Until Microsoft fixed its compatibility issues, it knew it didn't have a chance.

But it had forgotten to support the way the web works now. Microsoft had built Edge with proprietary infrastructure and a backward-looking eye, wanting to make sure it supported all the ancient software and systems that companies still use. Once they got past that, the team heard over and over that a huge problem with Edge was that way too many sites and apps just didn't work with it. Many people they spoke with, they found, thought Microsoft was asking about Internet Explorer. 'Is there going to be space for us? And what we found was really pretty energizing.'įirst they had to educate users that Edge even existed. 'You look at the competitive browsers and they're good,' said Chuck Friedman, a corporate vice president for Edge. Their question was, essentially, are the browser wars over? Chrome was totally dominant - even people within Microsoft used it - and Firefox and Brave and others already made for pretty solid competition. So a team of product managers, designers, engineers and others went out and talked about Edge with clients from all over: schools, big businesses, small businesses, you name it. Maybe, folks at Microsoft wondered, it was time to stop investing heavily in browsers at all.īut first, Microsoft wanted to know where it had gone wrong. Which is somewhat surprising, given that not so long ago, the company was thinking about just giving up on web browsers altogether.Ī couple of years ago, it had become clear that the much-hyped Edge browser wasn't catching on in mid-2017 Edge was significantly less popular than Internet Explorer, the browser so old and bad Microsoft built an entirely new product rather than keep upgrading it. It's the most functional, user-friendly browser the company's ever made. Microsoft's big news today is that its Edge browser has a bunch of new features and will automatically block many trackers that follow people around the web.

Microsoft edge vs chrome touch screen