First, from MSPowerUser:
Microsoft’s Edge browser has gained many new features with the release of the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, including extension support, support for notifications, swipe to navigate, and much more. But it seems even the newer revamped version of Microsoft’s Edge browser couldn’t prevent the Redmond giant from losing browser share, as the combined user share of Edge and Internet Explorer fell 2.15% in August, ending the month with 32.54% according to Internet analytics vendor Net Applications. August marked the fourth month in the last six where the combined browser share dropped more than 2 points, and the second highest decline in the past 11 years. In the past six months, IE has lost more than 12 percentage points of its user share, and since the first of the year, 16 percentage points.
Google’s Chrome browser continues to benefit most from Microsoft’s decline, gaining another 3.02% in August to take a total of 53.97% of user share. Ever since Microsoft made the decision to end support for older browsers in January (all before IE11 and Edge), and gave users the option to either upgrade to the latest browsers or switch completely, they have experienced an unprecedented decline, with many users choosing to jump ship and board the competition.Edge was missing several crucial features of modern browsers when Windows 10 launched, and ended up trying to sell itself on superior battery performance when new users didn't take to the browser. This was only a couple of months ago, and included anti-Chrome propaganda in Windows itself, warning users again Chrome because of its battery performance, which was supposedly much, much worse than Edge's. Several months on, though. it's pretty clear that features won out: Chrome had them, Edge didn't, and users are voting with their feet.
So it's probably not good news for Microsoft that Chrome is improving its battery performance, too.
Back in June, Microsoft hit out against Google by publishing test results which claimed that its Edge browser had the edge over Chrome when it came to power-saving on portable systems. Google has now responded by introducing new power consumption enhancements to the Windows version of its browser.
According to Google, the Chrome 53 release contains numerous CPU and GPU power consumption enhancements for video playback, along with other "big" performance and power improvements.
Google hasn't as yet published any test results to back up these claims, and I'm not expecting that Chrome will have closed the gap with Edge in one leap, but it's good that Google is addressing these issues.
The biggest loser in all of this may be Mozilla, whose Firefox browser has lost another 0.4% of the browser market, dropping to 7.69% (from a July 2006 peak of 25.1%). With Safari well back of Firefox, and Opera well back of Safari, it certainly looks like the fight for browser dominance is a two-horse race between Google and Microsoft, and Microsoft's recent efforts to attract people to Edge/Bing are either having no effect at all, or are actually hurting Edge's adoption rate by drawing attention to the popularity of both Chrome and Google.
After all, if people have to be bribed to use your product, how good can the product be? Also, the bribes themselves were pretty pathetic.
The Edge browser was supposed to be one of Windows 10's selling points: a truly modern browser that could finally outperform competing products like Chrome, and which was only available in Windows 10. But, like so many of Microsoft's claims about Windows 10, their claims about Edge have also proved to be more hype than substance, with the actual experience of using the product turning out to be mostly sub-par. Even as Microsoft slowly add modern browser features like extension support to Edge, Google are busy polishing their Chrome to be an even better browser, which makes luring users away from Chrome even harder... or, at best, not any easier, especially after making a lacklustre first impression.
First impressions... it turns out they really do matter.