MS Edge is in trouble

I can understand why Microsoft (and Apple) want to stay relevant in the browser war since they are basically the next generation of "operating system", but seems like the liability of having to support a browser outweighs the benefits at some point, especially if you are so particularly bad at it.

Of course, the MS model is to throw out a me-too product, and then continue to iterate and integrate until it becomes the de facto standard. I just don't know if that's a valid business model any longer.
 
It's the browser without an audience. Power users are happy using Chrome, Firefox, etc. and have no reason to go back to MS. Apple users are still mostly Apple users.
Novice users don't know what Edge is. They know to click in "the Internet" and no amount of MS nags are going to change that.
Large companies have long since made their decision to go with a specific old version of IE or swap to Chrome/Firefox.
 
Yeah, MS should have down this around the early 2000s, when everyone else was still building their own browser.

Ten years later, the race is crowded with impressive contenders, and browsers have become so complex that starting over from scratch will take them years to reach stability.

Firefox went the right way about it, maintaining the inner code base while transitioning to multi-process and protected plugins.

People complained about Firefox taking forever to add modern features, and they lost users, but they still have a user base. And it can grown now that they have a modem browser.

But MS released Edge to the world while it was still in Alpha, and it's barely hit Beta quality this year. OF course there's no uptake.
 
Its good having a browser with legitimate enterprise capabilities. For as much as I love FF (I use it at home) for deploying at work I stick to IE or Chrome.
 
bigdogchris said:
Its good having a browser with legitimate enterprise capabilities. For as much as I love FF (I use it at home) for deploying at work I stick to IE or Chrome.
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Tossing this out on the off chance you or others don't know about it - Frontmotion Firefox provides Firefox as an MSI and provides GPO templates for configuration management.
 
Domingo said:
Apple users are still mostly Apple users.
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Safari on Mac isn't half bad. Its actually very fast and works great. Firefox and Chrome work fine too but they feel clunky and you are always worried about what the next update will bring.
 
AltTabbins said:
Safari on Mac isn't half bad. Its actually very fast and works great. Firefox and Chrome work fine too but they feel clunky and you are always worried about what the next update will bring.
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I didn't mean that in a negative way. It works fine and it pairs just fine with the same app on the iPhone. I use it on the Macs we have in my office.
 
I don't mind Edge, but I'm in such a mixed OS setup I am sort of strapped to Chrome when I'm in front of [random OS]. But for some sites where Chrome is a bit flaky, I can fall back to Edge (or Safari on a Mac, or Firefox on Linux) and not really have any issue.
 
IE worked great for microsoft - actually still does. They managed to lure short sighted companies to build critical web applications on top of it so they got browser AND operating system locked in the process. Very stupid move for the customers, great for Microsoft.
 
I generally use Firefox but Edge is what I use when I have something I just want on a secondary monitor, like the Traffic Graph from my router, and I don't really want it to be just another tab or window of my main browser.

I know more people that still use IE than use Edge.
 
I never got the impression MS considered IE/Edge to be a high priority. Once they got their hands slapped for the tight integration between the browser and OS, they kinda took a more "meh" attitude towards it.

It's ( ms web browser ) utility is largely in downloading chrome/ff on new computers, but it's otherwise irrelevant, and has been for a long while now I feel.
 
Domingo said:
It's the browser without an audience. Power users are happy using Chrome, Firefox, etc. and have no reason to go back to MS. Apple users are still mostly Apple users.
Novice users don't know what Edge is. They know to click in "the Internet" and no amount of MS nags are going to change that.
Large companies have long since made their decision to go with a specific old version of IE or swap to Chrome/Firefox.
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This is such spot on analysis.

You just described by entire office. 75% use Firefox or Chrome. The other 25% think their email is only accessible on their home computer. And take their machine to Office Max when it's supposedly not working right.
 
B00nie said:
IE worked great for microsoft - actually still does. They managed to lure short sighted companies to build critical web applications on top of it so they got browser AND operating system locked in the process. Very stupid move for the customers, great for Microsoft.
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The problem is that Google are now doing the same thing with Chrome. Going all non-standard now they consider themselves 'the standard'.

It's all bullshit whomever you use.
 
daglesj said:
The problem is that Google are now doing the same thing with Chrome. Going all non-standard now they consider themselves 'the standard'.

It's all bullshit whomever you use.
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I think IE still holds the candle in that regard, plenty of company intranets that dont work under anything but IE. Even Chrome doesnt cut it when it comes to such intranets.
 
octane said:
I think IE still holds the candle in that regard, plenty of company intranets that dont work under anything but IE. Even Chrome doesnt cut it when it comes to such intranets.
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completely... There is an internal corporate site where I work written some time ago (but the author has left and noone is commited to "something that works" ) ... it does not work in FF, Chrome, Edge. It works in IE10 and below & only IE11 if you put the site on the compatibility list...
Luckily the bulk of the intranet is now on sharepoint (and luckily the generated html is browser agnostic... a benefit of MS losing the web "standard") but there are still pockets of hand-crafted pages that just break OR pages that execute java
 
Brian_B said:
I can understand why Microsoft (and Apple) want to stay relevant in the browser war since they are basically the next generation of "operating system", but seems like the liability of having to support a browser outweighs the benefits at some point, especially if you are so particularly bad at it.

Of course, the MS model is to throw out a me-too product, and then continue to iterate and integrate until it becomes the de facto standard. I just don't know if that's a valid business model any longer.
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The browser really is the new OS with the world moving to web apps. Which, if Microsoft really wanted to be relevant in the browser war, makes it that much more ponderous why they would not only limit Edge to just one version of one operating system, but relegate it to their petty phone app store sandbox and not write it in proper Win32, nevermind having no plugin support for most of its existence.

It's like they didn't even want to compete - which seems like their approach to most of their attempts at consumer focused products this entire decade: launch a half baked, me-too offering that doesn't hold a candle to entrenched leaders; consumers don't care; end up abandoning it in the most cowardly way possible with no official announcements.

To your second point, I agree - the embrace-extend-extinguish tactics of the mid-2000's don't work anymore because they're no longer in the position they once were.
 
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Edge started out very rough with the first RTM release of Windows 10. It's considerably better now but if one is tied into the Google ecosystem especially through their phones then Edge doesn't have much appeal. Extensions are an issue but critical ones like a couple of good ad blockers are there. On Windows 10 it's the best touch browser.
 
Edge is horrible. Right after I installed Windows 10. It was either firefox or chrome I installed and never looked back.
 
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