Ah, Microsoft Edge. When the topic of which browser to use rears its ugly head, the room tends to quickly devolve into two main camps: Chrome or Firefox, with an occasional incursion from a group of Safari enthusiasts in the corner. However, when the debate dies down and there’s a lull in the conversation, a tiny voice appears from the back. “Microsoft Edge isn’t bad these days”, the little voice notes. Everyone sagely nods. The room goes quiet again. And then we all go back to using something else.

As anyone who’s had the pleasure of installing Windows 11 recently will tell you, Microsoft Edge has become increasingly indignant as you try and force it back to the netherworld from whence it came, and according to Neowin we now live in a world where Edge accepts your decision, but it just wants to know why.

Yep, if Edge spots you attempting to download Google Chrome (which is surely its primary purpose at this point) it gives you a lovely questionnaire to fill out, in which you can almost feel the soon-to-be-departed browsers disappointment. Edge could have made you happy. Edge knows it has faults, but it’s willing to work on them. Edge just doesn’t know what it did wrong, and the least you could do is give it an explanation as to why you had to break its heart, you cruel and callous person you. Just give it a chance. Edge is willing to change.

All joking aside, Microsoft’s default browser does seem to be perfectly usable now that it’s adopted Chromium, the core of Chrome, so it’s perhaps undeserving of the mocking humour that surrounds its attempts to cling on to a meaningful userbase. While we can never be sure of exact figures on browser market share, according to Statcounter Edge actually has a larger percentage than Firefox, sitting at 10.63% in opposition to the Mozilla browsers measly 6.14%. Of course, neither of them can compete with the juggernaut that is Chrome with its gigantic 64.27% of the market, but it’s not a great surprise that Microsoft are keen to make users think twice before switching over to the ubiquitous multi-coloured orb.

It just all comes off as a little, well, desperate. If Edge were a friend, you’d take them out for a drink, maybe a little dinner, and remind them that they were a good browser nay, maybe even a great one.

“It’s not you” we’d say, with a comforting arm around the shoulder. “Maybe it really is them.”