatives - Firefox was the most unstable experience I had in years - I had a news site consistently crash the browser tab which also caused audio in other tabs to get screwed up, occasional redraw issues (flickering when resize), developer settings that are trivial to find in chrome (disable localhost CORS with SSL) - just a subpar experience.

Semaphor 6y ago

Germany, desktop, statcounter: chrome 44.65%, ff 25.5%, safari 8.8% and edge just below it (can't get it to show the exact number on mobile). and fwiw, I think new Firefox installs since last year block most of those trackers by default

purple-again 6y ago

Side effect from all the Windows VM's spun up by IT departments trying to lift and shift into the cloud ASAP due to COVID?

SimeVidas 6y ago

According to Wikipedia’s traffic analytics, Firefox has 13% and Edge has 5% on desktop. https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop-site-by-browser/browser-family-and-major-hierarchical-view https://analytics.wikimedia.org/dashboards/browsers/#desktop...

h91wka 6y ago

Edge is packaged with Windows. Chrome used Trojan horse tactics to get into the computers. Back in the 2010s when it just appeared, almost any popular freeware installer got sneaky "Also install Google Chrome and make it the default browser" checkbox. So, underhanded tactics are extremely efficient. Therefore, I expect that Firefox will keep losing shares. Making a better browser won't help them.

garkin 6y ago

I personally use Edge almost daily for their awesome in-browser TTS and reading-mode feature. I inspire you to try it. For general purpose Google account integration convinience grip is yet overweights their constant effort to ruin UI and extensions. Also Edge App Store still lacks uMatrix, but already has uBlock Origin.

catalogia 6y ago
> I personally use Edge almost daily for their awesome in-browser TTS and reading-mode feature. I inspire you to try it. Why should I use Edge for that, instead of Firefox (which also has TTS in its reader-mode)?
- garkin 6y ago
  I just tested it. They use built-in Microsoft Sam as TTS (at least in Windows), old and awfull. TTS in the Edge is pretty close to the bleeding edge. It's good. Both English and Russian. And Edge is still a gorgeus Chromium without recent time UI degradations and without ad- and privacy- blocker intolerant management. Personally i have a prejudice against Firefox for subjectively poor and ugly UI and old scars from their rendering issues.
  - catalogia 6y ago
    Well you'd not catch me dead using Windows to be frank. MacOS has the best offline TTS available to consumers right now, so that's what I use for TTS.

Ylodi 6y ago

NetMarketShare? They have been loving Microsoft for a very, very long time. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

formercoder 6y ago

Anyone else anecdotally notice that Edge's power usage is much better than Chrome's?

danso 6y ago

Another datapoint: according to analytics.usa.gov [0], and ignoring Safari (which counts iOS users), Edge (4.1%) is the 3rd most used browser behind IE 11 at 4.7%. Firefox is at 3.5%. [0] https://analytics.usa.gov/ https://analytics.usa.gov/

tssva 6y ago

Mozilla lost any chance of me switching to Firefox the moment they spammed me about switching. Something Google, Microsoft nor Apple have done regarding their browsers.

the_other 6y ago
Your loss.

40four 6y ago

For anyone who comes straight to the comments, I recommend passing on this article. If you already clicked through, I'm sorry :) It it misleading, the writer is only considering desktop usage, and then constraining the data the the month of March. The 'evidence' is in the form of a single screenshot, from his lone data source NetMarketShare. He is trying to hype it up as some sort of 'grand' milestone. Here is another data source that says otherwise - https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-202003-202003-bar https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl.... Other commenters have also pointed out data that conflicts this premise. It is poorly written, and over the top. The poster used the subtitle here, but the real title of the article is 'History in the Making: Microsoft Edge Overtakes Mozilla Firefox'. Also making points such as "While some expect Microsoft Edge to become the world’s top desktop browser...". Come on man. Finally, it is just not that interesting. The real story should be, some Firefox/ IE users decided to try out the new Edge in the month of March, after a flashy new version was released. Maybe Edge really will continue to claw a few points of market share, let's follow up in a few months. But this particular article is really poor.

zrm 6y ago
It's hardly even the right story on the desktop. It was obviously going to be the case that Edge would take market share from IE over time, because it acquires users in the same way that IE did (by being the default on Windows), and they're the same users. At one point IE was the number one desktop browser. So this is really just a continuation of the story about how Microsoft lost its browser dominance to Chrome, and then conceded defeat by adopting its engine.
- wayneftw 6y ago
  Well, I was there and during the first browser wars and I saw users and developers choosing IE because it was faster and had more features than Netscape. Thanks to Microsoft we got XMLHttpRequest (AJAX) and Web 2.0 (DHTML, iframes). IE was just a better browser and that's how it gained market share - the same way Chrome did. The fact that IE was the default was secondary. If being the default was all that was needed, IE would have never lost any market share. Having your competitor do all the work and then using it to your advantage sounds like a win to me though. Also as a user and a developer I consider it a win on multiple levels. I'm happy that every desirable target platform now has a default embeddable browser engine derived from a common high-quality WebKit heritage. I also now have a major non-Google fork of Chrome to choose from, one that I know will be there for the next decade.

kazinator 6y ago

Another Windows thing Microsoft needs help from Google now is multilingual input. The Japanese IME in Windows 10 is borked. The solution? Install Google Japanese Input, never look back. (It must be working somehow in Japanese Windows 10 sold in Japan, but it's broken in English Windows.)

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

butz 6y ago

Microsoft Edge is now the second most-used desktop browser ... to download alternative browser after installing Windows. First is still IE11.

DigitallyFidget 6y ago

Meanwhile I'm using Vivaldi, which has been a great experience ever since leaving Firefox behind.

non-entity 6y ago

I used edge for a while when I did a fresh install of windows and was too lazy to install anything else. It was overall fine but had a few issues that annyoed me. For one a ton of sites or malls would block me from using an "unsupported browser". I'm sure the sites would have worked just fine, and that it was lazy whitelisting of UA strings and not Edge's fault itself. It also still seemed to crash a lot for me, although not as much as when it was first released. And, of course, there was that article posted on here a few weeks(?) back that mentioned how edge has the most intrusive "telemetry".