I’ve said it on other occasions, but I have no problem saying it again: Microsoft Edge seems like a good browser to meI think that Microsoft has done a great job in recent years, which seems even more so when we consider that we are talking about a web browser that is signed by the same technology company that has been betting everything in the business on Internet Explorer for years. And that its successor, now called Edge Legacy, reproduced many of its predecessor’s bad habits.

Everything changed when they realized this after many years of inadequate strategy continuing to bet on your own engine was a mistake and they took a big leap when they adopted Chromium. Thanks to this change, it was able to stop devoting the resources it used to its engine and put them at the service of improving browser features, adding new ones and generally turning Microsoft Edge into a truly solvent proposition that has a lot to convince. users to make the leap.

That’s the problem In 2008, Google entered the browser market with Chrome, started growth almost immediately, which was indirectly reflected in the number of Internet Explorer, which greatly affected Firefox as well. In the following graph, if you disable the rest of the browsers and leave only Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox visible, you can see

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share

Today, and given this data, we can ask ourselves many questions, and I personally have one left: Would Microsoft be able to reverse this decline if it changed its policies? There’s no doubt that Google played a few tricks to its advantage, but at the time, Microsoft’s most used operating system in the world (it lost its position when Android overtook it in 2017) might have worked in its favor, too. just like he did in the past.

Be that as it may, there was a time when Microsoft had the most used web browser in the world and the second by far, and this explains to us that its current 5%, the average share of Microsoft Edge, is extremely disappointing in Redmond. It must be a very unpleasant situation and it is of course more than understandable that they intend to recapture at least some of the luster of the bygone days.

Image: WindowsLatest

What is not so justifiable is in many cases the way to do it. It’s not the first, or the second, or… that, no need to go on, we can use the vague but very precise “nth” to say that again, Microsoft Edge re-displays messages for users to be the default. As we read in WindowsLatest, on this occasion they resorted to a three-dimensional image, which of course is displayed whether the user wishes it or not.

Microsoft Edge has a rich history of disturbing newsas we recalled in March, which adds a similar “turra” to Windows 10 users who, either because they can’t or because they don’t want to, haven’t made the leap to Windows 11. And the problem, the big problem, is that they don’t seem to realize , that far from attracting more users, what they achieve with these disruptive actions is to cause more rejection of what they are promoting.

As you will see, I put the word never in quotes in the title of this post for two reasons. The first is that life has taught me that saying never is quite brave in many cases. And the second is that depending on the circumstances, I might consider making Microsoft Edge my default browser. But not until Microsoft gives up the constant pressure with this type of action.