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,...

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