Edge Overtakes Firefox To Become the Second-Most Popular Browser (softpedia.com) 119
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo quotes Softpedia:
It was probably just a matter of time, but the thing so many people, including everyone at Microsoft, expected finally happened: Microsoft Edge surpassed Mozilla Firefox to become the world's second most-used desktop browser. Data provided by market analysis firm NetMarketShare reveals that the whole thing happened in March, when the adoption of the Chromium-powered Microsoft Edge improved to a level that allowed it to overtake Mozilla's own browser.
So right now, Microsoft Edge is the second most-used desktop browser on the planet with a share of 7.59%, while Mozilla Firefox is now third with 7.19%.
As for who's leading the pack, Google Chrome continues to be number one with a share of 68.50%.
So right now, Microsoft Edge is the second most-used desktop browser on the planet with a share of 7.59%, while Mozilla Firefox is now third with 7.19%.
As for who's leading the pack, Google Chrome continues to be number one with a share of 68.50%.
Always retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time MS releases a new web browser and essentially forces it on everyone through updates, some idiot marketing research firm, website, etc. breathlessly claims it's the most used evaaa! That is has the most installs, etc.
Retards, all.
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The new Chromium-based Edge (aka "Edgium") replaces the old MS-wholly developed version of Edge.
IE11 still is around on Windows 7, 8, and 10 as well. Microsoft knew that too many business internal sites and such still require it. IE11 is going to remain around for a while.
So yes, you can use Edgium and IE at the same time.
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Oh look, an anonymous coward talking shit. Of course sites can open apps on your machine, what do you think happens when you click a steam/discord link etc. designed to do exactly that. It's standard practise so be an intolerable dick elsewhere.
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You are requesting your computer to open whatever application you registered to handle the mailto: URI method and to pass to it the arguments provided by what you clicked.
The thing displaying the mailto: URI did not open the registered handler. You opened the registered handler.
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Every time MS releases a new web browser and essentially forces it on everyone through updates, some idiot marketing research firm, website, etc. breathlessly claims it's the most used evaaa! That is has the most installs, etc.
Retards, all.
Well, those are interesting words. Only Chredge isn't forced on anyone in any way. It doesn't self-install.
But don't let facts get in the way of your anonymous first-post tirade.
Re:Always retarded (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not exactly true. Edge is part of Windows 10, and Windows 10 will update the old Microsoft-built Edge to the new Chredge at some point, if it hasn't happened already. And unless you're an Enterprise customer, you can't turn off updates in Windows 10 short of yanking out the network cable, so you're going to get Chredge one way or another.
If you still have Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 then you won't get Chredge unless you intentionally download and install it.
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Weird, can you show me where in the prominently featured Cortana search I can make it open things in my default browser, not Edge?
Or how about the non-disableable (at least not without registry hacks) start menu web search. How do I make it open things in my default browser. The one that, when I tried to set it, I got a pop up telling me I should keep using Edge, because it was "built for windows 10" with a nice dark pattern button set with a big, bold "check it out" for Edge and a smaller, text-only link u
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I know at work, when Edge updates or a Windows update is rolled out, Windows resets your preferred everything to M$ apps on its own without asking.....
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If you look at the data this isn't just a monthly blip, it's a long term trend.
I still use FF (Score:1, Insightful)
I remember when FF was king, with 75%+ marketshare.
Of course that was well before they decided to sacrifice themselves on the alter of social justice. People can be such slow learners.
Re:I still use FF (Score:4, Insightful)
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More like they've made too-many-to-count braindead decisions to be chrome-like, because their primary source of money is Google.
You could probably stop after the word "decisions". It was simply amazing how many stupid decisions they've made (and, in some cases, continue to make).
But by that logic... (Score:2)
They were right... As you now chose Chrome instead. Meaning you would jave liked them to be *more* Chrome like.
This is why I did stay with Mozilla the whole time.
Navigator, then Opera and Mozilla ("Seamonkey") to develop for, then Firefox, then Firefox still. No IE, no Chrome (the new IE), no Edge.
Sorry, I really think if you ever chose IE or Chrome or Edge, you joined the organized crime, supporting those who harmed and harm us all, and should not be a member of our society.
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i still use FF even though it may be slower than chrome. Browsing is bottlenecked by the server anyway... and internet traffic.
Truth be told, i'd prefer a browser that wasn't a dozen levels of abstraction and 100 MB of executables, but at least it's the only (i think) browser where with some effort you can have near absolute control (videodownloadhelper is one major omission)
if only the building process was simpler/faster, but i fear each recompilation would take the better part of an hour
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Sorry, I really think if you ever chose IE or Chrome or Edge, you joined the organized crime, supporting those who harmed and harm us all, and should not be a member of our society.
And I think if you use Mozilla, then you are rebel scum who should be destroyed! ...The difference being that I am joking, an you are probably not.
*sigh* crazy people everywhere.
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Indeed, but eventually people will learn that privacy actually matters.
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Indeed, but eventually people will learn that privacy actually matters.
"Eventually", sure. Of course, by the time that people decide they prefer privacy FF may not be around anyway.
It's a pity Mozilla aren't faster learners.
Re:I still use FF (Score:5, Funny)
FF still has 100% marketshare on my computers :-)
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Social justice made Chrome faster and more stable and advertised it on the Google home page?
Social justice decided to ditch the old plug in system? Social justice made the mobile version have layout issues?
Re:I still use FF (Score:5, Insightful)
Social justice made them develop a plugin system that didn't scale or have enough security for the modern world. And social justice made them fix it. Basically everything is social justice's fault.
Also social justice ran over his cat.
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Actually looking at the timeline Firefox stated to recover from years of stagnation after Eich left, so maybe social justice did fix it...
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Personally I wouldn't even contemplate using Chrome (or anything Microsoft) because they both see you as a source of income.
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Social justice is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society, as measured by the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity, and social privileges. In Western as well as in older Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive what was their due from society.[1][2][3] In the current global grassroots movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets and economic justice.
In it's purest, non-biased form, what's so wrong with that?
How would the opposite of the above be a good thing for civilization in general?
Disaffected people, people who are being exploited in some way, eventually fight back. That's not good for anyone and creates viscious downward spirals that can wreck a society. I'm reminded of the French Revolution, for instance, as an extreme example.
Seems to me when you have over 7 billion people alive on the planet at the same time, you should probably arrange for
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Each organization has some employees producing disproportional amount of churn and diverting productive ones into endless debates about the process. One such person can easily have a net value of negative 3-5 engineers, so removing them from the organizat
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They should put 100% of their effort into making the best web possible browser as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Who gets to decide what is the 'best'? Define what 'best' even means? That's a very vague and arbitrary word. For instance, if you define 'best' as 'largest number of people who have it installed', then Windows 10 is the 'best' operating system for a computer -- but the numbers are artificially inflated by Microsoft because of the methods used to install it on computers. Conversely you could say Linux is the best operating system because (I'm sure) the number of Linux installations on all computing devices
Re:I still use FF (Score:4, Informative)
I remember when FF was king, with 75%+ marketshare.
That's only in your head. Firefox never had more than 30-35% market share ca. 2009-2010. IE lost the top spot ca. 2012 (to Chrome) and second place in 2015 (to Firefox).
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I remember before that when IE6 that near 100%. ff fought ie/ms for years to bring ie/ms down. leading to another monopoly of google/chrome.
No context (Score:5, Interesting)
Without comparing it to previous data, this isn't very useful. Did Mozilla lose market share? Did Google? Where did the users come from?
At the end of the day, half the browsers on that list are all Chromium based. Google owns the web.
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Re:No context (Score:4, Informative)
You can view the data here: https://netmarketshare.com/ [netmarketshare.com]
Remember to set the timeframe when looking at the table.
Firefox barely even registers on mobile, the top four are Chrome, Safari, Samsung and QQ.
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Firefox lost a little over the last 2 years, but so did IE+Edge combined. Firefox was about 10.17% 2 years ago, down to 7.19% now. However, IE+Edge had combined 16.75% 2 years ago and have combined 13.46% now. In fact, both Mozilla and MS lost more market share to Chrome in the last 24 months, but there's also a shift to Edge from IE during that time as well.
I primarily use Firefox (Score:3)
Blame Firefox (Score:3)
Re: Blame Firefox (Score:2)
The likeness helped me move from chrome to FF - less of a migration shock like say moving from windows to Linux.
Edge improved to a level that allowed it... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: Edge improved to a level that allowed it... (Score:1, Funny)
So you are saying you are a really cheap whore. ;)
No offense.
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Firefox is an excellent browser on desktop. If switch to it immediately if they sorted out the mobile version.
Having Chrome sync between desktop and mobile keeps me on it. Firefox has sync but until Firefox Mobile gets usabile it doesn't help me because I have to use Chrome on Android.
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But there is one mobile browser I use even more, I believe it is Firefox based, the DuckDuckGo privacy browser.
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The main issue is that a lot of pages don't render well. Take this simple page for example: https://www.satsignal.eu/ntp/R... [satsignal.eu]
It's unreadable because it's so wide on my phone. I have to constantly scroll side to side. There is no way to make the font bigger without zooming, Firefox removed the text size option for some reason.
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But Firefox has the "reader" option which makes it just about perfect, something Chrome can't do!
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True, although you can't enable reader mode for Slashdot desktop mode for some reason. I'll play with it a bit more, perhaps there is some sort of bodge that would make it usable.
Why can't they just fix it though?
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I say this because I don't recall a single site failing to work correctly recently on Firefox on the desktop.
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Firefox desktop is fine. On mobile the problem is mostly sites that don't have a mobile version. Firefox isn't good at taking a desktop layout and making it work on a mobile screen like Chrome is. If you look at Chrome it makes the page narrower so you can read an entire line at a reasonable zoom level (i.e. reasonable font size), but Firefox doesn't.
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Re: Edge improved to a level that allowed it... (Score:2)
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You have to keep in mind that phone screens are really high DPI. Mine is about 450 IIRC. Everything has to be scaled up about 5x just to make it viewable.
Chrome seems to do that properly and accounts for the width of the page being 5x less than reality too. Firefox doesn't so everything is microscopic. Firefox's "solution" to this is to just zoom in to make the font reach the minimum size, but then you have to scroll over multiple page widths to read a line and it's not even consistent, on some sites it doe
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Firefox is an excellent browser on desktop. If switch to it immediately if they sorted out the mobile version.
It's an excellent browser on mobile too. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than chrome. For one, I can run noscript, which makes the web a much more reasonable place.
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As much as I love uBlock in Firefox for Android I put up with just DNS66 because Chrome renders pages decently almost every time. With Firefox there are some sites which just don't work (including Slashdot desktop layout!) and some which you need to fiddle around zooming and using the reader mode to make work.
I really want to switch to Firefox but the constant layout issues are very frustrating.
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That's definitely a big factor. Windows 7 dropped from ~29% to ~26% of all desktops in the last 3 months, while Windows 10 increased from ~52% to ~57% over the last 4 months. Windows 10 gets Edge by default, whether or not that's the new Chrome-Edge doesn't matter, it's the same metric.
Never mind you can't uninstall it from Windows... (Score:5, Insightful)
From? (Score:1)
You can uninstall *Windows*!
I mean what are you? A professional, or just toying around?
Re:From? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Microsoft Edge browser? (Score:3)
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Exactly. It being force-installed and still only having 7something% tells you everything you need to know about user opinion of Edge.
"Stolen"? From *Google*? (Score:5, Informative)
It is open source.
And it came from KDE!
It is a fork of Blink, which is a fork of WebKit, which is a fork of KHTML.
Other than that, your point still stands.
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It's a testament to how crap Internet Explorer, MSN and Bing are that even being the default on Windows wasn't enough to make them succeed.
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This is stupid, the one browser that does not come preinstalled on anything is the one that beats all others. If what you say had any bearing on the truth, Edge would have 99% of the market, not practically nothing.
"Popular" (Score:1)
Yeah, like we didn't see this game before.
No, mate ... MS pushing it onto all people via Windows does not make it popular. Only used. Unknowingly, unwillingly, or in confusion.
We have seen this before. ... *making* it "popular"... with this very article.
And it is YOU
Because you are going to keep saying it, until you or people believe it... and follow it ... and you fulfilled your own prophecy.
Or ... until we stop you. By not being fools.
So you are the enemy.
You are the PR lobbyist. The viral marketer. The s
The most popluar browser is meaningless (Score:2)
Other than making developers customize their web apps to make them "work better".
The most popular restaurant is McDonalds. Does that make it the best one?
Now Edge, which is really just chrome in shiny wolfs clothing and is installed on every windows 10 system by default, has moved up to #2 (aka Starbucks)
I'm sure not everybody remembers when IE was the most popular browser, (back in 2008 or so)
Here's a month by month breakdown of browser stats starting in around 2002:
https://www.w3schools.com/brow... [w3schools.com]
McDonalds (Score:2)
>> The most popular restaurant is McDonalds.
McDonalds is not a restaurant.
Firefox needs to update (Score:2)
FF is used 25X as much as Edge (Score:3)
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That is of course true. The tracking methods used do not work with FireFox users since the vast majority of them have JavaScript and Spying and Tracking disabled. Something which cannot be done with Edge, Chrome, or EdgeChrome/ChromeEdge.
None of my 7 billion computers are tracked by the hooligans, for example, because my Firefox disables the ability of these hooligans to track.
A Better Way To Say This... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you put it that way, you realize how utterly rubbish the take-up of Edge has been...
It's a bit like a runner finishing a marathon by *just* beating another competitor and then crowing about it... when the other runners finished the race and went home the day before.
Long live Firefox, thanks. For it's flaws - no shortage of 'em - it's still *not Google* and *not Microsoft* and *cross Platform*. Win.Win.Win.
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I never let facts get in the way of a good story!
Re: A Better Way To Say This... (Score:2)
Well said. And consider it stolen. ;-)
Don't really trust NetMarketShare stats (Score:5, Interesting)
The biggest traffic monitoring company is StatCounter. They monitor 3 million sites. Nearly 100x more than NetMarketShare. And they count raw numbers of page views. Their stats [statcounter.com] show Firefox at 4.4% (behind Safari at 18.35%), and Edge (have to edit it to show individual Chrome-type browsers) at 4.14%. Suggesting that NetMarketShare's stats for Edge are being inflated by the "grandma" scenario I gave above - people who only use a browser a few times a month, and thus end up using Edge since it came pre-loaded.
The other traffic monitoring company is W3Counter, which tracks 80,000 sites but only the last 15,000 pageviews per site (so sites which get more pageviews are not disproportionately represented). I'm not quite sure what to make of their stats [w3counter.com]. They show FF in 4th behind Safari and IE+Edge, but neither Edge nor FF show up in their individual browser version breakdown.
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Ack. They count in terms of unique visitors per month.
Wikipedia stats (Score:2)
I am partial to the Wikipedia browser stats [wikimedia.org], although it looks like it was upgraded recently (in the last few years since I looked) and now the data only goes back to 2015 - although you can also look at their older data [wikimedia.org].
It tells a pretty different story about Edge - it has Edge at 2.1% with Firefox at 5%.
The growth of Edge is totally uninteresting to me but the fall of Firefox makes me pretty sad. Firefox down from almost 10% at the start of the recorded period.
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hey count raw numbers of page views
Which is what makes their statistics completely worthless. Just because I use an extension to refresh a webpage every 15 seconds and I run this 18 hours a day, does not mean I should count as 100,000 visitors. We are trying to look at the market distribution of web browsers, not the distribution of data.
W3Counter is even worse.
As NetMarketShare is the only company that monitors unique visitors, it is the only source for information on browser distribution.
Doesn't Chrome and Edge spy on you more, though? (Score:1)
use javascript blockers (Score:5, Interesting)
The data is biased towards those that would visit those particular sites and to those that would not run script blockers and/or tracking blockers. It is likely that they have never recorded my use of Firefox.
It is probable that more Firefox users will run blockers than Edge users would. It is possible that Edge users may be more interested in visiting the tracking sites than Firefox users do.
Edge is the most popular alright... (Score:2)
It's the easiest way to download Firefox or Chrome onto a Window$ machine with a fresh Windows 10 install!
Phones (Score:1)
Most Used not most popular (Score:3)
The symbol for the Internet and total customer locking is still a thing ...
So basically the 2 top browsers are (Score:2)
The windows inertia effect (Score:2)
Is there any evidence people are making a conscious choice or is it magically appearing in windows updates whether you asked for it or not?
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The only way to get Edgium is to disable security on your computer (though apparently many who went and got Edgium never bothered to enable any security in the first place) and go get it from the Microsoft Malware Repository (they call it the Microsoft Store).
Eventually Edgium may be distributed with Windows or chucked into a so-called "feature update". However, not even Microsoft believes that Edgium is stable enough for that yet, and it might be many many many many many years before it is.
Well yeah... (Score:3)
It comes bundled with Windows. The vast majority of people will just use that, because it's there and they don't have to do anything like downloading and installing an application.
I'm more surprised that Chrome became as dominant as it did, but then again when most people use Google, and Google relentlessly advertises for their browser, it's a given. People are lazy.
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It does not come bundled with Windows.
Pre-installed != Popular (Score:2)
I'll bet that if it didn't come pre-installed fewer people would use it.
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It does not come pre-installed.
I'm shocked, I tell you! (Score:2)
"Edge Overtakes Firefox To Become the Second-Most Popular Browser"
Proving once again that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of Americans.
Still no (Score:1)
Choice? (Score:1)
Still seems broken. (Score:1)
Everytime I try to use it I run into problems. From a time card to other web sites it's broken. I'd like to ditch IE and just use edge. It's a long way from that happening.
Edge is always running in background (Score:2)
I'm wondering if the report uses data from how many browsers are actually "running" (as Microsoft has Edge do) vs. how much use they're actually getting in the real world.
For example, I use CCleaner and when cleaning browser cache, nearly every time it asks, 'Edge is running in the background, do you want to close it?' even if it was never opened in the first place. Nobody I know uses Edge, it has always seemed to me like Windows launches Edge intentionally in the bg to inflate numbers and therefore make sh