NetMarketShare: Microsoft Edge becomes the second most popular desktop browser for the first time, with a market share of 7.59%, beating Mozilla Firefox's 7.19%
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer :
Context & Ripple Effects
Edge's original engine earned respectable reviews — The Verge called it the moment Windows finally had a good browser — but staying Windows-only capped its reach for years. The pivot came in late 2018, when Microsoft announced it would rebuild Edge on Google's Chromium engine and ship it to Windows 7, Windows 8, and macOS.
That rebuilt browser began rolling out in January 2020, and barely three months later NetMarketShare shows it overtaking Firefox for the first time. The milestone matters because it validates the Chromium bet: Microsoft traded engine independence for distribution reach, and the share gains followed almost immediately.
First-order effects
- Mozilla Firefox drops to third place on desktop for the first time in this dataset, a symbolic and practical blow to a browser whose relevance with developers and press depends on staying in the top two.
- Microsoft re-enters the browser race with momentum: Edge on Windows 7, 8, and macOS — the cross-platform reach the legacy Edge never had — is now converting downloads into share within a quarter of launch.
Second-order effects
- Mozilla now competes against a Chromium-based Edge on every platform it serves, pressuring Firefox to differentiate on features and privacy rather than engine performance — and raising the stakes around the default-search deals that fund it.
- Web developers gain yet another reason to test against Chromium variants first, since Edge, Chrome, and eventually other Chromium browsers now cover a growing majority of desktop traffic, marginalizing Gecko testing.
Third-order effects
- If Edge's trajectory continues alongside Chrome, desktop browsing consolidates around a single engine maintained largely by Google — with Microsoft, ironically, now one of the biggest distributors of its rival's technology, and engine diversity becoming a niche concern.
The trend: The desktop browser market is consolidating around the Chromium engine, with Microsoft's adoption of it converting distribution muscle into share at the expense of the last major independent engine, Gecko.