Microsoft Edge's browser share declines for first time in 14 months

midian182

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What just happened? After months of seeing its popularity increase, is Microsoft Edge losing momentum? It certainly looks that way. The browser saw its market share decline in April, marking the end of fourteen consecutive months of growth.

Switching to a Chromium-based version brought plenty of new users to Edge. One analytics firm (NetMarketShare) put its market share as of March 2020 at 7.59%, above Firefox’s 7.19%.

It was more good news for Microsoft last month when another analytics company—StatCounter—reported that Edge has been adding users over the last few months while Firefox’s userbase declines, though it still gives Mozilla’s browser a larger market share.

StatCounter’s report for April, however, shows a change in Edge’s fortunes. The browser’s market share fell from 3.45% in March to 3.39% in April, its first decline since introducing the Chromium-based Edge in January 2020.

 

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

While the drop may have scuppered Microsoft’s hopes of overtaking Firefox in the near-term, it looks as if Edge will take the third spot behind Safari and Chrome eventually; Firefox’s share declined by a slightly larger percentage last month than Edge’s: 0.09% vs. 0.06%

Edge still has an unsurmountable task in catching up with leader Chrome, which holds a near 65% market share. The now-retired Internet Explorer and Edge Legacy, meanwhile, have both seen their shares fall below 1%.

As noted by TechRadar, some of Edge’s growth over the last 12 months was the result of users moving from IE and Edge Legacy, a trend that may have ended.

Microsoft will be hoping that the decline was just a temporary blip. We’ll have a clearer picture next month.

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They were headed in the right direction. Its more secure, chromium based, faster than IE but then:

There are irritating unavoidable confirmation prompts at setup and again with updates, it messes with default browser settings and the startup pages are obnoxious. I know it can be changed but the page vomit from msn is just awful and intrusive to my senses.

I know when I install chrome I am going to get a fast browser with a simple single tab opening with minimal graphics and a search box.

Unauthorized information collection is another subject of course, I wouldn't trust Edge or Chrome on that front.
 
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They were headed in the right direction. Its more secure, chromium based, faster than IE but then:

There are irritating unavoidable confirmation prompts at setup and again with updates, it messes with default browser settings and the startup pages are obnoxious. I know it can be changed but the page vomit from msn is just awful and intrusive to my senses.

I know when I install chrome I am going to get a fast browser with a simple single tab opening with minimal graphics and a search box.

Unauthorized information collection is another subject of course, I wouldn't trust Edge or Chrome on that front.
I use Chrome and Edge. Both work pretty well, though I agree about the whole MSN start page and other annoying aspects of Edge. That said, Chrome seems to have it's own share of issues. In particular I find that if I leave Chrome open for a long time performance seems to degrade and problems occur. As long as I exit and reopen Chrome on a regular basis it works fine. Not sure if it's a memory leak problem or not, it just feels like that is what is happening.
 
Some of the hundreds of remover scripts actually works?? I will have to try them again may have luck removing this crap browser now...
 
Try Vivaldi. It's a browser from Opera's original founder, Jon von Tzetchner, which is user and privacy-focused, which is more than can be said about Opera's current owners. It's the Escalade in a lot full of Accords, Civics, and Yugos.
And bugs :)
 
I've used Vivaldi as my daily driver since its day 1 alpha release on every PC I own, and it has only gone from strength to strength. I have never had a day in that time span where irritation with a breakdown rose to a conscious level anywhere but the Android release, and I attribute that more to the imbecility of the smartphone as a platform.
 
I've used Vivaldi as my daily driver since its day 1 alpha release on every PC I own, and it has only gone from strength to strength. I have never had a day in that time span where irritation with a breakdown rose to a conscious level anywhere but the Android release, and I attribute that more to the imbecility of the smartphone as a platform.
Good for you. I also used it for a year or two. Then I gave up.
 
Or you must be extremely patient towards your applications.
I am when the alternatives are privacy-invading Chrome and Edge, insane ideologue-owned Firefox, and Chinese-owned Opera. Considering the wealth of features and customizations Vivaldi offers over those other minimalist atrocities, it's a no-brainer.
 
I am when the alternatives are privacy-invading Chrome and Edge, insane ideologue-owned Firefox, and Chinese-owned Opera. Considering the wealth of features and customizations Vivaldi offers over those other minimalist atrocities, it's a no-brainer.
How is Vivaldi less "privacy-invading" than Edge? In this day and age all you get to choose is to which company you want to hand out your data.

If you wanted to say you trust Vivaldi Technologies more than Microsoft, that's an acceptable argument, but it's just what it is, personal beliefs.
 
How is Vivaldi less "privacy-invading" than Edge? In this day and age all you get to choose is to which company you want to hand out your data.

If you wanted to say you trust Vivaldi Technologies more than Microsoft, that's an acceptable argument, but it's just what it is, personal beliefs.
From just recently:


Or the fact that they regularly blog about the importance of privacy as a feature of their browser and internet usage in general, aligned in just about every regard with watchdogs like the EFF:


And in the past Vivaldi has indicated that if Google interferes in Chromium to remove the ability to do things like ad-block that they will re-implement it.

Currently I do trust Vivaldi more than Microsoft, because they have not yet given me a reason not to, unlike Microsoft (and unlike Opera before them), which piles those reasons up higher on top of the existing mountain every day. Once Vivaldi gives me cause not to, there are alternatives like Brave waiting in the wings.
 
From just recently:



If you want to avoid Google tracking you, use a different search engine though. There's no other way.

Or the fact that they regularly blog about the importance of privacy as a feature of their browser and internet usage in general, aligned in just about every regard with watchdogs like the EFF:


It is called lip service. Microsoft also blogs a lot about how much they care about you and your privacy and user experience and yada-yada.

And in the past Vivaldi has indicated that if Google interferes in Chromium to remove the ability to do things like ad-block that they will re-implement it.

We'll see when they walk the walk. Till then, go to lip service.

Currently I do trust Vivaldi more than Microsoft, because they have not yet given me a reason not to, unlike Microsoft (and unlike Opera before them), which piles those reasons up higher on top of the existing mountain every day. Once Vivaldi gives me cause not to, there are alternatives like Brave waiting in the wings.

I rest my case: it's just your personal beliefs and preferences, not much else. You gotta pick your poison, and that's about it.
 
We'll see when they walk the walk. Till then, go to lip service.



I rest my case: it's just your personal beliefs and preferences, not much else. You gotta pick your poison, and that's about it.
Blogging vaguely about the "importance" of privacy and providing step-by-step guides to how to achieve it are two separate things, Vivaldi does the latter and has consistently done so since day 1. Between the features offered stock and abilities offered by addons to resist fingerprinting and other advanced techniques, and a VPN, you can achieve privacy that may not be perfect but is nonetheless significant.

And the effect is observable: my old Gmail account, which I've long abandoned, is constantly peppered with spam. My ProtonMail, by contrast, now several years old and also used daily, tends to only get things filtered into spam because the filter has gotten overzealous going after promotions I legitimately sought out.

You just sound like someone that has resigned himself to the position of cowardly impotence, of "picking the lesser evil" between Google and Microsoft. It's the equivalent of a fat man whining that fitness is unattainable.
 
Blogging vaguely about the "importance" of privacy and providing step-by-step guides to how to achieve it are two separate things, Vivaldi does the latter and has consistently done so since day 1. Between the features offered stock and abilities offered by addons to resist fingerprinting and other advanced techniques, and a VPN, you can achieve privacy that may not be perfect but is nonetheless significant.

Are you actually trying to convince me that Vivaldi has more step-by-step guides on personal data protection than Microsoft? :) That's a good one. It only shows you never saw any of MS' learning sites.

And the effect is observable: my old Gmail account, which I've long abandoned, is constantly peppered with spam. My ProtonMail, by contrast, now several years old and also used daily, tends to only get things filtered into spam because the filter has gotten overzealous going after promotions I legitimately sought out.

... or the fact that you're way more conscious about your personal data and you don't give out your email address so easily as 10 years ago. But the cold fact is that you have absolutely no access to either mail provider's server records, so you're just trying to justify your personal choices by any and all means. As if anyone cared.

You just sound like someone that has resigned himself to the position of cowardly impotence, of "picking the lesser evil" between Google and Microsoft. It's the equivalent of a fat man whining that fitness is unattainable.

No, I'm just not pretending I know things that I don't. I could follow suit and go on to analyse you and launch personal attacks, but I will leave it to you. You have absolutely no way to tell how Vivaldi or Microsoft treats your data behind the scenes, you just decided that Vivaldi is trustworthy and Microsoft isn't.
 
I was using Edge for some time. And as a result, I noticed that it seems to be more CPU intensive than running Chrome because the laptop fan spins up a lot more frequently. In terms of privacy, I feel MS should be the lesser evil as compared to Google.
 
Isn't chrome still a memory and resource hog? (not to mention the well publicized exploits recently). I read that they were finally acknowledging that the design was crap using each tab as a complete new instantiation of chrome, instead of using reusable code, thereby chewing up all the RAM on a machine if you keep tabs open, like a lot of people do. Personally I zeroed chrome after the last exploit mess
 
I completely understand why it's losing market share. Our new computers at work (little boxes attached to the backs of monitors called ThinkCentre M920 Tinies) force us to use Edge. My old hack to get at Chrome doesn't work anymore (even though Chrome is still on the machine... it's stupid).

Edge just plain sucks. I can't even use the address bar for Google search anymore. That's a habit that's impossible to break because every other computer I use does this. It's not absolutely horrible like Exploder was but that's really setting the bar abysmally low. I get Firefox cravings from it.

Just a thought here, but you might want to change the scaling of that Statcounter Global Stats graph. All that it shows is Chrome way out ahead with everything else looking about the same.
 
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