Thinking About Microsoft’s Aggressive New Edge Rollout (Premium)

Microsoft can’t get rid of the “legacy” version of its Edge browser quickly enough. It’s like it never happened.

As Mehedi reportedly earlier today, Microsoft will automatically push the new Chromium-based Edge web browser to all Windows 10 users on January 15. That the new Edge browser will not be feature-complete on that date—among other things, it can’t sync installed extensions—is disappointing. And one might wonder what the rush is, though it must be related to the end of support for Windows 7.

But this is weird, right?

The “legacy” version of Edge will be “hidden” (but not removed?) from everywhere in the user interface. And any attempt to launch that older browser will redirect automatically to the new one.

Even Internet Explorer, an outright embarrassment, is treated better than that by Microsoft, no doubt because enterprises actually rely on it still. But the original Edge? It is apparently loved or needed by nobody at all.

Not literally, of course. Edge, like countless other unpopular Microsoft products and services—Cortana, Windows phone, whatever—of course has its fans. But to the world at large, Edge never even happened. In fact, this browser is so unpopular, it was responsible for the unthinkable: It overcame the power of defaults. Despite being the default, preinstalled web browser in Windows 10, a system used by nearly one billion people, Edge is only used by 5.5 percent of them. Chrome, a web browser that is not installed by default on anything other than Chromebooks, is used by 67 percent of desktop users.

That delta explains why Microsoft belatedly killed off “legacy” Edge and it perhaps explains why it is now moving quickly to pretend it never happened. But this should have never happened. Edge, like the developer features in the Universal Windows Platform (UWP), was only provided in Windows 10 in a wrong-headed attempt to differentiate the new product. In doing so, Microsoft guaranteed its defeat. (It happened to UWP, too.)

I tried to use Microsoft Edge. And there were indeed things I really did like about it, including its modern user interface, its excellent text rendering, and its battery life advantages. But Edge was always behind overall, always, as Microsoft struggled to keep pace with browsers that are upgraded continuously. And it was bogged down with pointless features, instead of being a blank canvas that users could optimize and customize with extensions. With each new Windows 10 version, I’d chart the improvements while noting that there were still problems that kept me from making it my daily driver. And this never changed.

That I wasn’t alone is little consolation. I wanted Edge to succeed, though I find it hard to justify why now, looking back on this. But the move to Chromium was correct, and still is. And while Microsoft may not go as far as Brave, Firefox, or Safari when it comes to blocking online trackers, it is still providing a much faster, safer, and more privacy-safe baseline browser experience that we see with Chrome. This is a positive move.

The worry, of course, is that it’s already too late. By implicitly training hundreds of millions of users to bypass Edge and use Chrome instead—the running joke is that we all use Edge once, to install Chrome—Microsoft may have cemented its future. The new not-quite-an-“e” icon helps, a bit. A user interface that is more familiar to Chrome users could help a bit, too. But many if not most people will simply bypass this excellent new browser, not noticing that it works with Chrome’s extensions and delivers the same basic browsing experience.

That’s on Microsoft, of course, and wondering about the world that might have been is a pointless exercise. But what bothers me most about the decision making that led to this disaster is that Microsoft tried to this once before and changed course due to negative feedback. The user interface, communications, and file system/storage improvements it planned to bring to Longhorn in the early 2000s were coming only to Longhorn and not to previous Windows versions. Developers, businesses, and users revolted, and so Microsoft relented: These technologies were made available to all supported Windows versions at the time.

With Windows 10, Microsoft didn’t do that. Edge, like UWP, Cortana, and other technologies, would not come to Windows 7, which at the time had the largest-ever install base in desktop OS history. Microsoft wanted to move the world forward. And it failed.

Well, all’s well that ends well. For users, my primary concern, the new Edge is an excellent replacement for both Chrome and “legacy” Edge. And unlike its predecessor, I can recommend it to others, even in its incomplete initial state. And should Edge be relatively unsuccessful—anything under double-digit usage share is a failure—this change will still have a positive impact on Windows 10 and on those who use and support it.

But still. It’s hard to not wonder what could have been.