A Fresh Start Means Change: The New Edge Browser

The new edge browser is a breath of fresh air for users who are tired of the same old experience. With its chromium-based engine, it's a significant departure from its predecessor, which was lacking some of the features that made edge popular in the first place. One of the notable omissions is the tab-style support, which may be rough on users who are accustomed to this style of browsing. On the other hand, the new edge browser offers an official dark mode, although it can also enable a beta version of this feature through flags.

The Edge Team's Promise: New Features and Improved Performance

The edge team has promised that they will return some of the features that were missing from the previous version, such as easily shareable tab collections and a three-tiered privacy control system. Additionally, they've committed to new features like an internet explorer compatibility mode, which is a godsend for nostalgic masochists and corporate workers who are stuck using legacy apps that just won't run on modern browsers. The edge engineers have also stated that they're not only creating new features for their own browser but also submitting suggestions to the chromium open source project, which might influence other chromium-based browsers and even chrome itself.

Competition is Good: What Does the New Edge Mean for Chrome?

The existence of this chimeric concoction brings up a huge question: Google's control over the internet. Depending on where you get your stats, chrome has been sitting at around 65-75 global desktop browser market share, with edge around 5 and the supposedly defunct internet explorer still hovering around 5-10%. If users switch to edge as much as 85% of the internet could be dominated by browsers based on Google-owned software, giving Google an unprecedented level of control over the way the internet will continue to change. While Google has developed many standards and protocols that have benefited all web users, like the speedy protocol that formed the basis for http2, they've also been responsible for some shady locked ecosystem type stuff in the past.

Google's Commitment to the Open Web

However, it's worth noting that Google has said they remain committed to the open web and will continue to work with others in the web browser ecosystem. While this is a reassuring statement, it's still a topic of concern among those who value the freedom and openness of the internet. It's also worth considering alternative browsers like Firefox or Safari, which might be a better fit for users who want to avoid giving Google too much control over their online experience.

A New Standard in Browsers: Chrome vs. Edge vs. Firefox

To gauge the performance of the new edge browser, we ran chrome, new edge, and old edge through a handful of benchmarks. The results were impressive, with the new edge holding up well to chrome although both lost to firefox and webexpert. It even beat both the old edge and firefox in Basemark, which is a significant improvement over its pure html5 performance out of our tested browsers. However, when we ran the test again using https instead of http, it brought its score up to a tie with chrome.

The Verdict: A Well-Performing Alternative to Chrome

With its well-performing feature-rich extension-heavy alternative to chrome on the table, users are in luck. While firefox is still a viable option, the new edge browser is an attractive choice for those who want a browser that's close to chrome in terms of performance but with some unique features and a more open approach. Whether or not this means Google will fundamentally own the ability to set their own standards for how the internet is developed remains to be seen.

A Word from Our Sponsors

This video was brought to you by Drop X Alex Cavalli Tube Hybrid Amp. It's a solid-state and vacuum tube amp that combines the best of both worlds, delivering the required current for planar magnetic headphones. With its high voltage, it can drive dynamic headphones to perform their best. The Drop X Alex Cavalli Tube Hybrid Amp is built from the ground up by drop and alex cavalli, a long-time favorite among audiophiles. It's got an entirely new circuitry design and comes with a one-year warranty. You can check it out at the link in the video description.

Down to Earth: Merch Store and Community Forum

We also want to thank our community for supporting us by checking out our merch store, which features cool shirts like this one. And if you're looking to join the conversation or get involved with the community, we've got a forum where you can do just that. We don't require you to buy anything, but it's always fun to support us and meet other fans of technology and gadgets.

What Do You Think? Share Your Thoughts!

If you liked this video, please hit that like button, subscribe to our channel, or share the link with your friends and family. If you didn't like it, well, we're still here, trying to make content for you guys. Either way, thanks for watching!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enmicrosoft released its edge browser originally known as project spartan in 2015 which wow was that only four years ago feels like a lot longer than that you know what they say time flies when you're having fun anyway out of the gate edge brought some interesting features to the table like a reading mode and the ability to easily mark up and share web pages but it was also slow and memory hungry and it lacked support for the thousands of helpful browser extensions that you could get on chrome and firefox so while it peaked at 20 market share among windows 10 users in august of 2015 its subsequent slide over the following months and years indicates that most of those people were probably just using it to download chrome so then in late 2018 after four long years of progressively more desperate tactics to get people to please please just try it please microsoft decided that rather than trying to fight chrome they would enter the belly of the beast becoming chrome then destroying it from the inside just kidding i mean that might be what they're doing we actually don't know but what we do know is that there's a freaking chromium-powered edge browser out there in the wild and we spent the last couple of days finding out whether it's the next big thing or the browser equivalent of two kids stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat so they can get a ticket for your pg-13 task bar today's video is brought to you by corsair the corsair ironclaw rgb wireless mouse features a native 18 000 dpi optical sensor a comfortable palm grip and sub 1 millisecond slipstream technology check it out at the link below for the uninitiated chromium is google's free and open source software project that forms the foundation of google's mainline chrome browser builds which by contrast are not open source so what that means is that anyone including microsoft can take that foundation and potentially build their own browser on top of it and actually microsoft is far from the first company to do this some of the more well-known third-party chromium-based browsers include opera brave amazon silk and samsung's aptly named internet now the new chromium-powered edge is not fully launched yet but microsoft is publishing developer builds as they get closer to the full rollout and that means that we can try it right now so we're going to be using the windows 10 version but this is kind of cool the new edge will actually be available on android ios and even mac os so let's get started when you open a new tab you get some layout options focused has some frequently visited sites and a simple search bar unfortunately powered by bing but fortunately with the option to change it to google search duckduckgo or ask jeeves or whatever and the next up is inspirational layout which adds the pretty microsoft background of the day to the mix or the informational layout which adds an msn style new section on your first boot up of the app it will probably prompt you to import your chrome data including bookmarks or favorites your saved passwords your autofill entries and your browsing history but if you're not 100 sure about the switch you can also do that in the settings later once you do that it actually begins to feel eerily like you're using a microsoft skinned version of chrome though right down to the menu layouts so most of the settings that you'd expect to find are there but like it's weird because they might be located in a different sub menu it's like using a chrome from an alternate universe where like the snap never happened what is it spoilers for spoilers you had more than a year to see the first part perhaps the weirdest part though of the new edge experience is installing chrome extensions now by default the new edge only allows you to install a small number of microsoft approved edge insider add-ons but in true chromium fashion you can allow the installation of any extension from the chrome web store by simply clicking allow extensions from other stores with that said there's no guarantee it'll work lastpass for example wouldn't let us sign in on edge now thankfully there was an edge version already available and that one worked fine we're just saying that whether it's for security reasons or other compatibility reasons microsoft says that the list of official add-ons will increase as they go through and verify them so it's not that they're taking a walled garden approach they just want to make sure that the user experience is okay so then if you were like amped to switch from chrome to edge we just want you to keep in mind that you might not have all of your chrome features exactly as you like them also making matters worse if you are one of the edge faithful hi microsoft's chromium-based reboot might be a bit of a bummer for you too because a fresh start means that the current build is even lacking some of the features of old edge so these include setting aside tabs style of support oh that's kind of rough for you surface pro users out there and an official dark mode although you can at least enable a beta version of that last one in the flags now the edge team has promised that those features will return and they've also committed to new ones like easily shareable tab collections a three-tiered privacy control system and best of all an internet explorer compatibility mode i'm actually not joking about this that is a godsend not only for nostalgic masochists but also for corporate and it workers that are stuck using legacy apps that just won't run on modern browsers and the edge engineers say they're not only creating new features for their own browser they're also submitting suggestions to the chromium open source project which might influence other chromium-based browsers and even chrome itself for any of this actually matter though edge has to perform as well as chrome firefox or the others and actually given edge's reputation as the browser it probably has to perform even better so we ran chrome new edge old edge and firefox through a handful of benchmarks html5 test for pure html5 performance basemark for a mix of javascript and graphically intense workloads and webexpert for a wide sampling of tasks intended to mirror everyday browser use and i gotta say for a fledgling browser the new edge held up all right it kept up pretty well with chrome although both of them lost to firefox and webexpert and it beat both the old edge and firefox in basemark now it did have the worst pure html5 performance out of our tested browsers but then we ran the test again using https instead of http which brought its score up to a tie with chrome so then at least from a pure performance standpoint the new chromium-based edge is immediately a big step up from the old edge and extremely close to chrome in terms of what you can expect from day-to-day browsing so with a well-performing feature-rich extension-heavy alternative to chrome on the table other than firefox of course sorry firefox fans you guys are still a thing um we should just all be celebrating then right like competition is good right not so fast so we've talked a lot about what a chromium-powered edge browser means for the user experience but there's another huge question that the existence of this chimeric concoction brings up is google about to fundamentally own the ability to set their own standards for how the internet is developed because here's the thing depending on where you get your stats chrome has been sitting at around 65 to 75 global desktop browser market share with edge around five and the supposedly defunct internet explorer still hovering around five to ten percent now firefox and safari still have healthy enough user bases but think about this once this new edge actually launches and edge and internet explorer users hopefully switch over as much as 85 percent of the internet could be dominated by browsers based on google owned software that gives google an unprecedented level of control over the way the internet will continue to change and while google has developed many standards and protocols that have benefited all web users like the speedy protocol that formed the basis for http 2. they've also been responsible for some shady locked ecosystem type stuff in the past like changing youtube so that it ran worse on non-chrome browsers wait i'm just trying to think was that before or after they removed don't be evil from their corporate motto can you remember yeah i mean either so the thing is all of that could be much ado about nothing and for their part google has said they remain committed to the open web and will continue to work with others in the web browser ecosystem but we still thought it was important to not just try out new edge in this video but to also point out that if you subscribe to the age-old wisdom about absolute power and absolute corruption and all that you might want to at least give firefox a try or safari sure or safari this video is brought to you by the drop x alex cavalli tube hybrid amp it was built from the ground up by drop and alex cavalli a long time favorite from the audiophile community it combines solid state and vacuum tube amps it's got an entirely new circuitry design it delivers the required current for planar magnetic headphones and thanks to its high voltage it can drive dynamic headphones to perform their best it's got a one year warranty and you can check it out at the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description you don't have to buy it you can just download it it's cool um yeah also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally joinmicrosoft released its edge browser originally known as project spartan in 2015 which wow was that only four years ago feels like a lot longer than that you know what they say time flies when you're having fun anyway out of the gate edge brought some interesting features to the table like a reading mode and the ability to easily mark up and share web pages but it was also slow and memory hungry and it lacked support for the thousands of helpful browser extensions that you could get on chrome and firefox so while it peaked at 20 market share among windows 10 users in august of 2015 its subsequent slide over the following months and years indicates that most of those people were probably just using it to download chrome so then in late 2018 after four long years of progressively more desperate tactics to get people to please please just try it please microsoft decided that rather than trying to fight chrome they would enter the belly of the beast becoming chrome then destroying it from the inside just kidding i mean that might be what they're doing we actually don't know but what we do know is that there's a freaking chromium-powered edge browser out there in the wild and we spent the last couple of days finding out whether it's the next big thing or the browser equivalent of two kids stacked on top of each other wearing a trench coat so they can get a ticket for your pg-13 task bar today's video is brought to you by corsair the corsair ironclaw rgb wireless mouse features a native 18 000 dpi optical sensor a comfortable palm grip and sub 1 millisecond slipstream technology check it out at the link below for the uninitiated chromium is google's free and open source software project that forms the foundation of google's mainline chrome browser builds which by contrast are not open source so what that means is that anyone including microsoft can take that foundation and potentially build their own browser on top of it and actually microsoft is far from the first company to do this some of the more well-known third-party chromium-based browsers include opera brave amazon silk and samsung's aptly named internet now the new chromium-powered edge is not fully launched yet but microsoft is publishing developer builds as they get closer to the full rollout and that means that we can try it right now so we're going to be using the windows 10 version but this is kind of cool the new edge will actually be available on android ios and even mac os so let's get started when you open a new tab you get some layout options focused has some frequently visited sites and a simple search bar unfortunately powered by bing but fortunately with the option to change it to google search duckduckgo or ask jeeves or whatever and the next up is inspirational layout which adds the pretty microsoft background of the day to the mix or the informational layout which adds an msn style new section on your first boot up of the app it will probably prompt you to import your chrome data including bookmarks or favorites your saved passwords your autofill entries and your browsing history but if you're not 100 sure about the switch you can also do that in the settings later once you do that it actually begins to feel eerily like you're using a microsoft skinned version of chrome though right down to the menu layouts so most of the settings that you'd expect to find are there but like it's weird because they might be located in a different sub menu it's like using a chrome from an alternate universe where like the snap never happened what is it spoilers for spoilers you had more than a year to see the first part perhaps the weirdest part though of the new edge experience is installing chrome extensions now by default the new edge only allows you to install a small number of microsoft approved edge insider add-ons but in true chromium fashion you can allow the installation of any extension from the chrome web store by simply clicking allow extensions from other stores with that said there's no guarantee it'll work lastpass for example wouldn't let us sign in on edge now thankfully there was an edge version already available and that one worked fine we're just saying that whether it's for security reasons or other compatibility reasons microsoft says that the list of official add-ons will increase as they go through and verify them so it's not that they're taking a walled garden approach they just want to make sure that the user experience is okay so then if you were like amped to switch from chrome to edge we just want you to keep in mind that you might not have all of your chrome features exactly as you like them also making matters worse if you are one of the edge faithful hi microsoft's chromium-based reboot might be a bit of a bummer for you too because a fresh start means that the current build is even lacking some of the features of old edge so these include setting aside tabs style of support oh that's kind of rough for you surface pro users out there and an official dark mode although you can at least enable a beta version of that last one in the flags now the edge team has promised that those features will return and they've also committed to new ones like easily shareable tab collections a three-tiered privacy control system and best of all an internet explorer compatibility mode i'm actually not joking about this that is a godsend not only for nostalgic masochists but also for corporate and it workers that are stuck using legacy apps that just won't run on modern browsers and the edge engineers say they're not only creating new features for their own browser they're also submitting suggestions to the chromium open source project which might influence other chromium-based browsers and even chrome itself for any of this actually matter though edge has to perform as well as chrome firefox or the others and actually given edge's reputation as the browser it probably has to perform even better so we ran chrome new edge old edge and firefox through a handful of benchmarks html5 test for pure html5 performance basemark for a mix of javascript and graphically intense workloads and webexpert for a wide sampling of tasks intended to mirror everyday browser use and i gotta say for a fledgling browser the new edge held up all right it kept up pretty well with chrome although both of them lost to firefox and webexpert and it beat both the old edge and firefox in basemark now it did have the worst pure html5 performance out of our tested browsers but then we ran the test again using https instead of http which brought its score up to a tie with chrome so then at least from a pure performance standpoint the new chromium-based edge is immediately a big step up from the old edge and extremely close to chrome in terms of what you can expect from day-to-day browsing so with a well-performing feature-rich extension-heavy alternative to chrome on the table other than firefox of course sorry firefox fans you guys are still a thing um we should just all be celebrating then right like competition is good right not so fast so we've talked a lot about what a chromium-powered edge browser means for the user experience but there's another huge question that the existence of this chimeric concoction brings up is google about to fundamentally own the ability to set their own standards for how the internet is developed because here's the thing depending on where you get your stats chrome has been sitting at around 65 to 75 global desktop browser market share with edge around five and the supposedly defunct internet explorer still hovering around five to ten percent now firefox and safari still have healthy enough user bases but think about this once this new edge actually launches and edge and internet explorer users hopefully switch over as much as 85 percent of the internet could be dominated by browsers based on google owned software that gives google an unprecedented level of control over the way the internet will continue to change and while google has developed many standards and protocols that have benefited all web users like the speedy protocol that formed the basis for http 2. they've also been responsible for some shady locked ecosystem type stuff in the past like changing youtube so that it ran worse on non-chrome browsers wait i'm just trying to think was that before or after they removed don't be evil from their corporate motto can you remember yeah i mean either so the thing is all of that could be much ado about nothing and for their part google has said they remain committed to the open web and will continue to work with others in the web browser ecosystem but we still thought it was important to not just try out new edge in this video but to also point out that if you subscribe to the age-old wisdom about absolute power and absolute corruption and all that you might want to at least give firefox a try or safari sure or safari this video is brought to you by the drop x alex cavalli tube hybrid amp it was built from the ground up by drop and alex cavalli a long time favorite from the audiophile community it combines solid state and vacuum tube amps it's got an entirely new circuitry design it delivers the required current for planar magnetic headphones and thanks to its high voltage it can drive dynamic headphones to perform their best it's got a one year warranty and you can check it out at the link in the video description so thanks for watching guys if you disliked this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribed or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description you don't have to buy it you can just download it it's cool um yeah also down there is our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join\n"