One of the most egregious things is the insistence on using the Bing start page. You have to install an extension to have your own start page (in fairness most browsers are like this these days).
However, lately Edge just magically stopped letting new tab redirect work. At least it loads a blank page, but it is annoying. Microsoft seems hell bent on preventing user control all over their client ecosystem. The same extension works fine in Brave and Chrome - so it is definitely something they did.
Because I don't like Firefox and dislike anything to do with Google. Google also plays all sorts of dirty tricks to try and get you to download Chrome. I primarily use Windows because I get Windows plus Linux. For example, I have Ubuntu and Nix running through WSL. Apple also plays dirty tricks and has all sorts of nonsense, they're just better at getting away with it.
In general, I just use the browser that's "native" to the platform. On Windows I use Edge, on macOS and iOS I use Safari, and on Linux I use whatever I feel like at the time (Edge, Firefox, or Chrome). At the end of the day, features are effectively in parity, so I just don't care that much, and right now I use Edge on Windows and Android. Edge does have some nice features though. It doesn't keep me wanting.
You can go read the Edge feature list if you're bothered by it. For one, I don't tolerate the nonsense. It can all be disabled, so I disable it. Secondly, I don't think Edge is the "best" browser. I don't think there is such a thing, and I didn't compare it to others.
Things that I like are the Microsoft Defender SmartScreen for checking downloads and websites (which has caught me, e.g., because Imgur packaged malware when I downloaded an image I had uploaded to my own profile) in addition to the built-in Microsoft Defender, collections, the web capture feature which makes it nice to be able to capture a screenshot of an entire page, the tab grouping, browser casting to another device, workspaces, and the syncing that actually works. My password manager also integrates quite nicely. Now, before people respond with "but Chrome/Firefox does this" or god forbid "you can do all that in Emacs", I never made a comparison. They probably have similar and also features that separate themselves. I just said Edge is a good browser, which it is, underneath all the marketing and advertising shenanigans that Microsoft is idiotically throwing around within Edge. The default Edge is indeed a very annoying browser. But, like I already said, underneath all that is a quite good, professional browser that makes it easy to do real work., and it's not all that much work to disable all of that.
It has specific security mitigations that apply on Windows. It has Super Duper Secure Mode (JIT disabler per-website). It has better battery life than Chrome. It looks nicer than Chrome and it has much better vertical tabs than Brave or Firefox.
I generally like the Microsoft stack but I cannot wait for them to be hauled back in front of congress over these shenanigans. They will have earned it.
Yeah, my problem is on my devices I set a custom start page to something hosted on my NAS device's internal web server. Nothing fancy, just a simple HTML page with some links and a little javascript.
It's surprising how much time such a little thing saves me, compared to trying to wrangle the default browser start pages into something usable.
Workspaces is the first instance of synced tabs in a browser that actually works for me.
A lot of nice features are included in the browser, that maybe they are in other browsers now, but that hasn't always been the case. I was a Vivaldi user prior to switching to Edge, but here are some things I like:
- Tab groups. Vivaldi has this also, and has better tools for collapsing tabs by host
- Some of the built-in features are nice. QR code, send to other devices, split view, capture & markup, easier profiles.
- Bookmark bar has a per-bookmark option to hide title. Doesn't delete the title, so you can still use it for search. But this makes a really handy app bar.
- Probably not true, but I expect it to be better optimized for Windows vs other browsers
- Cross-platform w/ workspaces is great. I use a mac for personal and windows for work. Can't use Safari on Windows, and Vivaldi wouldn't sync tabs (at the time)
- I expect Microsoft to integrate AI features in early and well, and I want to be on the cutting-edge to see what AI has to offer.
I agree, I hate all the tracking BS also, but I turned a bunch of things off and the rest is probably a wash with everything else tracking me anyways.
I really recommend you fire it up and give it a try. You're sure to be surprised, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
Edit: Feature that I'm missing most from Vivaldi - the speed dial page was just amazing, running through bookmarks. I've mostly supplanted by using the bookmarks bar, but it's still not a perfect replacement for me.
Native Vertical tabs. Google Chrome doesn’t even have viable extensions for this (and yet brave and edge have it native).
(My oft spoken rant)
Horizontal tabs are useless if you have more than 8 tabs open at once. Or if you are one of the very few that has a monitor with more vertical pixels than horizontal.
Also, Safari’s vertical tabs implementation is weak whereas Orion’s is workable.
