Microsoft Edge review: Windows finally has a good browser
For two decades, the default web browsing experience in Windows has been Internet Explorer. Over the years, Microsoft's home-built browser became bloated, insecure, confusing to use, and just plain hated by many users.
Context & Ripple Effects
This review captures the moment Microsoft's Project Spartan replacement shipped on every Windows 10 device as Edge, ending Internet Explorer's two-decade run as the default — a run the corpus describes as bloated, insecure, and widely hated. Reviewers called Edge the first good default browser Windows had.
The praise didn't hold: by late 2018, sources reported Microsoft was building a Chromium-powered browser to replace Edge as the Windows 10 default, and executive interviews confirmed the decision came after Edge's flaws became clear. Early builds showed Chrome extension support, limited sync, a mixed Chrome/Edge UI, and dark mode — Microsoft keeping the Edge shell but adopting Google's engine.
First-order effects
- Windows users immediately get a competent built-in browser for the first time in twenty years, removing one of the most common reasons to install a third-party browser on day one.
- Internet Explorer's role as the Windows default ends on every Windows 10 device, stranding its legacy rendering behavior that sites had long been forced to support.
Second-order effects
- Rivals like Google lose nothing short-term — but once Microsoft's own engine proved unable to keep pace, the pressure pointed toward adopting Chromium outright, which would hand Google's rendering stack a dominant install base via Windows defaults.
- Web developers gain a path to testing against fewer engines: if the default browser on Windows converges on Chromium, edge-case compatibility work shifts from engine differences to shell features like extensions and sync.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, browser competition stops being about rendering engines — Microsoft's home-built lineage ends and Windows ships on Google's — and moves entirely to the layers above: extensions, sync, UI, and services.
- A near-single-engine web raises the stakes for whatever remains outside Chromium, since a default browser no longer guarantees engine diversity the way shipping Internet Explorer once did.
The trend: Browser engines are consolidating around Chromium, with Microsoft's move from its own code to Google's engine as the decisive data point.