I'm not sure what more they could do. They're extremely pushy about it in Windows. It takes several steps to make it stop pushing Edge when you open any web links.
I don't use Edge (or Chrome) because I don't trust the companies that make them, and it's one small piece of my computing life I can withhold from them. So...there's nothing they could do to make Edge good enough for me, without fixing the lack of trust I have toward Microsoft, which I guess is a marketing problem, but also a behavior problem. (Surprisingly, though, I think I feel less animosity toward Microsoft than I do for Google these days. Which, is hard for me to believe about myself, given how long and how much I've hated Microsoft over the years.)
Chrome didn’t come to dominate the desktop browser market by forcing users’ hand, but by offering a better experience. The few times I used Edge, nothing gave me a remotely better experience, I only noticed small annoyances and moved on.
> Chrome didn’t come to dominate the desktop browser market by forcing users’ hand, but by offering a better experience.
Disagree strongly. Reasons:
- Google has been extremely pushy with Chrome, including lying (IMO) about it on their front page, a place where no other ads have been shown ever (IIRC).
- Their own products often don't work in other browsers. Might be an honest mistake but personally I really don't buy the idea that Google cannot afford a QA team, so I'm going with the idea that they classify all this as "really useful bugs".
- People keep telling me that Chrome is better. I've tried to like Chrome (before I started shunning Google, I used to be a fanboy) and for me it could never replace Firefox for work (development, support and research). So I go with "better for some people".
- Today I'd argue that more than ever Chrome is a worse choice. It's not like they've stopped sending every address you type in back to their AI, and recently they've strayed so far from "Don't be evil" that even they realized it was becoming a joke. (Something something about animals on a farm and pigs painting the barn wall at night.)
Chrome started becoming really popular when Firefox started becoming terrible around 10 years ago. Chrome was much faster and had better features. Firefox was bloated and slow and was pretty much resting on its laurels. These days it has inertia on its side, not that it's necessarily better anymore (I would argue Firefox is better now)
It doesn't matter how pushy or honest is google. Users have to go out of their way to use chrome instead of the default browsers and they still do. And I haven't heard anyone saying "I'd rather use Edge or IE but site xxx only works on Chrome".
> It doesn't matter how pushy or honest is google. Users have to go out of their way to use chrome instead of the default browsers and they still do.
Not entirely true. Chrome as been bundled with other popular software for significant time.
Also saying someone has to go out of their way to install it when it is advertised on the front of Google.com isn't my definition of "out of their way".
> You just can't admit that Chrome does have its merits for some non-logical reason
Disagree again. And I don't really understand where you get that from.
I admit Chrome is nice for a lot of people.
The reason why it owns the market today is because it is a decent/good browser (except for its huge privacy issues) and because Google has put an enormous effort behind pushing it everywhere all the time.
Yeah it's really off putting. A lot of people here cannot come to grips with the fact that many tech companies are big because their customers people love their products; this includes Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon.
Nobody is pulling a fast one on me when I buy my iPhone and Mac. I know full well what Google and Facebook are doing with my data when I use their sites.
I. Don't. Care.
They have products and services that I want and I'm happy to fork over cash or data to get them. Please take your conspiracies elsewhere.
I used to be like you. I've defended Google until recently.
But after China, the killer drones and how they are destroying other players for no other reason than greed and carelessness I don't defend them anymore.
I still trust them with my data in their cloud, for now, but I try to reduce their power.
If we are lucky they might even become nice again in the future.
They used to be wildly profitable even when they were nice.
Please let me know where I either stated something as a fact that isn't, or didn't point out that something was my personal opinion, interpretation or how I remembered it.
The closest thing I find that might resemble a conspiracy theory in my post above is probably the part about convient bugs that makes Google products lag in other browsers.
In that particular case I agree: it might just be that the front-end devs at Google are seriously unprofessional or that their QA team is really understaffed or bad or something.
But I think I pointed to that alternative, just that I didn't find it plausible.
Reasonable alternative explanations for why the search results page would keep one core on my machine spinning up, but obly in Firefox or why there's always something with Calendar (but only in Firefox) might be accepted.
But personally, even as a one man team at the moment, I try to make sure it works in all browsers.
These are not conspiracy theories. They’re practices of a search engine monopolist trying to get an unfair advantage in other markets. Compare and contrast to old Microsoft and browser bundling.
The way you phrase this almost suggests there isn't still an obnoxious pop-up partially obscuring search results every single time you go a Google Search while not logged in with a competing browser to this day.
Don't release a browser which cannot be made to adblock. I suspect that 90% of the vaguely techy world laughed at Edge the moment it's clear they'd have to accept autoplaying videos on webpages again. And like it or not those reactions filter through family and friends pretty effectively.
I don't use Edge (or Chrome) because I don't trust the companies that make them, and it's one small piece of my computing life I can withhold from them. So...there's nothing they could do to make Edge good enough for me, without fixing the lack of trust I have toward Microsoft, which I guess is a marketing problem, but also a behavior problem. (Surprisingly, though, I think I feel less animosity toward Microsoft than I do for Google these days. Which, is hard for me to believe about myself, given how long and how much I've hated Microsoft over the years.)