The new Edge is pretty much Chrome with an Edge skin. It does all the fancy Chrome syncing, it integrates with your browser extensions and it works with websites as well as Chrome does. Now, here’s where it gets dicey on the appeal. See, let’s say you have two products. Product A which you’ve used for a long time and like, and Product B, which is new. Product B is the same as Product A, this is good for Product B, but now you have no incentive to change. If Microsoft Edge is now Google Chrome, then Chrome users have no reason to switch to Edge. It’s a bit worse if Product B is a rebranded version of a Product C which you tried and now actively dislike. Edge is Pepsi, and Chrome is Coke except Edge also used to taste like dollar store cola before so you’re not really sure you’d want to risk it again.
I have the Edge preview installed, but I have to agree with the linked article – I really see no reason to use Chrome with an Edge skin. I used to use the original Edge because not only was it quite fast on Windows, it also integrated well with Windows both behaviourally and visually. The new Edge looks like Chrome, and just stands out like an eyesore.
I doubt the new Edge will achieve much higher user figures than the original Edge, making me wonder if it’s even worth the effort.
Maybe because Microsoft might privacy rape you less than Edge will? And the latter might allow ad-blockers more easily?
Or use Brave or Dissenter or another Chromium fork.
It’s to stop bleeding on new installations, and put a real EOL support to some things. Like, it’s really time to rebuild that webapp that someone exported from Access.
To stop the bleeding and hope Google makes a strategic screw up like the recent adblock extension fiasco, or like their own screw up when they tried to end the resale market for console games when revealing the Xbox One. The tables can turn on Google much easier if your product is nearly identical.
Edge will be bundled with Windows and Microsoft is getting ready to phase out IE. Chrome still needs to be installed separately. Edge will be the most shipped browser in a few years. Ancient playbook, but still very effective.
Ummmm The original Edge being bundled with Windows 10 didn’t help it at all. LOL Microsoft is not looking to be the #1 browser installed but to be one of the top ACTIVELY USED browsers (aka capture market share). Unfortunately, it will be even a challenge for them to overtake Firefox.
MJ,
I wouldn’t want to underestimate the power of bundling. Yes users can switch, but there has to be enough of a problem for them to do so. The majority are lazy and stick with what’s installed.
I believe the big problem microsoft faces is that customer demand for computer upgrades is much less reliable than it had been for them in the past. They cannot take it for granted any more, customers are fatigued. So with windows, rather than risk low adoption rates going forward, microsoft committed to calling all future releases “windows 10” and pushing forced updates. This should help inflate windows 10’s market share while giving microsoft more control to bundle it’s products and services to a wider audience. I don’t know if this strategy is working for microsoft, but it’s clear that microsoft knows it’s loosing consumer interest and is taking the drastic step of embracing competing technologies in order to regain relevance and control. Microsoft doesn’t want users to use chrome, but since that’s what they’re doing anyways, then microsoft wants users to use a version of chrome that it controls. Same deal with microsoft’s big push to adopt linux tech for dev machines.
So I think a microsoft’ chrome fork could become popular since most users and companies would no longer have compelling technical reasons to install google chrome any longer as Microsoft would be bundling the same browser already, albeit under it’s own brand. In a way it’s reminiscent of “embrace, enhance, extinguish,”, also from microsoft’s playbook.
>I wouldn’t want to underestimate the power of bundling. Yes users can switch, but there has to be enough of a problem for them to do so.
Most people have already switched as IE and the original Edge (which again have already been bundled with Windows) are niche browsers today. You are right in that people are not going to change their BROWSER for no reason. LOL No idea what you mean by “forced updates” or what that has to do with what browser one is using. Anyone still using Windows 7 now is not upgrading to Windows 10 and it’s not a free upgrade anymore by normal means and that has been the case for a while now.
You are right about Edge in the enterprise… Possibly in about two years we can remove Chrome from our staff PCs. This won’t be enough for Microsoft to overtake Chrome but probably Firefox. So I agree the new Edge will do better than the current Edge but that is not a high bar.
MJ,
It means it’s difficult for typical users to block windows 10 updates. Microsoft has the ability to deploy products to increase it’s marketshare just by bundling them with automatic updates without the overhead or inefficiencies of marketing. If users uninstall your app, just reinstall it for them in the next update…
https://winaero.com/blog/prevent-windows-10-installing-unwanted-apps/
While I don’t know if microsoft is going to abuse updates to promote it’s version of chrome, technically it could be done. You may remember they did deploy OS updates that displayed deliberately confusing dialog boxes to upgrade to windows 10. There were a couple iterations of the reappearing upgrade dialog box, all confusing and always changing the actions the users had to take in order to cancel the update. On one version the “X” would cancel the update, but another the “X” permitted the update.
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/229040-microsofts-latest-trick-clicking-x-to-dismiss-windows-10-upgrade-doesnt-stop-upgrade-process
Granted this was very scammy and microsoft lost the lawsuit, but their campaign was undeniably effective. They could conceivably consider something along the same lines to coerce users into installing it’s version of chrome and setting it as default thereby replacing google chrome. One simple update could realistically make microsoft’s version of chrome the the most popular browser overnight. The question isn’t whether microsoft could, but whether they’d actually have the gall to do it given the legal ramifications. I’ll others weigh in on this.
Half the people I have to deal with regularly barely know there are alternatives, yet in the consumer market it would be unwise to think of them as a minority. It’s often the case if they are using some 3rd party browser it was installed for them by some web browser apparatchik IT support person like me!
Yes the products are similar right now, but that’s because edge is playing catchup.
Microsoft have the opportunity to focus on features over trying to battle the rendering engine. This is exactly what Opera (at least until it got bought and shifted direction from power user focus).
To give an equivalence;
Just because ubuntu is based on debian, and compatible with it, does not mean it isn’t a compelling option in it’s own right. Why?because despite sharing the same base, they offer different things to different user bases.
I agree with you 100% Thom… The original Edge was laughable at launch because it was a half baked browser with a poor “penciled in” UI and no extension support or cross-platform support. Add in the fact it was a browser from Microsoft that spelled doom. The last thing I (and anyone really) needs is another Chromium based browser. I wish they keep with the original Edge but either way I am sticking with my long time browser of choice…Firefox.
Well… that’s a fair question, but for enterprise users, the main draw for anyone using Windows on most of their systems is whatever the new Edge brings in as far as group policy capabilities brings versus having to use Google to manage Chrome or custom scripts to manage Chrome.
There’s always the possibility that Microsoft’s version is less privacy intrusive… but then again, you’d be having to trust Microsoft on that. There’s also the uncomfortable possibility that if Google changes the terms of Chromium at some point, Microsoft is going to be SOL, so that’s also a consideration.
I’m skipping all this and going directly to Firefox, because we need an open web, and anyone that can donate to them time, money or coding skills on a regular is doing the web a service.
I think this makes sense, and allows MS to focus on integration and extension rather than core functionality. Politically it’s also interesting, in effect MS became Chrome’s biggest and most influential customer overnight!
Long term they eliminate the need to install Chrome as a 3rd party browser, you get it by default, and when I consider this sort of benefit with the re-birth of ARM as a potential platform, it seems pretty obvious that you wouldn’t want to duplicate development streams that already exist elsewhere.
Finally, sometimes when I read articles like this I suspect the commentator has barely used the product that is being critiqued. Especially when they claim switching to Chrome brings MS Edge a new feature that has actually already existed in Edge from day one!
I’ll be honest. I’ll take chromium Edge over Google Chrome any day. Especially if the IE mode is brought to fruition. One browser for all my work apps? HELL YES!
Yes, those of us involved in managing / administrating industrial or commercial platforms won’t disagree.
Isn’t that the point though? It takes far less effort to apply a few tweaks to Chromium than to maintain the entire codebase for a separate browser, rendering engine, and javascript runtime. It mean I think the point is to eliminate wasted effort. A bundled browser does not need to be better, it just needs to be good enough – look at Safari (barely good enough, but you get the point)…
I’m not defending Edge as a product, I don’t use it and don’t plan to, but I didn’t use the old Edge either. It makes sense to me though, if you were a user of Edge before now you basically just have a better Edge. If you weren’t your probably not going to be interested. The only thing it has going for it compared to Chrome imo is that it is Chrome without the Google entanglements – but you could just run a Chromium build and have that (or use Brave, Opera, or whatever).
Agreed, though they will use the javascript engine from the old Edge
> they will use the javascript engine from the old Edge
Not so, it will use V8. https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore/issues/5865
For me, it becomes “why use Chrome?”
Edge is fast, Chromium-based, and easy.
You missed the point.
Edge-Chromium is not meant for home users, but primarily for businesses.
As the web evolves, IE11 is no more enough and Edge has not been widly adopted.
If Microsoft don’t give businesses a safe way to use old corporate applications and new technologies, they will go away from Microsoft browers to Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
With a working Edge-Chromium, Microsoft will deprecate IE11 and Edge, and businesses will “safely” migrate to Edge-Chromium, still managed with GPOs and well compatible with old corporate tools.
Also remember Microsoft needs a foot in the browser space for Sharepoint, OWA, Office 365,…
OSAlert often seems to forget that business exists. When New-Edge/Chredge/Edgeium is ready to be built-in with Windows again it is exactly what business needs:
* Built-in with the OS
* Updated automaticcally
* Very nicely managable through policies
* Syncable with a Microsoft account
* Can perform an import of all Chrome-synched-data (favorites/passwords/history)
* Will open and render all modern websites/webapps perfectly by default (including Office 365/Azure/Dynamics)
* Will open a definable list of “legacy” websites/webapps in “internet explorer mode”
Chrome has been added to many business installations in the last few years, but it will disappear in a few years as well.
What is going to happen to consumers is less clear. They might choose to switch to Edge because it is just built-in, but they might ignore Edge because it offers nothing special for them and would require to find a solution for continuous Chrome-synching.
Flip side of the question: If Edge is the same as Chrome, why even install Chrome in the first place?
The purely technical aspects that drove a lot of companies to preferentially use Chrome are no longer an issue if Edge is using the same rendering and JavaScript engines, so I suspect we’ll see a significant uptake in Edge usage over the next few years simply because of the corporate side of things. The only real reason to use Chrome now on Windows 10 is ideology or significant dependency on Google’s infrastructure.
hii
Why? Well, not today. But if this becomes the “new Edge” delivered with your OS, then it matters.
Why? Why was MSIE (the very poor pathetic thing that it is) the #1 Windows browser? It’s what came with the system… it’s the “supported” browser from the OS manufacturer.
While, this might not matter as much as it did 15 years ago, it still matters (sadly).
Remember, Microsoft is “guilty” of being a monopoly in more ways than one. Once you’re blessed with that “title”, you usually get to keep it for life. While, one can argue that you have a “choice” of browser… only “one” (Edge) is officially blessed and supported by the OS manufacturer.
And yet there are still “enterprise” apps that require Internet Explorer (not edge). Sigh…
When you have Edge on your entire enterprise network and you can control it with policies, companies, like mine, can stop pushing out Chrome and band-aiding the management of it. Plus, why wouldn’t Microsoft want to ship a browser that is better than Edge/EdgeHTML? This is a win.
Add to that that I now trust Microsoft more than I trust Google! I, for one, like this move.