Microsoft says a PC running its Edge browser will last 77 percent longer than Firefox, and 35 percent longer than Chrome.
To prove its point, Microsoft has once again employed a time-lapse video of three unplugged Surface Books side by side streaming video for several hours with Chrome, Edge, and Firefox.
The Surface running Edge lasts 12 hours and 31 minutes, while the Chrome device peters out after nine hours and 17 minutes, with the Firefox unit lasting seven hours and four minutes.
Microsoft released similar video last June, again showing Edge outlasting its rivals, which prompted a reply from Google showing Chrome's battery improvements.
Yes, this is basically the same argument that Microsoft was making last June, to exactly zero effect on Edge's market share. Having already lost this argument once, they're now trying to win it again, apparently with zero understanding of why this pitch didn't sell Edge to users the first time around.
Listen up, Microsoft: I'm going to do you a solid here. I'm going to tell you why this sales pitch didn't work last time, and won't work now. Ready?
1. Nobody browses the Internet for 10 continuous hours. Users are doing other things with their PCs (or phones, natch) instead, most of which are way tougher on their batteries than browsing the net. If you're doing anything on a laptop for an entire work day, then you're plugging that puppy in at some point. 10 continuous hours of Internet browsing really is more than enough, for almost everyone.
2. While people don't really care about squeezing out 2 extra hours of Internet browsing from their laptops, they DO care about the features of the browser they're using. Edge has recently added some much-needed functionality with the latest update, bringing it to a point which arstechnica described as "on the edge of being good," but it's still an inferior product to both Chrome and Firefox. Two extra hours of a terrible browsing experience on an inferior browser is just not attractive to users. The market has already spoken on this one; a good experience is better than a longer experience, especially when the "shorter" experience is already ten continuous hours long.
3. "Microsoft says Microsoft product is better than the competitions'" is not news. Never mind that click-hungry tech blogs have run with this story because their business models require them to publish as much content as possible, regardless of its quality; very few of them are treating this like a serious news item. Of course Microsoft's own testing shows their product outperforming the competitions' products (on a metric that the users don't care about), but users already knew that Edge gave better battery performance. They just didn't care, because Chrome has every other feature that they want in a browser, features which Edge is still trying to add in, now more than a year and a half after release.
4. Google is going to continue improving Chrome's battery performance. Saying that Chrome is a better browser because it includes the features that users want in a modern browser, while providing acceptable battery performance, is not the same as saying that Chrome is perfect. Chrome can still be improved, and Google proved themselves willing to work on improving it, in response to Microsoft's previous battery-life broadside. Not because they were losing market share, because they weren't and aren't, but because they wanted to keep winning, and saw no reason to concede any part of the field to Microsoft. They won't be resting on their laurels this time, either; expect new battery-life improvements for Chrome to be announced within a month.
There you go, Microsoft. Does that help?
Instead of slagging your competitors over a battery-life metric that the market has clearly indicated your users don't care about, maybe focus on improving the experience of using Edge. When Edge has all the features of Chrome that users care about, then the fact that it extends users' battery life slightly can start to make a difference; until then, though, publicizing these claims just make Microsoft look desperate.