Microsoft’s campaign to popularize Edge appears to be paying off – but is it?
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Microsoft’s push to lure users to its proprietary Edge browser seems to be working, at least according to one key traffic metric.
Microsoft has made a continuous effort to promote Edge since its relaunch in January 2020 and numbers have been provided to Tech Radar Pro by CompareWeb reflects this: Visits to the browser’s download page increased by more than six and a quarter million that month compared to December 2019, from 228,644 to 6,524,646.
There was another spike in May 2022, with nearly a million visits in the previous month – possibly due to Microsoft’s April 2022 announcement that Edge would support the use of VPNs.
Against the competition
Anyone using Windows machines or Microsoft applications will be well aware of the constant prompts to use Edge, with links to the download page accompanied by promises of faster performance with first-party services like its email provider Outlook.
The company has certainly focused on integrating these services into the browser, but despite these efforts, Microsoft Edge still pales in comparison to Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari in terms of overall usage.
While CompareWeb was unable to provide download statistics for these browsers – their respective privacy policies prevent such data from being collected – it is common knowledge that these rivals dominate the browser space by a huge margin (opens in new tab).
However, Edge is gaining ground over Mozilla’s Firefox, once one of the most popular browsers in the world. Between May and September 2022, Edge has consistently outperformed Firefox in terms of download page visits, averaging a million more than its rival.
Looking at confirmed downloads, Firefox’s popularity seems to have dropped significantly. The global monthly average for confirmed downloads between October 2019 and September 2022 was just under 60,000.
On this front, it was most beaten by Opera (2,312,387), which has seen a surge in popularity in recent years, perhaps thanks to its free integrated VPN, a browser feature that’s gaining popularity among general users.
The anonymous Tor browser also beat Firefox, with a monthly average of 1,046,939 confirmed downloads. In fact, Brave was the only browser in the data to underperform Firefox, which averaged just over 30,000 confirmed downloads over that period.
Tor’s relative success points to growing concerns about online privacy as users become more aware and even suspicious of Big Tech’s often relentless collection of personal data. According to a recent survey jointly conducted by Opera and ad filter company Eyeo, more than 80% of consumers are willing to switch browsers if it means improving their privacy protections.
Edge-ing his way to success
It seems that Microsoft Edge hopes to emulate the success of Safari and Chrome by becoming the default browser for many users. The problem is that these browsers have the advantage of being connected to each of their company’s vast ecosystems – Microsoft doesn’t have the same grip. At the moment, it’s doing its best to make it the default browser for Windows 11 users, but few of them come close at the moment.
However, the company seems to continue to cultivate its own ecosystem. With PC sales down and, more worryingly, declining revenues from its leading Windows OEM sector, the operating system giant seems to be shifting its focus in other directions. Its cloud services, such as Azure and Microsoft 365, as well as the Teams video conferencing platform, are enjoying success in the business sector, but for the general user, Microsoft is again often overshadowed by its two biggest rivals.
In addition, Microsoft is virtually non-existent in the mobile market, which has brought Apple and Google so much success. With mobile devices ubiquitous around the world, almost all Android or iPhone, users are once again tied to their systems and software, including their own browsers. Microsoft’s entry into the mobile market is all but dead, having failed to take off in any way.
And then there’s the hassle of switching browsers, where users already have their login and password stored in it, all the extensions and settings they’ve customized to their personal preferences, built up over years and integrated with other services. If you’re a Safari or Chrome user, why on earth would you bother switching to Edge now?
The same, of course, applies to anonymous browsers. Despite Opera and Eyeo’s research mentioned above, it seems that their optimistic results have not materialized in the real world.
But if the small trend of using anonymous browsers takes off, Edge will be hung to dry. The browser report on protecting user privacy is no better than the mainstream rivals, and the same goes for Microsoft in general, with Windows 11 is getting flak for its invasive practices at.
So it seems that Microsoft Edge wants to leverage the default browser space and employ the same promotional tactics as its rivals before them. If we only look at visits to download pages, it seems that Edge is gaining ground. Despite the rising numbers, Edge’s adoption rate pales in comparison to the big two. If Microsoft is to take them seriously, it needs a much more compelling reason for users to switch than it works a little better with Outlook and a few business apps.