Why does Microsoft even bother with Edge?

in most people's minds around the world this icon equals a bad internet browsing experience and for what feels like decades now the Internet has been full of jokes like this claiming that the only purpose of edge or Internet Explorer because people still don't seem to differentiate between the two is to download another browser which got me thinking if nobody seems to like using it then why does Microsoft still keep pushing it I'm out - from tech out are you watching the 29th episode of the story behind Sears and let's talk about edge ok so before I condemned this bathroom right from the start because of some memes on reddit let's see what the stats have to say according to stat browser edge makes up a tiny one point 89 percent of all browsing on all platforms it's up from one point seventy two percent a year ago which is some a month of growth I guess notice though that even relatively minor browsers like the Samsung browser the ancient Internet Explorer and UC browser all handily outperform it when it comes to overall market share now if I know the stats down to just desktops edge close up to four point eleven percent up slightly from three point fifty-eight percent a year ago that's just half a percent of growth in a year and there are two important trends to note this year first internet explorer fell over three percent in the same period this means that people who leave internet explorer generally don't switch to edge but leave microsoft's browsers behind altogether at the same time Windows 10 adoption worldwide has been very fast and its market share has finally overtaken Windows 7 which makes it extra surprising that edge the default browser of Windows 10 did not benefit from its growth it means that maybe for the first time ever the masses are not choosing the default solution and while other statistic websites show slightly different pictures their results overall are clear edge is a minor player that users don't seem to want to adopt which really begs two questions why don't you just want it and why does Microsoft still push it nonetheless well let me start by making a statement you won't hear very often here on the internet right now edge doesn't suck now really unless you are a power user edge will work just fine for you the basics are covered it's quick to startup performance with vendor well not to the absolute best is actually pretty good pages meander and work just fine edge is secure and it even looks fairly attractive in my opinion hell when I asked web developers in my company they said they had fewer problems supporting edge than they had supporting Safari on the Mac there are even areas where edge does better than other browsers it is arguably the only browser that works well with touch on Windows and the only one that I know that supports pens at all for example edge did have a few glaring issues when it first launched specifically it didn't support any extensions and it was limited to Windows 10 but those two have mostly been fixed there is now an Android and iOS app for edge that uses the native browser technologies of each platforms so they have the exact same performance as Chrome and Safari and let you sing stuff between edge on the phone and on windows edge extensions are also available now although the selection here is not quite on the same level as that on other platforms either way my point is not that you the power user should switch to edge I myself am a happy Firefox user and I think Firefox and Chrome are still a better choice for most power users however unlike in the days of unit Explorer the quality difference between edge and the others isn't that huge and usually when the default option is good enough then normies or non power users don't attempt to switch so why are they switching either case of edge well I can think of two main reasons first the branding honestly making the edge logo looks similar to the Internet Explorer one was just Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot it's hard to think of a brand that is worse than that of IE edge is a completely new browser from top to bottom it's better than IE in almost every way the whole reason I imagine Microsoft replaced IE with edge is because as usage numbers clearly show people didn't like IE so why on earth would they hamstring edge right from the start honestly I can only think that they just wanted to give non techies who upgraded from Windows 7 to 10 a familiar icon but they should have just left internet explorer die and the second reason is simply put of Google's dominance over the internet and smartphones I mean open any Google site on edge n you will constantly be bombarded with nasty download prompts for Chrome many newer ones like cuckoo for example won't work at all and since most people around the world use their Android phone as their primary computing device more often than not relying on Google services their default browser on their phone will impact the browser choice on their desktop not the other way around makes sense so with bad branding and Google's dominance over the web and smartphones it is little wonder that people are switching to Chrome but if that's the case why does Microsoft still bother with edge well it seems obvious that an OS would have a default browser after all more and more tasks are moving from local apps onto the web but there is much more to a built in browser than just that if Microsoft wants to push through new system-wide features it needs places to showcase them including a browser it can control in the past things like inking with digital pens touch support or even Cortana integrations were big pushes for Microsoft and edge was always one of the main vehicles for them and big features in the future also seem to rely on edge a lot edge is the only browser that runs natively within Windows mixed reality which Microsoft claims as one of their main focuses going forward and upcoming features like sets for example also rely on edge if sets ever really makes it out of the beta labs it will allow users to group multiple app windows such as Word documents OneNote pages as well as browser tabs into a browser like window with tabs based on edge technology of course there are many more examples like this and the point is that Microsoft needs good first party apps and especially a good browser to bring their future ideas to life they can't just rely on Firefox or Chrome to help them push new windows features default browsers also have a few other important implications specifically their rendering engines are used all over their operating systems often without a users knowledge if you don't know what the rendering engine is then think of it this way browsers consist of two main parts a core called the rendering engine which turns code from a server into a website by you know rendering it and all the stuff built on top of it like browser UI password manager syncing between devices and so on the engine of a browser can be used by other apps too and not just the browser itself edge on Android much like most other Android apps actually uses the native chrome rendering engine and builds functionality like Microsoft syncing on top of that in the same way edge and even Chrome on iOS news app safari engine and simply add their own customizations on top and so do most apps that have two open web content like many email clients or social media apps for example so making the edge engine work well means improving tons of Windows 10 apps at once one step above that is progressive web apps where an entire app is just a fancy website that pretends to be an app this is a new technology that you can experience on Android already and if you want to see it for yourself I recommend trying mobile dot Twitter com Chrome and Firefox just let you add a homepage icon for supported pages like this one which then make it look and feel like a real app with offline capabilities push notifications background syncing and so on and remember these apps will be powered entirely by a browser edge to will support progressive web apps on windows 10 in its next update they will be install from the Microsoft Store at first and directly from edge later on they were running their own window without the edge UI on top of them and they'll have access to native windows features like notifications live tiles as well as katana and so on just like real apps Google and Microsoft are both pushing for progressive web apps to become the next big app platform and Microsoft will need edge to make that happen and the last noteworthy feature of edge and my opinion is one that I think most people don't even know about edge is actually also an app to read PDFs and most recently also ebooks Microsoft really wants to turn Windows 10 into an education platform where students can read books for school annotate them write on them with digital pen and so on and the tool to support it all is edge in other words edge goes beyond just browsing the web so it's clear that Microsoft needs edge not only is a simple web browser but also because it is the glue that holds many other pieces of Windows 10 together but if Microsoft really wants to make people start loving edge then I think they still have a long way to go now I've said before that edge isn't bad and I stand by that but I find it really confusing that that's the bar Microsoft has passed I mean I'll expect the company that owns the operating system that edge runs on and by the way has really deep pockets and the rich history of building software to build something that is leaps and bounds better than the comp maybe a browser that for once performs demonstrably better than the competition especially when they have just completely rebuilt their browser from scratch something more than just not bad but all right now I want to hear from you what you think about H are you using it already if not can you see it becoming a viable competitor in the future I've put together a poll on Twitter that you can find in the description of this video so go there and cast your vote while you edit make sure to follow me on my social media channels I am tech Arthur on all of them and I do a ton of cool behind-the-scenes sort of stuff over there if you want to see past episodes from the story behind series then you can watch them right here they're all still relevant so you can binge watch them and if you want to see future ones then be sure to subscribe and to come straight into your inbox all right I'll see you later [Music]

Channel: TechAltar

Views: 1,246,045

Keywords: Edge, Microsoft, Internet Explorer, IE, Purpose, Rick and Morty, PWA, progressive web app, PWAs, progressive web apps, chrome, firefox, Opera, Samsung browser, UC browser, statistics, analytics, rendering engine, HTML, Windows 10, default, browser, sync, Android, iOS, epub, PDF

Id: 2irD_HtUkls

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 21 2018