Microsoft Edge achieves record high desktop browser market share

[Shawn Knight]

Editor's take: StatCounter offered no explanation as to why Safari's market share fell 4.34 percent from November to December, why Edge's share increased 0.67 percent, or why Firefox saw its share grow by 0.93 percent. Perhaps new computers gifted during the holidays running Windows 11 had an impact? We'll have to wait until the next monthly report to see if we are looking at a new trend or a holiday anomaly, but it is worth noting that similar movement was not observed at the end of 2022.

Google's Chrome maintained a comfortable lead in the global desktop browser market to close out 2023, but the fight for second place took an interesting turn.

According to the latest data from StatCounter, Google finished the year with 65.29 percent of the desktop browser market – an increase of 3.17 percentage points month over month. Microsoft Edge, however, managed to overtake Safari for second place to secure an 11.89 percent share, its highest slice of the pie to date. Apple's desktop browser market share fell to 8.29 percent.

Mozilla's Firefox ended 2023 with a 7.61 percent share, while Opera accounted for 3.8 percent worldwide.

Keep in mind that these figures only apply to the desktop browser market.

When adding mobile devices, tablets, and consoles to the mix, things start to look a bit different. Chrome still reigns supreme by a wide margin but Safari firmly takes second place with an 18.56 percent share. Edge, meanwhile, falls to just 4.97 percent, narrowly ahead of Firefox at 3.36 percent. Opera brings up the rear with a 2.86 percent share.

What browser are you using these days? After moving on from Internet Explorer many moons ago, I found myself in the Firefox camp for years before eventually settling down with Chrome due to Firefox's memory issues. It is far from perfect but I do like some of the newer features to come down the pipe, like the ability to see a page's memory usage when hovering over a tab.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/101395-microsoft-edge-achieves-record-high-desktop-browser-market.html

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I've moved to brave due to google's insistence on manifest V2 deletion. I care not for google's ads not the tens of thousands of revenue they have made off of me.

I want to like firefox, but much like linux, I keep finding some game ending issue. for me its instability. Randomly, with no warning, Firefox just locks up hard and crashes, losing all my saved tabs. Usually when I have more then 50 total. never found an answer for why this happens other then "oops teehee must be a memory issue, have you tried less tabs : .)" which is not helpful at all. Also found it doesnt export or import bookmarks 100% from chrome for...some reason. Never had a browser, including firefox, do this before my most recent switch, thankfully I caught it before uninstalling chrome.

Bonus, brave on android has an adblocker built in. I'll keep trying with firefox but I have no confidence they will ever get it totally fixed.

 

[nnguy2]

"What browser are you using these days? After moving on from Internet Explorer many moons ago, I found myself in the Firefox camp for years before eventually settling down with Chrome due to Firefox's memory issues."

Surely you jest. The same Chrome that spawn the RAM eating memes?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"What browser are you using these days? After moving on from Internet Explorer many moons ago, I found myself in the Firefox camp for years before eventually settling down with Chrome due to Firefox's memory issues."

Surely you jest. The same Chrome that spawn the RAM eating memes?

He's not. People seem to have forgotten the serious issues firefox once had with memory leaks and, more crucially, the 32 bit memory limit. Eating RAM is a totally different issue to your browser crashing because it cant address enough to keep your tabs open.

People dunk on Chrome's memory use but the speed difference between chrome and firefox back in the day was jawdropping. Firefox felt like an infected IE6 instance by comparison.

Ahh the good old days.

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

I used to dislike FF, back in the day it was slow and crashed a lot for me. But then google started abusing the people so I tried other browsers. I still can't stand Edge or Safari, and wanted to try something not based on the chromium engine so I tried FF 2-3 years ago. I was pleasantly surprised, it is much better now. I don't notice speed issues with it and it doesn't crash on me, and I usually have loads of tabs open. FF also works quite well with uBlock Origin ad blocker, which quite successfully blocks youtube video ads. I wouldn't mind paying for ad-free youtube if they didn't abuse their misinformation campaigns and shadow ban people, but until then I will furiously block their crap.

I'm not surprised here to see Edge is increasing, M$FT plugs the crap out of their browser and it is the default on many desktop computers running windows. M$FT just like google abuse their position of power to try and strong arm everyone into their realm. Shady and despicable tactics are commonplace by them, among others.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

I used to dislike FF, back in the day it was slow and crashed a lot for me. But then google started abusing the people so I tried other browsers. I still can't stand Edge or Safari, and wanted to try something not based on the chromium engine so I tried FF 2-3 years ago. I was pleasantly surprised, it is much better now. I don't notice speed issues with it and it doesn't crash on me, and I usually have loads of tabs open. FF also works quite well with uBlock Origin ad blocker, which quite successfully blocks youtube video ads. I wouldn't mind paying for ad-free youtube if they didn't abuse their misinformation campaigns and shadow ban people, but until then I will furiously block their crap.

I'm not surprised here to see Edge is increasing, M$FT plugs the crap out of their browser and it is the default on many desktop computers running windows. M$FT just like google abuse their position of power to try and strong arm everyone into their realm. Shady and despicable tactics are commonplace by them, among others.

At work we all prefer Edge to Chrome, because if you do Google Admin work, it becomes very apparent very quickly that Edge's memory management is somehow superior to Chromes. try doing work with 4-5 incognito windows, each one logged into a different google admin account, and you'll find Chrome acting like IE6 for some reason.

Edge was better when it was on its own engine though. Edge HTML and Chakra were very promising but MS didnt want to put the work into competing with google.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Damn. Safari was at 14%. Did M chip sales peak already?

 

[texasrattler]

I liked IE. Used it forever until Edge came out. Didn't care for Edge at first and still used IE. Once Edge switched to chromium, I was all in. Just seem to function better imo.

No, I didn't like Chrome on desktop. To me it was different from what I was use to.

 

[thewelshbrummie]

"What browser are you using these days? After moving on from Internet Explorer many moons ago, I found myself in the Firefox camp for years before eventually settling down with Chrome due to Firefox's memory issues."

Surely you jest. The same Chrome that spawn the RAM eating memes?

It's in interesting take that feels dated. I've had Firefox open with hundreds of tabs for weeks on end while still being able to load Red Dead 2 without issue or crashes. 32GB might help but it's rare for FF to go over 8GB RAM when I do that.

Edge isn't bad but the UI changes they keep making and moving things around is getting annoying. But I have no problems with Microsoft pushing Edge as they do when Google does the same if I use any Google website. I don't use Chrome so I get the "switch to Chrome" box appearing every time I use Google search or Youtube.

 

[RudyBob]

I still like Brave but their search is not good

 

[envirovore]

I've not left FireFox since it's initial public release, nor do I plan to.

Thankfully they've greatly improved the android mobile client over the last couple years.

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

I've not left FireFox since it's initial public release, nor do I plan to.

Thankfully they've greatly improved the android mobile client over the last couple years.

It has indeed. The iPhone app is also good, which is odd considering Apple forces use of webkit. Hopefully that will stop at some point. Also no extensions for mobile FF on iOS. :-(

Luckily I don't do a ton of mobile browsing...

 

[koblongata]

Was on Edge for a while, but returned to Chrome just because Edge cannot play 8K video smoothly XD

transferring password and bookmarks between both is quite easy actually

 

[Mr Majestyk]

I didn't install crappy Chrome on my new PC. If I could uninstall Edge I would. Firefox all the way, and if I use Chromium based browser it will be Brave or Vivaldi.

 

[Puiu]

I can see black friday and holiday sales affecting these numbers a lot. And I've seen people switch to Firefox because of how slow Chrome has become.

 

[WhiteLeaff]

From what I tested, edge is the fastest among all.

 

[s3thra]

Firefox since before version 1.0.

For a trip down memory lane/a history lesson about Netscape and the beginnings of Mozilla there's a great video on YouTube documenting those times. Search for "Project Code Rush".

 

[Revolution 11]

Firefox since before version 1.0.

For a trip down memory lane/a history lesson about Netscape and the beginnings of Mozilla there's a great video on YouTube documenting those times. Search for "Project Code Rush".

I remember the good old days when Firefox 3.0 was a major upgrade (I had tried Firefox 2.0 briefly and was intrigued but did not make the jump on my old PC). Tabbed browsing, integrated Bookmarks and History manager, different browser themes, much better support for new webpages, Firefox 3.0 had it all.

I strayed to other browsers when the UI changed for Firefox (Chrome, Pale Moon, etc) and the memory usage got heavier and heavier.

Luckily, Firefox has fixed most of those post 3.0 issues. I currently have 6752 tabs open on Firefox with 32 GB of RAM, stable as a rock and silky smooth as butter, zero crashes. Even the old 3.0 UI is mostly back if you customize the layout a bit.

Edge was promising but is just another Chrome with even more heavy-handed Microsoft ads and integrations (AI, Bing, etc).

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Where's my Nertscape browser!

 

[nismo91]

I used to love Firefox. used it since v1.5 for many years until about 3 years ago when I found out that Firefox randomly crashes on my old haswell PC. I even did a clean windows install on the pc but it doesn't fix it. tried deleting profile, using nightly build, beta build etc but it still crashes randomly, even without add-ons. to make things worse for unknown reason the download speed was always capped when using firefox.

moved to Edge and never looked back. I also used Edge in my android phone. funnily enough Firefox works perfectly on my kaby-lake work laptop. now I'm using alder-lake PC and firefox seems to be working fine. I don't know if they have hidden issues with older hardware but all I know is that edge works perfectly on that old machine.

let's just hope MS doesn't jinx it and destroy Edge in the future.

 

[ZedRM]

I've been on FireFox for years. I use Brave but it does not have the level of customizations FireFox does. FireFox extensions are excellent and make Chrome and other browsers look a bit like amateur-hour.

Edge is a joke and as it's made by Microsoft, can not be trusted! Why are people continuing to use it?

 

[lazer]

Also consider Opera, it is very good, also for ad blocks.
I NEVER would use a MS product unless I am forced to.
Chrome also is too much Google sucking info.
I use old version of FF and NEVER update. Works good.
Remember: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

 

[ZedRM]

Also consider Opera, it is very good, also for ad blocks.
I NEVER would use a MS product unless I am forced to.
Chrome also is too much Google sucking info.
I use old version of FF and NEVER update. Works good.
Remember: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

I used to love Opera. But after having been bought out by a Chinese government influenced entity, I just can not and will not trust it.

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

I'm sure most of you know this but for those who don't, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, and I think even Safari all use Chrome as their core browser underneath. Firefox is far as I'm aware is the only one that is truly out of the Google realm.

 

[Bamda]

I switched from Chrome to Edge and I love it. A couple of features I really enjoy are the sidebar and the split screen.