From NeoWin:
It has been almost two years since the release of Windows 10, which came with Microsoft Edge by default, but it appears that the browser just isn't gaining traction among users. As Neowin's Senior Editor Andy Weir pointed out, there are a number of features missing from the browser, one of them being extensive support for extensions.
According to NetMarketShare, Microsoft Edge only commands a market share of 5.65% - which is an increase of only 0.02 percentage points compared to last month. It is interesting to see that the browser was at 5.09% exactly one year ago, which means that it only grew by 0.56% year-over-year. On the other hand, Google Chrome has continued its dominance with a market share of 59.49%. As a point of reference, this is a sizeable growth of 10.84 percentage points year-over-year.
Meanwhile, Internet Explorer fell to 16.84%, while Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari grew to 12.02% and 3.72% respectively. The "Other" section also showed a slight increase, and climbed to 2.29%.
Data from another firm, StatCounter, depicts an even more depressing situation for Microsoft. According to the report, Edge sits at 3.89%, however, this is an increase of 0.15 percentage points compared to the previous month. That said, when viewed in a broader perspective, this is still a minor 1.14 percentage points year-over-year growth.
Chrome is the king of all browsers according to these statistics as well, with a market share of 63.21% - a decrease of 0.14 percentage points compared to last month. Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari command 14%, 9.28%, and 5.16% respectively.It probably shouldn't be a surprise that Edge isn't thriving, since it's exclusive to Windows 10 which has also stalled, but it's important to note that these numbers are only for desktop browsers. Chrome has 55.55% of the mobile market, too, a market where both IE and Edge don't even register. Safari is the the #2 mobile browser, at 33.17%, followed by the built-in Android browser (5.40%), and Opera Mini (3.18%), with every other browser failing to reach even 1.00% share.
It's nice to see Firefox regaining some lost ground, though. I've been giving Firefox another try lately, myself, and have been pleasantly surprised by how quickly it starts, and by how much it's improved. I don't know that I'd describe it as better than Chrome, but it's definitely as good as, and will import your bookmarks and such from Chrome as well, making switching a snap, and choosing between the two basically a coin flip decision. Edge can't say the same; two years after launching, Edge is still suffering from a poverty of quality extensions, and from Microsoft's determination to push their Bing search platform as the default search choice on both Bing and Cortana. And it shows; even the "Other" category is growing more quickly than Edge.
Microsoft's strategy seems to rely heavily on monopolistic tactics: giving Windows 10 away for free was supposed to garner a dominant share of the OS market, and bundling Edge with the OS would have leveraged that into browser dominance, too, driving adoption of Bing in the process, and effectively stealing the core of Google's business out from underneath them. It's a strategy that Microsoft have employed before, effectively killing Netscape's Navigator (and resulting in a costly antitrust suit in the process), but things seem to be playing out very differently this time. The market is speaking; whether Microsoft are listening is anyone's guess.