Feeling a Little Edgy (Premium)

I’ve successfully ignored Microsoft Edge for the past few years, but I’m writing a Windows 11 book and so it was time to get my hands dirty. And … wow.

Just, wow.

I thought I understood that Microsoft had been jamming more and more features into Microsoft Edge, but you don’t really understand what’s happened until you experience it. And, in my case, having purposefully ignored Edge for so long really helped drive home what’s changed: if I had been using Edge all along, the steady drone of new might have simply seemed like normal evolution. But coming back to it a few years later was shocking.

Looking back at what I wrote about Microsoft Edge in the Windows 10 Field Guide is alternatively amusing and alarming. “Microsoft Edge … offers a streamlined user experience with tabbed browsing, an address bar with integrated search, and mostly-obvious access to common browser functions,” I wrote at the time.

No more. Today, Microsoft Edge is the antithesis of Windows 11, a bloated product that doesn’t seem designed so much as just bolted onto so much that it no longer resembles its original vision. It’s the web browser version of somehow who is addicted to plastic surgery and just doesn’t know when to stop.

Looking over the Microsoft Edge chapter in the Windows 10 Field Guide, I see only a few features---like Collections--that differentiate this product, functionally, from Google Chrome or other web browsers. And of course some interesting ecosystem support like Microsoft account and ALT+TAB integration. The rest of it is simply familiar, which makes sense given what Microsoft was trying to achieve in the shift to Edge’s Chromium underpinnings.

Today, that is no longer the case.

Instead, Edge assaults you with complexity from the moment of its very first launch, when you are given a bizarre range of nonsensical choices. The very first screen you see tells you that Edge is “almost set up,” and an option titled “Stay up to date by regularly bringing in your browsing data” is auto-selected and, I gotta be honest here, I'm not sure what that even means. (I assume it’s related to the syncing of data through your Microsoft account.) In the next screen, you’re prompted to sign into your “Google browser,” whether Chrome is installed or not, so you can import bookmarks, history, and other data from that account into what Microsoft hopes will be the browser you now use instead. And then you’re given the most insidious choice of all, to “Make your Microsoft experience more useful to you” by auto-configuring back-end search, shopping, news, and advertising services to Microsoft’s preferences. The sheer gall of that is incredible, especially given the lack of explanation.

But it continues. You’re then prompted, in turn, to express yourself with a theme and pin some Microsoft and partner web apps to your Taskbar, which is interesting. And then you’re dumped into the Edge new tab experie...