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Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge browsers may be near the bottom of their unprecedented crash in user share, measurements published Sunday show.
Analytics vendor Net Applications reported that the user share of IE and Edge -- an estimate of the proportion of the world's personal computer owners who ran those browsers -- dropped by seven-tenths of a percentage point in December, falling to a combined 26.2%.
That seven-tenths of a point decline was notable because it was less than half that of the browsers' average monthly reductions over the last 12, six and three months, which were 1.9, 1.8 and 1.5 points, respectively. The slowly-shrinking averages over the three different spans supported the idea that IE and Edge may be reaching rock bottom.
Microsoft's browser collapse has been unparalleled. In 2016, IE and Edge -- Net Applications pours their user share into the same "bucket" -- shed 20.1 points, representing 43% of its December 2015 share. No other browser has bled that much user share that quickly, with the possible exception of Netscape Navigator in the 1990s.
I know we love to hate Microsoft in general and IE in particular, but is Edge that bad?
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @06:59PM
I haven't researched the details myself, but a friend told me Edge is a complete re-write and actually adheres to standards. With any luck MS will have a decent browser soon once they iron out those issues.
However, after the Windows 10 fiasco I trust MS less than ever. Unless they fully open source their code I will never trust them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @07:18PM
There was no rewrite, they "forked" their own IE code and named it Edge. It is is a PR stunt.
(Score: 4, Informative) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:30PM
It's not a complete rewrite. It may be a partial rewrite. Mostly its on the frontend though.
Edge is more standards-compliant I guess, but that doesn't mean anything when they have entire features not supported that are still in heavy use, even by themselves, with nothing to smooth the process over, except to just throw IE11 on there as a totally separate app. They couldn't think of some way to get Edge to emulate IE11 or run it as a child process or something "under the hood" on a per-tab basis to make this easier on the users (that would have been pretty neat). The lack of plugins for a solid year from its release date also completely crippled its utility.