Microsoft Edge is What’s Wrong with Windows 10 (Premium)

I spent most of the long weekend updating the Microsoft Edge chapter in the Windows 10 Field Guide for the October 2018 Update. And now I don't know what to think.

As you may know, I've reevaluated Microsoft Edge with each passing release of Windows 10, noting how it's improved, often dramatically, in each version. I've also spent a lot of time ruminating over what Microsoft Edge should be, a debate that basically boils down to whether Edge should be "detached" from the operating system so that it can be updated more frequently.

But that's the thing. Microsoft Edge and Windows 10 are essentially non-separable. And as Microsoft Edge goes, so does Windows 10. This has worked to the detriment of both, I think.

Put another way, Microsoft Edge is, in many ways, a microcosm of the overall Windows 10 experience. And I think that this fact, more than any technical issue, explains my ongoing concerns with both Microsoft Edge and Windows 10. That is, for everything that Microsoft gets right, there is too much inconsistency, broken functionality, and just outright weirdness.

Browsers are ... complicated. They're both apps and the host for another platform, the web, that runs on top of Windows (in this case). As the maker of Windows, Microsoft has long employed a strategy by which its own browser gains artificial advantages over third-party browsers by being so closely tied to the operating system.

This strategy worked for Internet Explorer, which once enjoyed over 80 percent usage share because it was bundled with Windows at a time when Windows was personal computing. But thanks to a variety of factors---IE's quality problems and the rise of mobile and web computing---that strategy no longer works.

And despite multiple antitrust cases, Microsoft never really stopped doing it either. Today, Edge is bundled with Windows 10, a platform that boasts about 700 million users, but it commands just 4.3 percent of the web browser market. Most users are on other platforms---Android, iOS, plus other versions of Windows---and most had long ago moved to better browsers like Google Chrome. Which, incidentally, just celebrated its 10th anniversary.

That both Google and Apple, the personal computing platform makers that rose to prominence in the wake of Microsoft's decline, make their own web browsers is not coincidental. Both play major roles in both mobile and desktop computing today, after all. But it is more interesting to me how different these browsers are from Microsoft Edge.

Yes, there are some similarities. On iOS, Safari is artificially given a non-removable status as the default web browser, a situation that does not exist on Android (or the Mac, for that matter). Likewise, Safari on iOS is only updated with the operating system, and not separately as an app as is the case with Chrome.

But neither Safari nor Chrome is as integrated with the underlying platform as is Edge. They're just standalone apps, really. And both of these br...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC