Everyone Needs the New Microsoft Edge (Premium)

I know, it’s a bit early. But I’m calling it: Basing the new Edge on Chromium is the best decision that Microsoft’s made in years. This is a browser that everyone will want to use. Even those who are firmly invested in Google’s ecosystems.

With 66 percent usage share on desktop and 63 percent share on mobile, Google Chrome is the dominant web browser today. That desktop usage is particularly impressive since Chrome is not the default browser on either of the dominant PC platforms, Windows and Mac. This means that most desktop users are actually using the built-in browser only once, to install Chrome.

Think about how incredible that is. The power of the default is so strong that Microsoft was previously found guilty of product bundling when it first included Internet Explorer in Windows, way back during a time in which PCs were essentially the only personal computing platform of note. But today, most Windows (and probably Mac users, too) barely even realize that Microsoft makes a browser. They go to the trouble of finding, downloading, installing, and then configuring Chrome instead.

Why do they do that?

They do it because Chrome is literally the best web browser available today. Yeah, yeah. You may disagree, may prefer Firefox, or Opera, or … whatever. No matter: As noted, fully two-thirds of all web browsing, desktop and mobile alike, occurs via Chrome. It’s the best.

That said, Chrome isn’t perfect. As a Google product, Chrome is designed as a front-end for the search giant’s core product, which no, isn’t search. It’s advertising. And every move you make---every site you load, every second of porn you watch---is tracked by Google, collated into a living, breathing digital representation of you as a consumer, and sold to advertisers so that they can better appeal to that hand you have on your wallet.

Most consumers at least vaguely understand this. Many have experienced that creepy “Google effect” thing where you are browsing or searching on one site and then some product related to what you were previously viewing mysteriously appears on another, completely unrelated site. A great many of these users have probably given up on even worrying about this. I’ve even heard from some who claim to prefer the targeted ads; after all, maybe one of them will actually be interesting to them.

For the love of God, people.

What if there were a version of Chrome that was literally stripped of all the Google tracking services, a browser that looked, worked, and performed exactly look Chrome, but didn’t follow you around the Internet like some lonely dog that’s been trapped in a house alone for the day?  What if there was a version of Chrome that provided the same benefits of Chrome---its stellar compatibility with web standards, its market-leading performance, its support for PWAs and other web apps, and its cross-platform sync of bookmarks, passwords, and other data---while actually respected your p...

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