For anyone who comes straight to the comments, I recommend passing on this article. If you already clicked through, I'm sorry :)
It it misleading, the writer is only considering desktop usage, and then constraining the data the the month of March. The 'evidence' is in the form of a single screenshot, from his lone data source NetMarketShare. He is trying to hype it up as some sort of 'grand' milestone.
It is poorly written, and over the top. The poster used the subtitle here, but the real title of the article is 'History in the Making: Microsoft Edge Overtakes Mozilla Firefox'. Also making points such as "While some expect Microsoft Edge to become the world’s top desktop browser...". Come on man.
Finally, it is just not that interesting. The real story should be, some Firefox/ IE users decided to try out the new Edge in the month of March, after a flashy new version was released. Maybe Edge really will continue to claw a few points of market share, let's follow up in a few months. But this particular article is really poor.
It's hardly even the right story on the desktop. It was obviously going to be the case that Edge would take market share from IE over time, because it acquires users in the same way that IE did (by being the default on Windows), and they're the same users.
At one point IE was the number one desktop browser. So this is really just a continuation of the story about how Microsoft lost its browser dominance to Chrome, and then conceded defeat by adopting its engine.
Well, I was there and during the first browser wars and I saw users and developers choosing IE because it was faster and had more features than Netscape. Thanks to Microsoft we got XMLHttpRequest (AJAX) and Web 2.0 (DHTML, iframes).
IE was just a better browser and that's how it gained market share - the same way Chrome did. The fact that IE was the default was secondary. If being the default was all that was needed, IE would have never lost any market share.
Having your competitor do all the work and then using it to your advantage sounds like a win to me though. Also as a user and a developer I consider it a win on multiple levels. I'm happy that every desirable target platform now has a default embeddable browser engine derived from a common high-quality WebKit heritage. I also now have a major non-Google fork of Chrome to choose from, one that I know will be there for the next decade.
We can actually measure how much was "choice" and how much was "defaults" because at that time there were versions of IE for Mac and Unix. They were, shall we say, not as popular as the Windows version. Even when there were a lot of websites that only worked in IE. Heck, you can still get Edge for macos/iOS and Android, how popular are they compared to on Windows?
And Chrome got popular in much the same way. For a long time you couldn't go to google.com in a non-Chrome browser without seeing a banner pushing Chrome, and it was bundled as a "you must notice and uncheck this box or Chrome will be installed as your default browser" option in a wide variety of popular third party software installers, and it's the default on most Android devices.
"Good enough" and "gets installed by the user not doing something" consistently beats higher quality options for popularity. Look at Firefox -- it's not doing anything like that, it's a better browser by a lot of metrics, and it's losing market share.
> We can actually measure how much was "choice" and how much was "defaults" because at that time there were versions of IE for Mac and Unix.
Let's see your measurement then. I worked among people that used Mac and Unix back then and most of them were anti-Microsoft zealots or brainwashed by the anti-Microsoft zealots. Aside from that - they were in the vast minority, but more importantly: They weren't getting the same product as on Windows. Furthermore, IE was the default on OSX from 1998-2003. How'd that work out?
Google pushing Chrome from google.com is nowhere near the same thing as "being the default browser". Not even close. And it goes against your idea that "users not doing something" is what gets you a higher market share. It doesn't explain the rise of Firefox at all. As well, Chrome got popular in tech circles before they even started doing that.
Tech circles is where all this starts. Once we like something, we push our families, friends and businesses to use it.
> Look at Firefox -- it's not doing anything like that, it's a better browser by a lot of metrics, and it's losing market share.
> I worked among people that used Mac and Unix back then and most of them were anti-Microsoft zealots or brainwashed by the anti-Microsoft zealots.
Explain Edge on non-Windows platforms today then. A mobile version exists, but so few people use it that it ends up inside "Other" in most charts, behind such well-respected alternatives as the house-brand browsers of various phone OEMs that bundle them by default. Windows Phone no longer has a meaningful user base, so this is from much the same population who use Windows on the desktop.
> Furthermore, IE was the default on OSX from 1998-2003. How'd that work out?
Netscape was disbanded in 2003, so apparently pretty effective.
> Google pushing Chrome from google.com is nowhere near the same thing as "being the default browser".
The equivalent of a billion dollar marketing campaign will raise usage of something independent of whether it's really any better than the competition. Otherwise Coca Cola has been wasting a lot of money on advertising.
> It doesn't explain the rise of Firefox at all.
You have to be the default and be "good enough." It doesn't have to be better but it can't be a lot worse. IE during the rise of Firefox had claimed victory and given up, so it was stagnant and no longer good enough.
> Tech circles is where all this starts.
Somehow Samsung has higher mobile browser market share than Microsoft and Mozilla put together.
> It's a worse browser by just about every metric.
Browsers are so complicated and there are so many possible metrics that we could have that debate for ten years and not cover half of it, but suffice it to say that some people disagree with you:
It it misleading, the writer is only considering desktop usage, and then constraining the data the the month of March. The 'evidence' is in the form of a single screenshot, from his lone data source NetMarketShare. He is trying to hype it up as some sort of 'grand' milestone.
Here is another data source that says otherwise - https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl.... Other commenters have also pointed out data that conflicts this premise.
It is poorly written, and over the top. The poster used the subtitle here, but the real title of the article is 'History in the Making: Microsoft Edge Overtakes Mozilla Firefox'. Also making points such as "While some expect Microsoft Edge to become the world’s top desktop browser...". Come on man.
Finally, it is just not that interesting. The real story should be, some Firefox/ IE users decided to try out the new Edge in the month of March, after a flashy new version was released. Maybe Edge really will continue to claw a few points of market share, let's follow up in a few months. But this particular article is really poor.