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posted by on Thursday January 05 2017, @04:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the do-we-still-hate-microsoft dept.

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


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:14PM (#449904)

    Having had the unfortunate experience of being forced to use it fairly frequently, I concur that it's absolutely awful. The interface should be used in textbooks as a perfect paradigm of how not to do it, the options are few and usually require absurdly long click-paths to get to, and it appears to be more vulnerable to hijacking as well. On top of that, fewer webpages actually work in it. And on top of that, not only are you not allowed to remove it, like IE from XP on, and not only does it nag you to make it default if it's not every time you open it, like all the other popular browsers, but it actually nags you over that specifically when you do NOT run it!

    Edge is malware.

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  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday January 06 2017, @03:38AM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday January 06 2017, @03:38AM (#450079) Journal

    > and it appears to be more vulnerable to hijacking

    I can attest to that. Worked on a laptop that'd been upgraded from Windows 8 to 10, and spotted this Microfast PC virus. Its uninstaller hijacked the Edge start page to redirect the browser to one of those scam websites that won't let you close it while a voice repeats over and over that your computer is infected and you should call this 855 number for help right away. Had to use the Task Manager to kill Edge. This malware didn't touch Chrome, which was also installed on the system.

    I find it interesting that a mere web page can trick a browser into blocking fundamental OS GUI controls such as the X button for closing an app. In addition to the Edge browser giving a web page too much power over it, it shouldn't be possible for any app to override OS controls. But that is to be expected with MS. ActiveX, what an idiotically easy and huge security hole to work so hard to add to their browsers. Further, what the hell was MS thinking, allowing programs to manage their own uninstallation? No Linux distro does that. Their package managers never need nor ask for any help from the app to do an uninstallation.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @06:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 06 2017, @06:20AM (#450120)

    And after all that trouble, they won't allow you to run it from the administrator account or in safe mode.