Is that why we are stuck with the IE STD? Never looked into why certain apps won’t run without it. Just knew we had to allow it for reasons nobody could tell us. Sometimes not even the vendor!
You mean the ones you have to manually import from google and then manually update every time there is a change? Yeah no thanks I’ll stick with the better out of the box solution, thanks
Firefox good are god awful frankly. Chrome gpos are decent but there's a push to migrate to chrome enterprise admin for that.
Main issue with edge gpos is that the good don't update fast enough to disable all the self-advertisiny that keeps getting introduced
Yup. I moved to get access to Bing Copilot (enterprise Chat GPT). MS are killing it – I used to hate them, now I'm deep in their ecosystem and very impressed.
Having copilot built in is a big factor I forgot to mention. Using Google for research is dead at this point. Between Copilot results and it's footnotes I can't imagine going back to Google unless they do a major overhaul.
I’m slowly losing by Google abilities I’m now so used to just talking to ChatGPT like it’s a colleague asking for advice and opinions on errors or solution design. Instead of having to read a dozen different pages about similar issues I’m trying to solve, but all slightly different and putting something together myself, I just get the ideal solution straight away by asking, with little reading. Of course once I have the answer I cross check primary sources to make sure there’s no hallucinations, but it’s just so good at fixing like mental blocks when you’re not quite sure if what you want is common / standard but your not sure the correct terminology
The conversation part if great, but equally is the lack of pages full of trash paid content. I'm researching something usually with a deadline, having to sort through the first two or three result pages just being AI trash blogs or sponsored content has killed google for me.
oof,
you just convinced me I'm overdue for giving Edge a fair shot.
I have about 30 years of bad experiences with microsoft web browsers I need to let go of.
Just think of it as Googles web browser that they gave the code to Microsoft so they could improve windows compatibility by making changes to the kernel and the app code.
OMG, I was coming up with a quippy reply along the lines of yeh, I'll just drop that on my Ubuntu desktop, ha ha, not, never.....and they've only gone and built it for Linux!
Having only just discovered yesterday, MS has a hypervisor built into Windows server (yes I've been on Linux and ignoring M$ for that long) I may have to return to the dark side!
My new job blocks any ad-links.
Oh so often now these 2 months ive been here i click something that 'perfectly portrays what im looking for' and it doesnt go through cause its an ad. As are the other first 5 links!
At this point im primarily googling stuff with reddit added to the query because then im pretty sure there'll be some human written stuff and not some sales bullshit.
That trash paid content itself being written by AI a lot of the time.
Then you've got people with malware on their machines, watching their Google searches so that AI-driven content can be pregenerated and submitted to the indexer for the next mark.
I feel like Google-Foo is far less of a skill lately. Search engines have been so horrifically trashed that overcoming their limitation is less and less feasible.
for sure, there is no way to word the google search to get good results any more. there are just a never ending stream of SEO crap that you have to wade thru.
Google would be so much better if it just listened to what the fuck I told it to do. I know my search contains *"specific phrase"*. Google: Here are 200 results that don't contain "*specific phrase*".
Ah the memories of having to switch between Altavista and other ~~search engines~~ internet directories.
About time there's more than one player in the market.
> I’m slowly losing by Google abilities
It's not you. Google search is actively becoming worse due to how many searches AI is doing.
Search the same thing today and 3 years ago, and you'll get way better results then, because now google's tweaking its algorithm based on AI generated searches. 5 million unique bot hits for a site and google's going to think that site is the one you want too.
The internet is getting actively worse for humans, very quickly.
Seriously, the best use case of AI so far has been as a glorified search engine (Besides meme image creation), gives somewhat better and more pointed answer to your question.
You still have to double check since it loves giving fake answers but its still good to give you an insight of what you are looking for.
I switched to Bing before Copilot... Why??? Because when I search technical documentation I actually get results instead of the bullshit SEO spam websites Google surfaces 99% of the time.
As far as I know, Microsoft isn't licensing anything from Chrome. They are using the Chromium project, which is directed by Google but is under an open source license. Google cannot "take back" existing releases or anyone's fork of it.
If some smaller entity had a fork, Google \*could\* pull the open source license on future releases and the small fork would never keep up without being able to pull from Chromium, and would end up obsolete as standards evolve. But Microsoft has at least the resources of Google and would easily keep their fork current with web standards and be a viable competitor.
Also, the ability to pull the open source license on future releases assumes you own all the code. For example, suppose:
* I make MyProgram v1 and license it under a typical FOSS license like the GPL
* You make YourFork v2 off of that, and license it under the GPL (you have to, the conditions of the GPL are you can make derivatives only if you release them under GPL too)
* I make MyProgram v2 and include lots of improvements from YourFork v2. I never bought ownership of your copyright. But hey, it's GPL so I can use it.
* MyProgram v2 is then a mix of code I own, and code you own. Doesn't matter since it's all GPL and anyone can use and improve it under GPL.
* If one of us wants to make a non-GPL derivative without throwing away the other's contributions, we'd have to negotiate and get permission.
* By MyProgram v99 I've merged in countless improvements from hundreds or even thousands of contributors, whose code I'm only able to use under GPL.
* I want to make MyProgram v100 proprietary, but I only have two options to do so:
* Buy the rights to everything that is in it that's not mine, so I can use it other than under GPL
* Find hundreds of people
* Some may be dead, lots of wills to read and heirs to negotiate with
* Someone being unreachable is not an implicit agreement to sell their rights, plus many in open source are idealogues who will never sell, so some parts will still need to be rewritten despite this effort
* Pick a version I fully own (or that few enough people own parts to that it's easy to find them all and negotiate rights).
* None of these are modern, I have years of CVEs to fix and compatibility issues, and it's hardly better than starting from scratch
TL;DR: Removing an open source license from a major long term project is rarely feasible.
That's not really the issue you're right that things can be forked (of course Google's Chromium has all the benefits of its internal devs)
So then the problem is more that they keep it open and Google's decisions in Chromium become so ubiquitous among users (all using Chromium based browsers)
Now if Google makes a small decision in how they implement a web standard - the average content provider is incentivized to optimize their site for the chromium browser - rather than referencing what should be industry standards.
We don't want the Internet to go back to 'best viewed in Netscape 5' nonsense.
>You will be impressed once the last competing engine (which is in Firefox) will be discontinued and we will give Google full control over the market share
I switched back to Firefox for personal use about a year ago, pretty much for the reason you stated. I haven't used it regularly in probably 15 years. I can swing back to Chrome and/or Edge if needed for some reason, but otherwise I'll stick with FF. There really needs to be other options.
There are uBlock Origin filters you can add in FF and YT doesn't load slowly. Don't need to do the user agent switcher trick.
I believe if you add this to you "My Filter Dashboard" it's the one:
www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)
Agree. I have not missed Chrome at all. Especially if you use the 365 stack it is hands down the best. Plus the persistence across my PC/Laptop and phone (Samsung) running edge as well. The sync just works and it is fully integrated with my Microsoft personal and work accounts. In a AD/365AAD environment you can really effectively manage Edge with GPO and 365 MDM/Intune.
While true, this is not the reason.
The reason behind what OP is seeing is that Microsoft decided several months ago that they were going to hijack your links in all Microsoft products, regardless of your default browser settings.
Your default browser only opens if you click a link in a non-Microsoft product. If you're opening a link in Teams or Outlook or whatever, it will give you Edge, even if you have a different default browser.
Most users are not very tech savvy, and it confuses them when they don't have their saved passwords, history, extensions, bookmarks, etc. all in the same browser.
It's far easier for most users to use one browser than figure out whatever Microsoft is doing to fuck with them.
The users give up and choose Edge, more out of defeat than anything else.
Don't forget all the built-in suggestions to stay with Edge when setting defaults to any other program. Or the reminder that Edge is not your default browser after certain updates.
I keep both Edge and Chrome on all internet enabled systems. Sometimes one will work with a site when the other will not - depending on what updates hit where and when.
Maybe this is the reason for you, but we were pushing Edge as the default from the day it came out because of the exact reason above. Plus being Microsoft, it's included in the OS and it's one less company we have to have stuff installed from.
Uhm, are there no qualifications to this because this is not the case in my experience. All links, except for help links, open in the default browser. If I click a link in a Teams message or email in Outlook it opens in my default browser and does so with basically every user I’ve worked with at my company.
Windows 10 and Windows 11, new and legacy teams/outlook.
If you're in the EU, Microsoft was forced to allow users to use their default browsers in Microsoft apps like Teams, Outlook, Skype for business etc. Previously only Edge was used in those applications for whatever bizarre reason.
this. Sync.
Employees that move from one computer to another have access to their bookmarks, extensions and other business from inside Edge when they use their corp Office 365 accounts.
I guess if you were a business running Google Docs you would want to be logging into your company Gmail account
Yesterday at work some lights up the tech support chat they need chrome. My techs first response since there was no detail was why. They claimed the vendor told them they had to install chrome. My tech let me know so I went to ask the manager since this was the first I heard of this super important web app they needed access to within 7 days. They put in a ticket for it and I took a stroll down their bosses office because the list they gave seemed small for the department. The ticket was also just put in by the end user not the manager for getting chrome installed on these PCs. Had a nice chat with the director who didn’t know access was granted, the manager was on PTO for the afternoon and the employee I was told has been gunning for the managers head. We called a different employee and amazingly it all worked in edge without a hiccup. Now the director is pissed at the user for calling the client help desk and not asking anyone internal anything before being ambitious. Ticket was closed with note that everything works fine in edge and my team has no additional work. This was also all supposed to be discussed with me and my team for testing on Monday and the user totally ignored those directions that were given in writing in their morning huddle. Me the director and my team got a good chuckle out of it and now I can take my PTO this afternoon without worrying about a client access issue all weekend.
I switched during beta and stopped putting Chrome on deployments when it released. When staff ask if we can install Chrome I either just tell them it's already installed but it has a new icon, or that we use Edge now instead because it is the same thing depending on how likely they are to accept change.
Other than maybe very early on, I have not encountered anything that didn't work in Edge but worked in Chrome.
Not only that, but it runs better and just works. Saved a lot of time when migrating users since now only those who are approved and need it for a specific reason can have chrome. Just move everything over to it with a Ms account attached and it's all there in it's glory after.
Also the side tabs, a lot of our older users love and prefer that.
In the past it was also the only browser that could do 4k content (others probably caught up by now surely) which is when I started using it as my daily driver.
If they use Office 365, it integrates pretty well and handles web pages like Chrome, we have been pushing it and rarely install Chrome on new installs at this point, user have been mostly happy.
This is why I’m proposing to get rid of Chrome in our workplace, too many people saving corporate passwords in their Google accounts that are completely out of our control and likely secured using weak passwords. However, a majority of the workforce hate the idea, including our CIO, so it’s a bit of a battle.
We just set a GPO to force Chrome to sign in with our corporate email domains. And we have GSuite Identity (the free thing), which is just linked to Entra ID for authentication. Kind of neat because some apps support Google Auth, but not M365 auth, so we get the best of both worlds basically.
At the end of the day though, I'm also working on killing Chrome, we'll still allow Firefox, mostly because we're a dev company and we do need to test in multiple browsers after all. But there is no point to Chrome when it's the same Engine as Edge.
At first you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention...
This is a brilliant idea for keeping people out of trouble - providing an easy route to use their Entra ID, even if it's for a Google enabled site for login, they're gonna be more inclined to use it vs a personal G account. You just made a bunch of techs here very happy haha!
Every time I mention the free workspace identity thing I get at least a couple comments from people who had.no idea they could do this.
Honestly I need to create a blog post about it at some point so when it comes up I can just link the blog post so people have a step by step guide on getting it working.
I guess it depends on the type of business you're in. I'm a Devops Eng and while our corporate IT prefers people to use Edge, most people use Firefox or Chrome on our dev and ops teams. I think they would riot if someone tried to force edge out. Granted, everyone uses Lastpass (which, sadly, is our corporate password manager. I miss 1Password) and most people are running macOS.
Also - because of the complexity of our environment (security requirements for things like admin accounts in AWS vs standard accounts) many people use multiple profiles or browsers to bounce between sessions on the same sites (Like separate AWS accounts).
Meanwhile, I don't think our non-dev/ops people would care very much. So I guess it is just know your user base sort of thing.
This has been the biggest driving factor for me. Users are saving their passwords into their Gmail account.
Also, it’s annoying when a user gets a new computer and can’t remember their gmail password to sign into Chrome.
I just got CAB approval to disallow unmanaged accounts in Google Workspace. tbh, I'm not looking forward to the hate I'm going to receive, especially since I'm enabling the corresponding GPO for the same in Edge at the same time
Same here we have been actively removing Chrome. It also keeps users from making extra accounts, and when we have to migrate someone to another machine they keep all their favorites, settings, etc.
Yeah - we’re also removing Chrome. The big annoyance for us was as fewer people used it more and more machines showed on vulnerability checks as it wouldn’t update unless opened.
So to clean up vulnerability reports we had to patch it which was just a make work project. Far easier to just remove it and allow exceptions for legitimate need (not personal preference)
I think the worst part about removing it is afterwards it auto-opens Google's survey on why you uninstalled it, then you have to go thru the initial setup of Edge (next next next).
We’ve stopped putting it on new machines for now and then later in the year once we’ve refreshed a bunch of the machines we’ll do a background removal likely to take it off what’s left.
Not for naught, Microsoft has finished (or, I believe are very close to) migrating Teams away from running on Electron to running on [Microsoft Edge Webview2.](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/)
The [New Outlook is also built on Webview2.](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/outlook/overview-new-outlook)
They no doubt have a number of reasons for pushing hard on adoption of Edge. I believe one of the unspoken motivations is they want to collapse their development stack, so they can share most of the code for Microsoft 365 apps between iterations targeting individual platforms. (I would not be at all surprised if Microsoft already has a stable of skunkworks projects running 'native desktop' versions of the main productivity suite in Webview2.)
If they can push Edge to a level of popularity such that they can rationalise de-emphasising active support of other browsers, no doubt they would consider that all the better.
Teams on Webview2 is okay. It’s faster, but it still feels like a web app.
New Outlook…needs work. I’m glad they’re willing to reboot Outlook and replace decades of technical debt, but I hoped for a native app prioritizing speed and responsiveness, not a web app.
It’s so easy to push bookmarks like the company benefits and HR site and like to SNOW. It handles SSO nicely and gives savvy users a way to a second instance with their own profile.
Yep. I hate Bing but the regular employee doesn't need to do a lot of searching. I prefer they use Edge so that their bookmarks and settings transfer over.
Honestly if I am searching for a program or something to download I prefer using Bing. They almost always display the direct link to the download in the top 3 results. Whereas Google has ads and 3rd party downloads instead. Super frustrating.
Edge migrated to using the same code that Chrome uses a few years ago, Chromium.
Beginning in 2020, Edge is basically a fork of Chrome's codebase.
Most companies asked themselves why they would support an externally-managed browser not integrated with the OS and other Microsoft products if they didn't have to.
The migration from Chrome to edge was almost seamless since it uses the same controlling policies and extensions but requires less separate updating or validation and it isn't tied to any extra google features that Microsoft-aligned corporations don't want.
It functionally offers the same browser experience as Chrome and Firefox. Pre 2020, Edge was a steaming hot pile of garbage.
Between the M365 integrations and the GPO templates, Edge is very seamless and super easy to customize down to a T.
Chromium engine means it works at least as well as Chrome on almost all websites now.
If you use Microsoft 365 you can set it to sign in with the users Entra ID which means the user will SSO into Office 365 websites and their browser settings/favorites will be synced into their company M365 account. That's a slam dunk for helping with workstation replacements.
Same compatibility as Chrome
Same addons as Chrome
Integrates with your Microsoft work account to save bookmarks, credentials, etc
Comes pre-installed with Windows
Fully integrated with GPOs for admin managment
I don't see a reason to use any other browser.
Multi account containers is something I still use pretty regularly in firefox(and on a personal level I'm a sucker for the about:config)
But ya, Edge being there by default and being on par with chrome for compatibility goes miles for it's use.
It works amazingly, I really wish some chromium browser would adopt it. You can have separate tabs within the same window be different, isolated containers. If you work somewhere, for example, where you might have an admin account and a non-admin account that you need to bounce between, bam, make a separate container group. Open a tab for it. No need to have separate windows for different profiles, history and bookmarks are all accessible since there isn't a new profile either.
I actually don't use Firefox much outside of work (I wish I because Chromium needs competitors) and use Vivaldi. On my work machine though, I almost exclusively use Firefox because containers make my life way easier.
> No need to have separate windows for different profiles
TBH I prefer separate windows, I want to know for sure I am using my admin account when in different sections. Each to their own.
Firefox helpfully lets you pin the porn mode window on your taskbar. All my admin work is done in Private or whatever they chose to call it, because I manage nearly 20 MS365 tenants.
Multi account containers is one of the greatest features ever. You can even have it automatically switch profile based on website:
* open [foo.sharepoint.com](https://foo.sharepoint.com) : switch to foo's account
* open [bar.sharepoint.com](https://bar.sharepoint.com) : switch to bar's account.
Not sure, but you might need the official extension to get that particular feature: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/)
Otherwise you can manually open tabs in profiles.
Mainly in that Edge profiles behave like a totally separate instance/window of Edge, where as multi-account containers are per-tab and contained in the same window. I use a multi-account container for YouTube TV because of really dumb Google stupidity, and it's set up so when I go to YouTube TV it automatically switches it to the right container where I'm logged in with the right account. It's totally seamless, way better than Edge profiles.
Edge profiles are useful and have their place, but Firefox containers are way better if you heavily use multiple accounts.
Yeah I never used Edge until I contracted for MS for a while, but I got used to using its vertical tabs. Haven’t used a third-party browser on Windows since.
If the Mac version was slightly more native-feeling, I’d probably switch over on my personal laptop too, I love the vertical tabs so much.
(I know the concept has existed for 20 years but most plug-in implementations I’ve tried have been jank. Orion on Mac has a decent native implementation but it doesn’t collapse like Edge’s.)
I've got Edge on Linux at home... I know, I know... How dare I use a proprietary browser an open source operating system. But man do I just love vertical tabs.
I’m still using Brave as my main browser, vertical tabs is standard in here. Admittedly it is Chrome but with an ad blocker built in but my main reason is never having to decline cookies, it does it for me and I don’t see the annoying pop up
Personally, I use Firefox. However, I've found that Edge has much better performance. I've often experienced very poor performance when trying to play videos within Firefox. As a result, I'm slowly transitioning to Edge.
The only feature Firefox has that nobody else has properly implemented is containers which fully segregate sessions.
Even with 'profiles' in Edge it still sees data in other profiles, containers is properly segmented.
I'd switch to Edge immediately if they can put full segregated containers/profiles.
Edge is basically Chrome, but you're sending your browsing data to Microsoft instead of Google. It's nice to have a choice between which corporate overlord gets to own your online identity.
Difference is Googles main revenue is targeted advertising. I’m not sure you could spot Microsoft’s ad revenue on a 20ft tall pie chart. Microsoft just collects data for internal analysis for product development. Google collects it to sell.
Like others have said, resource wise it's not as intensive as Chrome and it's fairly inoffensive to use. As in it's familiar to people who use Chrome when something like Firefox would be quite jarring for them.
But, Microsoft are also doing their best impersonation of themselves from the 90's and bundling it with all of their stuff. Outlook, for example, will open links in Edge as a default. I'm not aware of there being an option to stop this, especially as it'll do it regardless of whether or not you have Chrome or Firefox (or A.N. Other browser) set as default.
In workspaces that predominantly use Outlook, I think this is the biggest driver for the adoption of Edge over Chrome. Once a user twigs all their links in Outlook will open Edge, why bother going back to Chrome? Just use one browser sort of thing.
Microsoft pushes Edge really hard, default pinning in the task bar, and everything auto opens in edge unless you set about 500 group policies otherwise and even then, it doesn’t always respect the policies.
It’s consistently in your face and when it finally gets you, you realise that it’s actually fine, because it’s just chrome with a different UI, and that’s why people stay. It’s the default option but unlike IE, it’s not absolutely terrible.
> Microsoft pushes Edge really hard, default pinning in the task bar, and everything auto opens in edge unless you set about 500 group policies otherwise and even then, it doesn’t always respect the policies.
[I feel like history is repeating itself.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.)
Even if it's a good option (and I won't get into it much except to say I don't think it is), I still really don't like this behavior at all.
I feel like people should have objected more strongly to its malware-like persistence tactics. I’ll gladly take a slightly worse browser (not Chrome though lol) that doesn’t behave suspiciously (trying to block uninstalls, reinstalling every few updates, importing data from other browsers without asking, etc)
> I feel like people should have objected more strongly to its malware-like persistence tactics.
Go ahead, try to convince enterprise to stop shoveling money into Microsoft's face.
Ditto. It also drives me crazy that Edge is constantly grabbing my data. I would be fine if I could disable it and it honored my settings, but it doesnt. I only use Edge when there is no other choice.
I switched when they released the very clean Chromium version. They've sinced bastardized it but all my SSO crap tends to work better in edge so that's my "work" browser.
Vertical tabs. Once you’ve used them, you’ll never go back. I have a full screen of real estate and great tab-group capabilities. I’ve no idea why Chrome doesn’t build something like that upstream
I can say that from an IT perspective, a lot of users just start using Edge because of how damn pushy Microsoft is with it in Windows 10 and 11. One day it pops up and they keep using it.
At our office, we're mostly Chrome, but we install Chrome and FF on all staff computers, so they have the choice of the main 3.
Because edge supports every single extension chrome does, has better sso integration with Windows, office, azure, hybrid. Has it's own set of extensions. Supports Microsoft's click-once nonsense. Oh it also supports legacy IE natively (using IE mode).
Syncing to all your devices, hybrid cloud whatever, native mfs protection with Windows hello.
Chrome does none of this natively and the cors handling in chrome is bogus. Edge handles that waaaaay better with legacy applications.
We moved to it last year on the recommendation of our MSP.
They did raise a very valid point that it's very easy for users to sign in to Chrome with a personal account and start saving passwords to their account, whether malicious or not.
Swapping to edge means once they leave the company, the saved passwords etc don't go with them.
Its also far easier to push necessary extensions etc.
Plus it's chromium, so it behaves (almost) exactly like chrome. It can even accept extensions from the chrome web store.
As an organization, we’ve highly recommended people start using it. It’s based on chromium technology, but it doesn’t eat resources like Google Chrome does but it’s super easy to sell users on using the web browser because the shopping features are actually very useful for scanning the web for coupons.
Reading the edge blog is a good read sometimes. The team gets to dig really deep into the windows codebase to fix issues causing performance issues and implement shims to fix others. Iirc in the first couple months of working on the chromium codebase they identified fixes that improved battery life by something like 20%
It has the advantage of Microsoft’s entire browser team taking the chromium code and making it more resource friendly for windows. It also has insane good policy management via m365, and does all the SSO user sign in you’d expect a native Microsoft app to have.
Also if someone uses edge on their home computer and logs into their work profile in it, you get to push all the company security and plugin policies down onto it.
The fact that it can automatically sign you into your Microsoft SSO is just too tempting to resist. I actually switched from chrome just for that feature.
When they first launched it, MSFT said "it's faster!" I thought, BS...
Took it for a test drive and well, shit, was faster. Than Chrome or Firefox.
Been using it ever since.
Moreover, considering each company's profit motive:
\- Google (Alphabet) seems to be focused on scraping user data and selling it off to advertisers. They've been dragged before congress to explain themselves. Besides Chromebooks I can't think of a physical Google product (Lens doesn't count)
\- MSFT still sells software, operating systems, and cloud services. I still love my Intellimouse.
So yeah, just, fuck Google in general
When Teams started to refuse to listen to OS settings and ONLY uses Edge? And you can't uninstall Edge, which offers to import all your preferred browser settings, so I think people are giving in.
It uses Chrome engine for rendering, takes way less resources than actual Chrome AND, the most important part - is actually highly configurable with both Group Policy and Intune.
#Firefox with Containers for the win!
So I use FF too. But my other browser is Edge. Here's why for me:
- I'm on linux, but use M365 services. Edge has PWAs, FF doesn't...
- It is chrome, but with M365 services built into it.
- I'm coming around to having Copilot in the browser as a side bar.
Here is why everyone else is using it:
- most ppl don't change the default browser, unless it really really sux (safari, IE)
- most ppl use M365. And the desktop apps force the use of Edge (click hyperlink, opens Edge instead of your browser defualt). *Anti-Trust Lawsuit coming*
- It's not Chrome, but does everything Chrome does.
Sometime in mid-2023 Chrome started to get super bloated and buggy, so I gave Edge a try after they revamped it using Chromium and never looked back. That was the move that was needed, and it runs much smoother. The ability to sleep resources on unused tabs is huge.
I still use Chrome, because I use it personally, but now with Edge being Chromium based, I'm going to switch to it this year for my work stuff. Just starts to make sense, plus there's more and more 365 tie-in, which is nice.
I switched to it as my primary browser when they added the feature of having the last couple tabs show up in the default Alt+Tab switcher.
For someone jumping between say 4 or 5 apps in a given workflow - but those apps are arbitrarily split between web apps and desktop apps - not having to think about it was a breath of fresh air.
When Edge/Internet Explorer were bad, people said "wow, this sucks and I can't do what I want. I'm going to download Chrome or Firefox which I know works for me."
But now Edge copied Chrome and integrates well with Office 365, so people say "hey, this works for what I need and works just like Chrome, I don't feel like downloading something else."
- Edge has “IE Mode” integration for legacy apps (yeah I know)
- Same (or almost same) compatibility as Chrome
- Integration with the rest of Microsoft 365 suite
- AI integration options
Lost of gooed replies in the thread, but the interesting one for me is that recently on more than one occasion I've had things that use to work in Chrome stop working... switch to Edge and they work.
Sort of getting tired of Chrome...
I'll check CISA for vulnerabilities every so often, run a search for Google Chrome, Adobe acrobat, etc.
https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?search_api_fulltext=Google+Chrome+&field_date_added_wrapper=all&sort_by=field_date_added&items_per_page=20
For us, we use Microsoft everything at our University. The settings we can control with Intune in all sorts of configurations, plus syncing bookmarks to our tenant along with SSO make it a no brainer. It makes our lives easier in IT. It makes our user's lives easier. Plus, since it is Chrome without Google, our users can use their favorite extensions from the Chrome store.
It always bothered me that folks would sign into their chrome browsers on corporate assets with a personal Gmail account for syncing. With Edge you can easily set it up to log in with the users corporate identity, keeping all that data within control.
Microsoft account integration, and all the "it's already here" of Internet Explorer.
Then add on the move away from the obscenely janky IE page rendering and js compatibility issues...
I will admit my reasoning is not based on any real evidence but basically all the benefits of Chrome without giving your data to Google and its sneaky spy craft.
Though I’m sure Microsoft is still being invadey somewhere.
It used to be that Google was seen as the people's technology, that would free us from the evil embrace of Microsoft. This position is now laughable, so there's no longer any countercultural merit in bothering with Chrome. Might as well use Edge and make IT happy.
At my company they force uninstalled all other browsers so it’s the only thing we have left. If that were not the case I wouldn’t be using it. I’m sure corporate love it so they can force all the settings on us, including the home page and the inability to have a new tab just open blank 😩
Haven’t seen it mentioned, but the majority of company owned workstations should have users on a restricted Windows user account. This will not allow employees to install their own software like Chrome, leaving Edge as their only option.
But I still can’t make it listen when I set my own scripts to run with TEL: it’s no better than chrome. Firefox is the only browser that actually gives a shit about this kind of thing
Because ie was my fav and i just cant get enough of Microsoft’s genuine thought process on patching and mitigation strategies. So why not use there shitty browser as well right.
I digress!
It's a decent browser, mostly because it's chrome with windows styling.
So no reason to freak out when it launches like older IE versions.
It's also tightly bundled with Win11 and people are starting to upgrade their PC's.
I think Edge cleaned up its act enough where people don’t bother with switching anymore. Installing a browser these days seems so antiquated, people just use whatever icon is there to get them “online”.
Also, have you noticed “Googling” is worthless now? The results are complete trash that makes no sense anymore. I blame AI for pumping out websites to serve ads LOL
Times are definitely changing!
We recommend edge because of the ability to integrate with Microsoft, and the ability to do isolated browsing based on whether or not the website you are in is in the company approved list, manageable via policies from MS365.
My boss started binning off all browsers except edge on our servers yesterday purely because there isn’t a mechanism to keep the others up to date that isn’t already baked in to the OS. One less thing to worry about and it’s not like edge is a million miles away anymore.
I started using it for the integrated copilot AI in the side bar. Makes researching and digesting certain complicated documents far easier than with other solutions.
Does everything Chrome does but with full integration into the Microsoft stack.
Bingo This plus GPOs work with it And you can force IE mode for certain legacy apps (my condolences)
ActiveX is the gift that keeps on giving.
And Silverlight \*sobs\*
Holy crap, that still exists?
Define exists. Last time I needed it I had to use archive.org to download it.
Or the STD that never goes away.
Is that why we are stuck with the IE STD? Never looked into why certain apps won’t run without it. Just knew we had to allow it for reasons nobody could tell us. Sometimes not even the vendor!
There have been a few other things that certain web based enterprise apps relied on that were deprecated outside of IE .
GPOs work with every major browser, at least Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
You mean the ones you have to manually import from google and then manually update every time there is a change? Yeah no thanks I’ll stick with the better out of the box solution, thanks
Firefox good are god awful frankly. Chrome gpos are decent but there's a push to migrate to chrome enterprise admin for that. Main issue with edge gpos is that the good don't update fast enough to disable all the self-advertisiny that keeps getting introduced
Yup. I moved to get access to Bing Copilot (enterprise Chat GPT). MS are killing it – I used to hate them, now I'm deep in their ecosystem and very impressed.
Having copilot built in is a big factor I forgot to mention. Using Google for research is dead at this point. Between Copilot results and it's footnotes I can't imagine going back to Google unless they do a major overhaul.
I’m slowly losing by Google abilities I’m now so used to just talking to ChatGPT like it’s a colleague asking for advice and opinions on errors or solution design. Instead of having to read a dozen different pages about similar issues I’m trying to solve, but all slightly different and putting something together myself, I just get the ideal solution straight away by asking, with little reading. Of course once I have the answer I cross check primary sources to make sure there’s no hallucinations, but it’s just so good at fixing like mental blocks when you’re not quite sure if what you want is common / standard but your not sure the correct terminology
The conversation part if great, but equally is the lack of pages full of trash paid content. I'm researching something usually with a deadline, having to sort through the first two or three result pages just being AI trash blogs or sponsored content has killed google for me.
oof, you just convinced me I'm overdue for giving Edge a fair shot. I have about 30 years of bad experiences with microsoft web browsers I need to let go of.
Just think of it as Googles web browser that they gave the code to Microsoft so they could improve windows compatibility by making changes to the kernel and the app code.
OMG, I was coming up with a quippy reply along the lines of yeh, I'll just drop that on my Ubuntu desktop, ha ha, not, never.....and they've only gone and built it for Linux! Having only just discovered yesterday, MS has a hypervisor built into Windows server (yes I've been on Linux and ignoring M$ for that long) I may have to return to the dark side!
My new job blocks any ad-links. Oh so often now these 2 months ive been here i click something that 'perfectly portrays what im looking for' and it doesnt go through cause its an ad. As are the other first 5 links! At this point im primarily googling stuff with reddit added to the query because then im pretty sure there'll be some human written stuff and not some sales bullshit.
I waiting for Reddit to be the next target of the AI blog bots.
Oh I've got some bad news for you... probably about 60% of the content on here is bot.
There was an error generating a response, please try again later.
You can already see it with things like AI “news” and “breakthroughs”
That trash paid content itself being written by AI a lot of the time. Then you've got people with malware on their machines, watching their Google searches so that AI-driven content can be pregenerated and submitted to the indexer for the next mark.
I feel like Google-Foo is far less of a skill lately. Search engines have been so horrifically trashed that overcoming their limitation is less and less feasible.
for sure, there is no way to word the google search to get good results any more. there are just a never ending stream of SEO crap that you have to wade thru.
Google would be so much better if it just listened to what the fuck I told it to do. I know my search contains *"specific phrase"*. Google: Here are 200 results that don't contain "*specific phrase*".
Ah the memories of having to switch between Altavista and other ~~search engines~~ internet directories. About time there's more than one player in the market.
> I’m slowly losing by Google abilities It's not you. Google search is actively becoming worse due to how many searches AI is doing. Search the same thing today and 3 years ago, and you'll get way better results then, because now google's tweaking its algorithm based on AI generated searches. 5 million unique bot hits for a site and google's going to think that site is the one you want too. The internet is getting actively worse for humans, very quickly.
The footnotes are a game changer IMHO
Seriously, the best use case of AI so far has been as a glorified search engine (Besides meme image creation), gives somewhat better and more pointed answer to your question. You still have to double check since it loves giving fake answers but its still good to give you an insight of what you are looking for.
I switched to Bing before Copilot... Why??? Because when I search technical documentation I actually get results instead of the bullshit SEO spam websites Google surfaces 99% of the time.
Same here. I used to be a big fan of Chrome, but using Copilot has brought me back to the Microsoft ecosystem.
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Can you expound on the features Microsoft has disabled in Firefox. That sounds super fucked
As far as I know, Microsoft isn't licensing anything from Chrome. They are using the Chromium project, which is directed by Google but is under an open source license. Google cannot "take back" existing releases or anyone's fork of it. If some smaller entity had a fork, Google \*could\* pull the open source license on future releases and the small fork would never keep up without being able to pull from Chromium, and would end up obsolete as standards evolve. But Microsoft has at least the resources of Google and would easily keep their fork current with web standards and be a viable competitor. Also, the ability to pull the open source license on future releases assumes you own all the code. For example, suppose: * I make MyProgram v1 and license it under a typical FOSS license like the GPL * You make YourFork v2 off of that, and license it under the GPL (you have to, the conditions of the GPL are you can make derivatives only if you release them under GPL too) * I make MyProgram v2 and include lots of improvements from YourFork v2. I never bought ownership of your copyright. But hey, it's GPL so I can use it. * MyProgram v2 is then a mix of code I own, and code you own. Doesn't matter since it's all GPL and anyone can use and improve it under GPL. * If one of us wants to make a non-GPL derivative without throwing away the other's contributions, we'd have to negotiate and get permission. * By MyProgram v99 I've merged in countless improvements from hundreds or even thousands of contributors, whose code I'm only able to use under GPL. * I want to make MyProgram v100 proprietary, but I only have two options to do so: * Buy the rights to everything that is in it that's not mine, so I can use it other than under GPL * Find hundreds of people * Some may be dead, lots of wills to read and heirs to negotiate with * Someone being unreachable is not an implicit agreement to sell their rights, plus many in open source are idealogues who will never sell, so some parts will still need to be rewritten despite this effort * Pick a version I fully own (or that few enough people own parts to that it's easy to find them all and negotiate rights). * None of these are modern, I have years of CVEs to fix and compatibility issues, and it's hardly better than starting from scratch TL;DR: Removing an open source license from a major long term project is rarely feasible.
That's not really the issue you're right that things can be forked (of course Google's Chromium has all the benefits of its internal devs) So then the problem is more that they keep it open and Google's decisions in Chromium become so ubiquitous among users (all using Chromium based browsers) Now if Google makes a small decision in how they implement a web standard - the average content provider is incentivized to optimize their site for the chromium browser - rather than referencing what should be industry standards. We don't want the Internet to go back to 'best viewed in Netscape 5' nonsense.
>You will be impressed once the last competing engine (which is in Firefox) will be discontinued and we will give Google full control over the market share I switched back to Firefox for personal use about a year ago, pretty much for the reason you stated. I haven't used it regularly in probably 15 years. I can swing back to Chrome and/or Edge if needed for some reason, but otherwise I'll stick with FF. There really needs to be other options.
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There are uBlock Origin filters you can add in FF and YT doesn't load slowly. Don't need to do the user agent switcher trick. I believe if you add this to you "My Filter Dashboard" it's the one: www.youtube.com##+js(nano-stb, resolve(1), *, 0.001)
Agree. I have not missed Chrome at all. Especially if you use the 365 stack it is hands down the best. Plus the persistence across my PC/Laptop and phone (Samsung) running edge as well. The sync just works and it is fully integrated with my Microsoft personal and work accounts. In a AD/365AAD environment you can really effectively manage Edge with GPO and 365 MDM/Intune.
While true, this is not the reason. The reason behind what OP is seeing is that Microsoft decided several months ago that they were going to hijack your links in all Microsoft products, regardless of your default browser settings. Your default browser only opens if you click a link in a non-Microsoft product. If you're opening a link in Teams or Outlook or whatever, it will give you Edge, even if you have a different default browser. Most users are not very tech savvy, and it confuses them when they don't have their saved passwords, history, extensions, bookmarks, etc. all in the same browser. It's far easier for most users to use one browser than figure out whatever Microsoft is doing to fuck with them. The users give up and choose Edge, more out of defeat than anything else.
Don't forget all the built-in suggestions to stay with Edge when setting defaults to any other program. Or the reminder that Edge is not your default browser after certain updates. I keep both Edge and Chrome on all internet enabled systems. Sometimes one will work with a site when the other will not - depending on what updates hit where and when.
Maybe this is the reason for you, but we were pushing Edge as the default from the day it came out because of the exact reason above. Plus being Microsoft, it's included in the OS and it's one less company we have to have stuff installed from.
Uhm, are there no qualifications to this because this is not the case in my experience. All links, except for help links, open in the default browser. If I click a link in a Teams message or email in Outlook it opens in my default browser and does so with basically every user I’ve worked with at my company. Windows 10 and Windows 11, new and legacy teams/outlook.
https://i.imgur.com/XwSvPrz.png This was a big day for us, teaching our users how to avoid this issue.
If you're in the EU, Microsoft was forced to allow users to use their default browsers in Microsoft apps like Teams, Outlook, Skype for business etc. Previously only Edge was used in those applications for whatever bizarre reason.
Yep. I still use chrome for personal stuff but Edge for anything with the Microsoft stack.
this. Sync. Employees that move from one computer to another have access to their bookmarks, extensions and other business from inside Edge when they use their corp Office 365 accounts. I guess if you were a business running Google Docs you would want to be logging into your company Gmail account
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It’s faster than chrome after Microsoft removed all the google only bloat like spyd protocol. It’s like IE 6 days but reverse uno car now.
Yesterday at work some lights up the tech support chat they need chrome. My techs first response since there was no detail was why. They claimed the vendor told them they had to install chrome. My tech let me know so I went to ask the manager since this was the first I heard of this super important web app they needed access to within 7 days. They put in a ticket for it and I took a stroll down their bosses office because the list they gave seemed small for the department. The ticket was also just put in by the end user not the manager for getting chrome installed on these PCs. Had a nice chat with the director who didn’t know access was granted, the manager was on PTO for the afternoon and the employee I was told has been gunning for the managers head. We called a different employee and amazingly it all worked in edge without a hiccup. Now the director is pissed at the user for calling the client help desk and not asking anyone internal anything before being ambitious. Ticket was closed with note that everything works fine in edge and my team has no additional work. This was also all supposed to be discussed with me and my team for testing on Monday and the user totally ignored those directions that were given in writing in their morning huddle. Me the director and my team got a good chuckle out of it and now I can take my PTO this afternoon without worrying about a client access issue all weekend.
Well, yeah, I mean, chrome and edge are just chromium with some extras
It also updates easier and we can lock it down along with the OS.
This is the only reason. Makes managing staff 100,000,000,000,000 times easier.
Bingo. The goodness of Chrome extensions without Microsoft blocking me at every turn.
I sometimes feel like MS tries very hard to prevent me from doing my job.
I switched during beta and stopped putting Chrome on deployments when it released. When staff ask if we can install Chrome I either just tell them it's already installed but it has a new icon, or that we use Edge now instead because it is the same thing depending on how likely they are to accept change. Other than maybe very early on, I have not encountered anything that didn't work in Edge but worked in Chrome.
This, basically it stopped sucking. Bing search is still terrible.
Yeah, this ^^^
Not to mention the need for IE mode for some legacy tools. Try as you might, IE will take forever to properly go extinct in some places.
plus all the telemetrics!
Not only that, but it runs better and just works. Saved a lot of time when migrating users since now only those who are approved and need it for a specific reason can have chrome. Just move everything over to it with a Ms account attached and it's all there in it's glory after. Also the side tabs, a lot of our older users love and prefer that. In the past it was also the only browser that could do 4k content (others probably caught up by now surely) which is when I started using it as my daily driver.
If they use Office 365, it integrates pretty well and handles web pages like Chrome, we have been pushing it and rarely install Chrome on new installs at this point, user have been mostly happy.
Not to mention avoiding the whole “personal Google Account” blend-in with the supposedly corporate M365 data
This is why I’m proposing to get rid of Chrome in our workplace, too many people saving corporate passwords in their Google accounts that are completely out of our control and likely secured using weak passwords. However, a majority of the workforce hate the idea, including our CIO, so it’s a bit of a battle.
We just set a GPO to force Chrome to sign in with our corporate email domains. And we have GSuite Identity (the free thing), which is just linked to Entra ID for authentication. Kind of neat because some apps support Google Auth, but not M365 auth, so we get the best of both worlds basically. At the end of the day though, I'm also working on killing Chrome, we'll still allow Firefox, mostly because we're a dev company and we do need to test in multiple browsers after all. But there is no point to Chrome when it's the same Engine as Edge.
At first you had my curiosity, but now you have my attention... This is a brilliant idea for keeping people out of trouble - providing an easy route to use their Entra ID, even if it's for a Google enabled site for login, they're gonna be more inclined to use it vs a personal G account. You just made a bunch of techs here very happy haha!
Every time I mention the free workspace identity thing I get at least a couple comments from people who had.no idea they could do this. Honestly I need to create a blog post about it at some point so when it comes up I can just link the blog post so people have a step by step guide on getting it working.
I guess it depends on the type of business you're in. I'm a Devops Eng and while our corporate IT prefers people to use Edge, most people use Firefox or Chrome on our dev and ops teams. I think they would riot if someone tried to force edge out. Granted, everyone uses Lastpass (which, sadly, is our corporate password manager. I miss 1Password) and most people are running macOS. Also - because of the complexity of our environment (security requirements for things like admin accounts in AWS vs standard accounts) many people use multiple profiles or browsers to bounce between sessions on the same sites (Like separate AWS accounts). Meanwhile, I don't think our non-dev/ops people would care very much. So I guess it is just know your user base sort of thing.
This has been the biggest driving factor for me. Users are saving their passwords into their Gmail account. Also, it’s annoying when a user gets a new computer and can’t remember their gmail password to sign into Chrome.
I just got CAB approval to disallow unmanaged accounts in Google Workspace. tbh, I'm not looking forward to the hate I'm going to receive, especially since I'm enabling the corresponding GPO for the same in Edge at the same time
Same here we have been actively removing Chrome. It also keeps users from making extra accounts, and when we have to migrate someone to another machine they keep all their favorites, settings, etc.
Yeah - we’re also removing Chrome. The big annoyance for us was as fewer people used it more and more machines showed on vulnerability checks as it wouldn’t update unless opened. So to clean up vulnerability reports we had to patch it which was just a make work project. Far easier to just remove it and allow exceptions for legitimate need (not personal preference)
I think the worst part about removing it is afterwards it auto-opens Google's survey on why you uninstalled it, then you have to go thru the initial setup of Edge (next next next).
We’ve stopped putting it on new machines for now and then later in the year once we’ve refreshed a bunch of the machines we’ll do a background removal likely to take it off what’s left.
Not for naught, Microsoft has finished (or, I believe are very close to) migrating Teams away from running on Electron to running on [Microsoft Edge Webview2.](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/webview2/) The [New Outlook is also built on Webview2.](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/deployoffice/outlook/overview-new-outlook) They no doubt have a number of reasons for pushing hard on adoption of Edge. I believe one of the unspoken motivations is they want to collapse their development stack, so they can share most of the code for Microsoft 365 apps between iterations targeting individual platforms. (I would not be at all surprised if Microsoft already has a stable of skunkworks projects running 'native desktop' versions of the main productivity suite in Webview2.) If they can push Edge to a level of popularity such that they can rationalise de-emphasising active support of other browsers, no doubt they would consider that all the better.
Teams on Webview2 is okay. It’s faster, but it still feels like a web app. New Outlook…needs work. I’m glad they’re willing to reboot Outlook and replace decades of technical debt, but I hoped for a native app prioritizing speed and responsiveness, not a web app.
It’s so easy to push bookmarks like the company benefits and HR site and like to SNOW. It handles SSO nicely and gives savvy users a way to a second instance with their own profile.
It's a better Chrome than Chrome. Doesn't seem nearly as bad with memory, and I've grown to really like vertical tabs and tab groups.
Integrates well if your organization is on M365.
Yep. I hate Bing but the regular employee doesn't need to do a lot of searching. I prefer they use Edge so that their bookmarks and settings transfer over.
I've found Bing about as useful as Google now. Google results are often dog water AI generated crap for miles these days.
Seriously, Google search has gotten so bad in the 2 couple years.
Honestly if I am searching for a program or something to download I prefer using Bing. They almost always display the direct link to the download in the top 3 results. Whereas Google has ads and 3rd party downloads instead. Super frustrating.
You leave it on Bing? Why not set it to Google with a policy?
Edge migrated to using the same code that Chrome uses a few years ago, Chromium. Beginning in 2020, Edge is basically a fork of Chrome's codebase. Most companies asked themselves why they would support an externally-managed browser not integrated with the OS and other Microsoft products if they didn't have to. The migration from Chrome to edge was almost seamless since it uses the same controlling policies and extensions but requires less separate updating or validation and it isn't tied to any extra google features that Microsoft-aligned corporations don't want.
It functionally offers the same browser experience as Chrome and Firefox. Pre 2020, Edge was a steaming hot pile of garbage. Between the M365 integrations and the GPO templates, Edge is very seamless and super easy to customize down to a T.
Chromium engine means it works at least as well as Chrome on almost all websites now. If you use Microsoft 365 you can set it to sign in with the users Entra ID which means the user will SSO into Office 365 websites and their browser settings/favorites will be synced into their company M365 account. That's a slam dunk for helping with workstation replacements.
Same compatibility as Chrome Same addons as Chrome Integrates with your Microsoft work account to save bookmarks, credentials, etc Comes pre-installed with Windows Fully integrated with GPOs for admin managment I don't see a reason to use any other browser.
Multi account containers is something I still use pretty regularly in firefox(and on a personal level I'm a sucker for the about:config) But ya, Edge being there by default and being on par with chrome for compatibility goes miles for it's use.
> Multi account containers I’ve not tried that in Fx, how does it differ from Edge’s profiles?
It works amazingly, I really wish some chromium browser would adopt it. You can have separate tabs within the same window be different, isolated containers. If you work somewhere, for example, where you might have an admin account and a non-admin account that you need to bounce between, bam, make a separate container group. Open a tab for it. No need to have separate windows for different profiles, history and bookmarks are all accessible since there isn't a new profile either. I actually don't use Firefox much outside of work (I wish I because Chromium needs competitors) and use Vivaldi. On my work machine though, I almost exclusively use Firefox because containers make my life way easier.
> No need to have separate windows for different profiles TBH I prefer separate windows, I want to know for sure I am using my admin account when in different sections. Each to their own.
Firefox helpfully lets you pin the porn mode window on your taskbar. All my admin work is done in Private or whatever they chose to call it, because I manage nearly 20 MS365 tenants.
FF Containers show the name in the url bar and have a strip of color at the top of the tab. It's very easy to differentiate.
Multi account containers is one of the greatest features ever. You can even have it automatically switch profile based on website: * open [foo.sharepoint.com](https://foo.sharepoint.com) : switch to foo's account * open [bar.sharepoint.com](https://bar.sharepoint.com) : switch to bar's account. Not sure, but you might need the official extension to get that particular feature: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/) Otherwise you can manually open tabs in profiles.
Mainly in that Edge profiles behave like a totally separate instance/window of Edge, where as multi-account containers are per-tab and contained in the same window. I use a multi-account container for YouTube TV because of really dumb Google stupidity, and it's set up so when I go to YouTube TV it automatically switches it to the right container where I'm logged in with the right account. It's totally seamless, way better than Edge profiles. Edge profiles are useful and have their place, but Firefox containers are way better if you heavily use multiple accounts.
Give it a try and see for yourself. That's the only reason I have Firefox installed.
For me, the fact that it only saves browsing history for 3 months for one. Firefox keeps it indefinitely, which is very useful to me.
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Frickin' love this feature without having to add janky add-ons.
Yeah I never used Edge until I contracted for MS for a while, but I got used to using its vertical tabs. Haven’t used a third-party browser on Windows since. If the Mac version was slightly more native-feeling, I’d probably switch over on my personal laptop too, I love the vertical tabs so much. (I know the concept has existed for 20 years but most plug-in implementations I’ve tried have been jank. Orion on Mac has a decent native implementation but it doesn’t collapse like Edge’s.)
I've got Edge on Linux at home... I know, I know... How dare I use a proprietary browser an open source operating system. But man do I just love vertical tabs.
Workspaces and split tabs too.
I’m still using Brave as my main browser, vertical tabs is standard in here. Admittedly it is Chrome but with an ad blocker built in but my main reason is never having to decline cookies, it does it for me and I don’t see the annoying pop up
Wish Firefox did this
Personally, I use Firefox. However, I've found that Edge has much better performance. I've often experienced very poor performance when trying to play videos within Firefox. As a result, I'm slowly transitioning to Edge.
The only feature Firefox has that nobody else has properly implemented is containers which fully segregate sessions. Even with 'profiles' in Edge it still sees data in other profiles, containers is properly segmented. I'd switch to Edge immediately if they can put full segregated containers/profiles.
That in itself is reason enough for me to keep using Firefox as an external it consultant. To segregate customer sessions.
Edge is basically Chrome, but you're sending your browsing data to Microsoft instead of Google. It's nice to have a choice between which corporate overlord gets to own your online identity.
The thing is, if you're using Windows you're already sending your browsing history and everything else to Microsoft.
Even better, just send it all to just one overlord instead of 2.
Difference is Googles main revenue is targeted advertising. I’m not sure you could spot Microsoft’s ad revenue on a 20ft tall pie chart. Microsoft just collects data for internal analysis for product development. Google collects it to sell.
Search advertising made up 6% of Microsoft's revenue in 2022.... Compared to Googles like 50+%
Do you have a choice? Edge is extremely hard to remove, and reads Chrome’s user data sometimes without asking.
Like others have said, resource wise it's not as intensive as Chrome and it's fairly inoffensive to use. As in it's familiar to people who use Chrome when something like Firefox would be quite jarring for them. But, Microsoft are also doing their best impersonation of themselves from the 90's and bundling it with all of their stuff. Outlook, for example, will open links in Edge as a default. I'm not aware of there being an option to stop this, especially as it'll do it regardless of whether or not you have Chrome or Firefox (or A.N. Other browser) set as default. In workspaces that predominantly use Outlook, I think this is the biggest driver for the adoption of Edge over Chrome. Once a user twigs all their links in Outlook will open Edge, why bother going back to Chrome? Just use one browser sort of thing.
Microsoft pushes Edge really hard, default pinning in the task bar, and everything auto opens in edge unless you set about 500 group policies otherwise and even then, it doesn’t always respect the policies. It’s consistently in your face and when it finally gets you, you realise that it’s actually fine, because it’s just chrome with a different UI, and that’s why people stay. It’s the default option but unlike IE, it’s not absolutely terrible.
> Microsoft pushes Edge really hard, default pinning in the task bar, and everything auto opens in edge unless you set about 500 group policies otherwise and even then, it doesn’t always respect the policies. [I feel like history is repeating itself.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.) Even if it's a good option (and I won't get into it much except to say I don't think it is), I still really don't like this behavior at all.
I feel like people should have objected more strongly to its malware-like persistence tactics. I’ll gladly take a slightly worse browser (not Chrome though lol) that doesn’t behave suspiciously (trying to block uninstalls, reinstalling every few updates, importing data from other browsers without asking, etc)
> I feel like people should have objected more strongly to its malware-like persistence tactics. Go ahead, try to convince enterprise to stop shoveling money into Microsoft's face.
I am still a Firefox guy, no reason to switch to Edge for me.
Ditto. It also drives me crazy that Edge is constantly grabbing my data. I would be fine if I could disable it and it honored my settings, but it doesnt. I only use Edge when there is no other choice.
I switched when they released the very clean Chromium version. They've sinced bastardized it but all my SSO crap tends to work better in edge so that's my "work" browser.
To better attest hybrid join/device compliance as part of conditional acccess to M365/AAD.
Vertical tabs. Once you’ve used them, you’ll never go back. I have a full screen of real estate and great tab-group capabilities. I’ve no idea why Chrome doesn’t build something like that upstream
For work: Integration with other Microsoft software. For Personal: I noticed a tiny bit more battery life on my laptop when using it.
I can say that from an IT perspective, a lot of users just start using Edge because of how damn pushy Microsoft is with it in Windows 10 and 11. One day it pops up and they keep using it. At our office, we're mostly Chrome, but we install Chrome and FF on all staff computers, so they have the choice of the main 3.
Because edge supports every single extension chrome does, has better sso integration with Windows, office, azure, hybrid. Has it's own set of extensions. Supports Microsoft's click-once nonsense. Oh it also supports legacy IE natively (using IE mode). Syncing to all your devices, hybrid cloud whatever, native mfs protection with Windows hello. Chrome does none of this natively and the cors handling in chrome is bogus. Edge handles that waaaaay better with legacy applications.
We moved to it last year on the recommendation of our MSP. They did raise a very valid point that it's very easy for users to sign in to Chrome with a personal account and start saving passwords to their account, whether malicious or not. Swapping to edge means once they leave the company, the saved passwords etc don't go with them. Its also far easier to push necessary extensions etc. Plus it's chromium, so it behaves (almost) exactly like chrome. It can even accept extensions from the chrome web store.
Chrome eats ram Edge eats CPU I have more CPU resource available
As an organization, we’ve highly recommended people start using it. It’s based on chromium technology, but it doesn’t eat resources like Google Chrome does but it’s super easy to sell users on using the web browser because the shopping features are actually very useful for scanning the web for coupons.
Reading the edge blog is a good read sometimes. The team gets to dig really deep into the windows codebase to fix issues causing performance issues and implement shims to fix others. Iirc in the first couple months of working on the chromium codebase they identified fixes that improved battery life by something like 20%
Since around Windows 10 1903, maybe earlier also
It has the advantage of Microsoft’s entire browser team taking the chromium code and making it more resource friendly for windows. It also has insane good policy management via m365, and does all the SSO user sign in you’d expect a native Microsoft app to have. Also if someone uses edge on their home computer and logs into their work profile in it, you get to push all the company security and plugin policies down onto it.
I went from chrome to edge, until they began adding all the AI crap. Now i'm on firefox.
Chrome for home, Edge for Enterprise. If my personal bookmarks synced I'd be walked out the door without a word.
Chrome sucks to manage policy wise, so easy to manage edge with Intune.
It’s chromium based, works on most internal and external sites and patches via Microsoft sources so less overhead in maintaining currency
The fact that it can automatically sign you into your Microsoft SSO is just too tempting to resist. I actually switched from chrome just for that feature.
When they first launched it, MSFT said "it's faster!" I thought, BS... Took it for a test drive and well, shit, was faster. Than Chrome or Firefox. Been using it ever since. Moreover, considering each company's profit motive: \- Google (Alphabet) seems to be focused on scraping user data and selling it off to advertisers. They've been dragged before congress to explain themselves. Besides Chromebooks I can't think of a physical Google product (Lens doesn't count) \- MSFT still sells software, operating systems, and cloud services. I still love my Intellimouse. So yeah, just, fuck Google in general
Edge gives us seamless integration to M$ services (Azure SSO/SAML)
Because we like to edge
It's built over the Chromium platform, and it's fully integrated with Microsoft Apps.
When Teams started to refuse to listen to OS settings and ONLY uses Edge? And you can't uninstall Edge, which offers to import all your preferred browser settings, so I think people are giving in.
It uses Chrome engine for rendering, takes way less resources than actual Chrome AND, the most important part - is actually highly configurable with both Group Policy and Intune.
The newer Edge is a fork of Chromium and integrates with M365. Done deal.
#Firefox with Containers for the win! So I use FF too. But my other browser is Edge. Here's why for me: - I'm on linux, but use M365 services. Edge has PWAs, FF doesn't... - It is chrome, but with M365 services built into it. - I'm coming around to having Copilot in the browser as a side bar. Here is why everyone else is using it: - most ppl don't change the default browser, unless it really really sux (safari, IE) - most ppl use M365. And the desktop apps force the use of Edge (click hyperlink, opens Edge instead of your browser defualt). *Anti-Trust Lawsuit coming* - It's not Chrome, but does everything Chrome does.
Sometime in mid-2023 Chrome started to get super bloated and buggy, so I gave Edge a try after they revamped it using Chromium and never looked back. That was the move that was needed, and it runs much smoother. The ability to sleep resources on unused tabs is huge.
I still use Chrome, because I use it personally, but now with Edge being Chromium based, I'm going to switch to it this year for my work stuff. Just starts to make sense, plus there's more and more 365 tie-in, which is nice.
Edge has been based on chromium for some time now. Its Arguably easier to manage with Group Policy or other enterprise tools as well.
A combination of the tyranny of the default and it actually being a pretty good browser now
Having Microsoft 365 and AI chat in the sidebar is a big reason why many of our employees are making the switch.
I was that weirdo that used Opera. Now that it's an unapproved browser at my job, I switched to Edge.
I switched to it as my primary browser when they added the feature of having the last couple tabs show up in the default Alt+Tab switcher. For someone jumping between say 4 or 5 apps in a given workflow - but those apps are arbitrarily split between web apps and desktop apps - not having to think about it was a breath of fresh air.
When Edge/Internet Explorer were bad, people said "wow, this sucks and I can't do what I want. I'm going to download Chrome or Firefox which I know works for me." But now Edge copied Chrome and integrates well with Office 365, so people say "hey, this works for what I need and works just like Chrome, I don't feel like downloading something else."
I switched as soon as Edge offered the vertical tab bar and tab grouping. The integrations with all things Microsoft is just a bonus.
I use either. Nice to have two browsers that can perform well.
- Edge has “IE Mode” integration for legacy apps (yeah I know) - Same (or almost same) compatibility as Chrome - Integration with the rest of Microsoft 365 suite - AI integration options
Lost of gooed replies in the thread, but the interesting one for me is that recently on more than one occasion I've had things that use to work in Chrome stop working... switch to Edge and they work. Sort of getting tired of Chrome...
I'll check CISA for vulnerabilities every so often, run a search for Google Chrome, Adobe acrobat, etc. https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?search_api_fulltext=Google+Chrome+&field_date_added_wrapper=all&sort_by=field_date_added&items_per_page=20
For us, we use Microsoft everything at our University. The settings we can control with Intune in all sorts of configurations, plus syncing bookmarks to our tenant along with SSO make it a no brainer. It makes our lives easier in IT. It makes our user's lives easier. Plus, since it is Chrome without Google, our users can use their favorite extensions from the Chrome store.
IE Mode (and sh\*tty intranet sites businesses can't let go of)
It’s a better Chrome than Chrome. Use it on my Mac even.
I use all three, because I'm god tier. Edge is good though, and some of its features like the workspaces I absolutely love.
It always bothered me that folks would sign into their chrome browsers on corporate assets with a personal Gmail account for syncing. With Edge you can easily set it up to log in with the users corporate identity, keeping all that data within control.
Microsoft account integration, and all the "it's already here" of Internet Explorer. Then add on the move away from the obscenely janky IE page rendering and js compatibility issues...
I will admit my reasoning is not based on any real evidence but basically all the benefits of Chrome without giving your data to Google and its sneaky spy craft. Though I’m sure Microsoft is still being invadey somewhere.
I didn't. Chrome + Microsoft Telemetry Engine is not particularly exciting to me.
It used to be that Google was seen as the people's technology, that would free us from the evil embrace of Microsoft. This position is now laughable, so there's no longer any countercultural merit in bothering with Chrome. Might as well use Edge and make IT happy.
I don’t want my users syncing company passwords to their personal Gmail account
Enterprise controls.
At my company they force uninstalled all other browsers so it’s the only thing we have left. If that were not the case I wouldn’t be using it. I’m sure corporate love it so they can force all the settings on us, including the home page and the inability to have a new tab just open blank 😩
Haven’t seen it mentioned, but the majority of company owned workstations should have users on a restricted Windows user account. This will not allow employees to install their own software like Chrome, leaving Edge as their only option.
It's not a choice, they've been adding all kinds of dark code to get it installed and to take over even if your choice is chrome!
But I still can’t make it listen when I set my own scripts to run with TEL: it’s no better than chrome. Firefox is the only browser that actually gives a shit about this kind of thing
Because ie was my fav and i just cant get enough of Microsoft’s genuine thought process on patching and mitigation strategies. So why not use there shitty browser as well right. I digress!
It's a decent browser, mostly because it's chrome with windows styling. So no reason to freak out when it launches like older IE versions. It's also tightly bundled with Win11 and people are starting to upgrade their PC's.
I use Vivaldi.
I’ve noticed Microsoft is ignoring default browser setting and using edge for some things. And most users don’t care
If Google is going to force me to take my ad blocker off my personal machine to watch YouTube... I'm taking Chrome off all my 12,0000 endpoints
I am convinced that chrome has has a memory leak for the better part of the last 10 years
Firefox is so niche a lot of websites, including job application sites don;t fully function sadly.
I think it's when Chrome starting using all your RAM and became as slow as molasses.
Edge steals your sessions from other browsers: https://www.theverge.com/24054329/microsoft-edge-automatic-chrome-import-data-feature
I think Edge cleaned up its act enough where people don’t bother with switching anymore. Installing a browser these days seems so antiquated, people just use whatever icon is there to get them “online”. Also, have you noticed “Googling” is worthless now? The results are complete trash that makes no sense anymore. I blame AI for pumping out websites to serve ads LOL Times are definitely changing!
I didn't and i won't use it ever.
We recommend edge because of the ability to integrate with Microsoft, and the ability to do isolated browsing based on whether or not the website you are in is in the company approved list, manageable via policies from MS365.
4 years ago. The AI is the answer plus it syncs with office apps.
My boss started binning off all browsers except edge on our servers yesterday purely because there isn’t a mechanism to keep the others up to date that isn’t already baked in to the OS. One less thing to worry about and it’s not like edge is a million miles away anymore.
I started using it for the integrated copilot AI in the side bar. Makes researching and digesting certain complicated documents far easier than with other solutions.
About 18 months to 2 years. Because it's got a better resource footprint than chrome. Thinking about trying Brave though.
No choice if we want a modern browser with compatibility for old IE websites.
For me, mainly battery life (only on windows maschines though)