The past few months, it seems some “patches” and “upgrades” have brought some new sort of browser, Micosoft ‘Edge’ to my machines. What’s the difference, if any, between FireFox and Edge?
I’m a FireFox guy, but are there newer features or capabilities Edge has? Or is this more of MS trying to get their foot back into the door of web browsers? Is there a definitive list of pros and cons?
Tripler
Just curious. . .
Edge isn’t really new: it’s been available for Windows 10 for years. But apparently versions for other platforms are more recent. It showed up on my old Windows 7 laptop not too long ago.
Microsoft has reinvented Edge twice: Once a few years ago, when they wrote a new browser from scratch after giving up on Internet Explorer. The new browser was sleek but nobody used it. They gave up on that too, so rewrote Edge to be a Chrome clone with a Microsoft cosmetic layer on top of it. They use the same underlying open-source technologies, but Edge just swaps out the Googley parts (account syncing, etc.) for Microsofty equivalents.
That makes the new Edge in the same general family as Chrome, Safari, and Opera… they are largely similar under the hood, with similar engines.
Firefox is still its own thing, which is a both a pro and a con. It’s entirely open-source (though largely funded by Google) and controlled by a nonprofit instead of a corporation (questionable funding aside) and tries to protect your privacy. Unfortunately, because it has such a small share of the market (<5%), it also faces more compatibility problems when it comes to the latest web technologies. Chrome and its cousins for the most part try to adhere to web “standards”, but I put standards in quotes because at the end of the day Google and Apple have their own agenda and sometimes pushes forth changes that Firefox doesn’t necessary get right away.
Microsoft used to do that too (we used to call their strategy “embrace, extend, extinguish”) but not enough people use their browser anymore to make that an issue.
In summary, if you care about personal online freedom, go with Firefox. if you don’t, just use Chrome. Edge is just a shitty knockoff of Chrome.
In a bigger-picture context, Microsoft is slowly transitioning from desktop software to cloud services. They are trying to beat Google at their own game (and somewhat gaining ground, actually). Edge is just something they throw money at because they can, and they want to seem somewhat relevant and modern. More and more of their revenue comes from online, B2B services for other enterprises.
However, all of Google’s money depends on good browsers, so Chrome is a core part of their business. They have way more incentive to maintain and innovate on that front than Microsoft does. There’s no way around it: Google and Apple control all major browser development. Everyone else just plays catchup.
“Shitty knockoff” is one way of putting it. Another is to say that Microsoft Edge is based on the Chromium open-source code, as are Opera and Chrome itself.
A recent update to my Android phone’s MS Outlook forces me to use Edge when opening links in emails - which is annoying. I would like to open the link in Firefox, and keep reading Outlook emails - but instead, Outlook just opens a Edge tab in Outlook (so I can’t do anything else in Outlook until I close Edge). Grr…
That’s a false equivalence, as though all three were equal partners in the project. Both are shitty knockoffs of Chrome, and I say that both started life as their own browsers, and only switched over to Blink (not Chromium) when they lost the new browser wars. They add no meaningful contributions to the Webkit/Blink ecosystem, just feed off it as parasites.
That argument would fly for Apple or the various Linux distros who started Webkit way back when, not for Microsoft trying to enter the game twenty years late.
I will, however, admit that Microsoft is slowly changing and contributing more and more to open source projects. Maybe in 5 or 10 years time they will be as important a contributor in the browser space as Google and Apple are today. But not yet.
Edit: Sorry, I was wrong about Edge not being Chromium based. It is.
Thanks guys! I wasn’t aware that Edge seemed to have gone through multiple iterations before it’s current “launch.” It seemed like it might have been bloatware that MS was peddling to try to cut into Google’s cloud-based market share, a la @Reply 's comment. I will be sticking with FireFox, because it’s what I’m used to, and what we use at work (open source allows my company to implement security features), and I’m just not convinced I need anything else for basic browsing.
Have you guys noted any better/worse performance issues between the browsers? If the Chrome “family” are trying to adhere to a “standardized” web, is there really any difference between 'em? FWIW, I am not gaming through browsers, I’m not watching inordinate amount of the YouToobz, nor am I doing any “high impact” web computing (outside of MatLab).
I just get the impression that MS is forcing a browser in upgrades, that really has no benefit, because they simply can.
Tripler
Kinda like when they ‘bundled’ IE with Windows, and it became a ‘default.’ But, I dunno. . .
I’m a Firefox person myself, and I completely agree with this. If you want a browser that’s not controlled by a Big Evil Corporation™, Firefox is the way to go (Chromium is still too close to Google). If you don’t care about this, go for Chrome, which is the de facto standard for browsers anf for which websites are optimised. But there is no plausible reason whatsoever for using Edge. It simply combines the disadvantages of Chrome (coming from a Big Evil Corporation™) with thosoe of Firefox (not actually being Chrome).
I use Opera. Opera offers news links on their page, and so does Edge.
There are several reasons to use Edge. Until this year, I used Chrome almost exclusively, with Firefox as a backup when I needed to run two browsers together. I made fun of IE and Edge along with everyone else. But Edge has made a few significant improvements over Chrome, and I’ve become a convert.
The main advantage Chrome has is syncing within the Google ecosystem. If you’re all in on Google, this might be a deciding factor.
The two biggest advantages of Edge are resource usage and privacy controls. Chrome has become bloated and is an absolute memory hog. Edge uses less than half the memory of Chrome. And if privacy is important, Edge gives better and easier to understand controls. Memory was the deciding factor for me; I can notice the difference.
At the risk of appearing to cherry-pick, here are the conclusions of the first two reviews that popped up for me:
While you would be well served by either browser, for most users the time has come to move to Microsoft Edge. It offers comparable performance and features while using dramatically less of your system resources.
Surprisingly, we find Edge to be more of a polished browser, especially given its most recent updates. It uses fewer resources than Chrome while offering superior privacy controls that are built-in rather than optional. Edge also adds in some nifty features that Chrome can’t match. Our sole complaint regarding Edge is that it lags behind the syncing capability Chrome has…
Overall, it no longer makes sense to use Chrome as your default browser.
It depends on what you’re doing. There are different benchmarks on a whole bunch of things, and different browsers are different at different tasks. But kinda like cars, most browsers are just fine for the typical user.
Just try them all and use whichever one feels faster to you. If you don’t notice a difference, it doesn’t matter. And whatever is faster today probably won’t stay that way a year from now anyhow. They’re constantly optimizing and bloating at the same time. Browsers invisibly upgrade themselves in the background and the companies are always adding more crap to facilitate their other web stuff.
I’d avoid Opera myself, since it’s now owned by the Chinese, but the other major browsers work just fine for most people. One’s a Civic and the other’s a Accord. Or Camry. Whatever, I forget how the cars are named 
There are times when Firefox is EXTREMELY slow. My home page on Firefox is Google–just the one tab. And yet, it can take 10-12 seconds for Firefox to open up and fully load Google.
Other times it’s fast. And the most bizarre thing is that it seems to be completely random whether Firefox will be slow or fast.
I don’t have that sort of issue with Edge. The only reason I use Firefox at all is because of the control it allows–NoScript, etc.
I had been wondering about this question lately. I just got a new computer with Windows 10 Pro. I had been using MS Live for email and Firefox for a browser, but the new system wouldn’t transfer the old horse-drawn MS Live. The new MS mail system is okay, but when I click on a link in an email, it doesn’t come up on the screen like the old one did. It opens the link in Firefox, but I have to click on that icon on the toolbar to see it.
I tried Edge when it was new, but found it frustrating. It would mysteriously jump from what I was doing into another window. I’m open to trying the “improved” Edge, but I’m wary. Is it still jumpy like it was?
The security features may be differentiable, but my understanding is that Microsoft is contributing the code to lighten memory usage back to the Chromium project.
I would also note that people can very much prefer things that are optional to those that are built-in. And that Microsoft has a much worse reputation for the quality of their updates.
So which is worse? Giving all your secrets to Microsoft? Or giving all your secrets to Google?
Microsoft makes their money selling software. Google makes their money selling your secrets.
If you google search from Edge, you can do both at the same time.
Microsoft sees Apple making all kinds of money selling simple overpriced apps, so they got into that with the Microsoft store. They see Google making all kinds of money selling secrets, so they want to get into that too.
Someone several decades ago made this comment, and it’s still true today: “Microsoft’s business plan is simple. They want to rule the world.” If they can do anything to take away market share from Firefox and Chrome, they will. Their goal is to have everything on Microsoft.
I’ve almost given up on Firefox. Perhaps it’s because I still use 5yr old computers with 4GB memory, but it is slow to start, its memory management is abysmal, and its javascript implementation can’t handle some websites (I’ve got blank pages too often).
I’ve still got FF as the ‘default’ browser on my computers, but I’ve also got IE and Edge and Chrome. I avoid Chrome because Google already knows too much about me: I use IE as a lite-weight alternative when FF fails, and I mostly click on the Edge Icon when I want to browse.
I’m irritated by all desktop browsers that import aspects of an android/ipad user interface onto the desktop where they aren’t suitable, but I have no choice there. Edge isn’t materially better than Chrome in that respect.