Microsoft Edge vs Chrome: Which to Choose in 2023?

With Microsoft Edge being the third most widely used browser among desktop users globally, it has attracted much attention this year. Unsurprisingly, people are comparing it to Chrome, the undisputed leader in the browser market. Nonetheless, Edge’s increasing popularity has led to searches for Microsoft Edge vs. Google Chrome – something worth looking into.

From Internet Explorer to Mircosoft Edge, the transition is an interesting and long-standing one. When comparing to the market leader, Google Chrome, we’ll explore feature sets and answer FAQs such as “Is Edge safer than Chrome?” “What are the disadvantages of Microsoft Edge?” and “Does Edge use more CPU than Chrome”

Microsoft Edge vs. Google Chrome: The Current Landscape

As of 2023, with its Google Suite, Google Chrome is the definite leader in the browser market share, followed by Safari and Edge.

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In May 2020, Microsoft pushed Edge a lot harder. As part of a Windows update, the browser became impossible to uninstall. Additionally, the pandemic and its consequent remote working adoption led to an increase in the purchase of new devices for home offices. There is speculation that new Windows devices with Edge browser packed in might have resulted in increased browser use.

Furthermore, Microsoft has consistently pushed updates to improve the browser experience, especially by facilitating better integration for Windows and Chrome users.

Nonetheless, they both deserve a closer look and lend some integrity to the “Microsoft Edge vs. Chrome” question.

Microsoft Edge vs Google Chrome: Feature Breakdown

Let’s break this down regarding specific metrics and browser features/functionality.

Speed

• When tested on WebXPRT 3, Chrome and Edge were run through six tests replicating real-world conditions, which in particular, test the browsers’ HTML5 and JavaScript performance.
• Edge won by a narrow margin scoring 76 against Chrome’s 73. This was primarily due to Edge winning in the OCR Scan and Encrypt Notes tests.

Resource Consumption

• While both are significantly fast browsers, Edge might have a slight advantage.
• Based on a test in which six pages were loaded on each browser, Edge used 665MB of RAM, while Chrome used 1.4 GB.
• This would make a significant difference for systems running on limited memory.
• Also, Chrome is infamously known for eating up RAM, even on top-of-the-line CPU-OS combinations. Understand How Google Chrome is improving battery and memory optimization in 2023

Extensions

• By basing its architecture on Chromium, Edge has provided wide-ranging support for extensions.
• The Microsoft Store’s catalog of extensions is growing quite impressively. Additionally, if an Edge user wants to download an extension only available on the Chrome Web Store, they can download and add it to Edge in a couple of simple steps.
• However, despite these improvements, Edge extensions still grapple with some compatibility issues and are less convenient to use than Chrome extensions. In this case, Chrome still has the upper hand.

Features

Since both browsers are built on the same browser engine (Chromium), there’s not a huge difference in features on their desktop versions. Edge has a “read aloud” feature that vocalizes any highlighted text, but this feature isn’t too good with languages other than English. On mobile, however, Edge has some exciting features that stand out.

• The floating video feature lets users shrink a currently playing video and situate it on the screen when switching to a different tab or window.
• The news guard feature evaluates news outlets users visit and notifies them of the website’s credibility
• The sync feature lets users sync their data between devices through their Microsoft accounts. While the data currently includes only bookmarked pages, settings, passwords, and form data, Microsoft is in the process of letting users sync open tabs, extensions, and browser history.
• Chrome, however, is better integrated with widely used tools like Google Docs and Google Translate (which is much better than Microsoft’s Bing Translate).
• Chrome’s synchronization mechanism is also far more sophisticated and fills in all the gaps Edge leaves.

Security

• To protect users against websites running phishing operations or infected with malware, Edge leverages Microsoft’s SmartScreen system. It works better than Chrome.
• The SmartScreen system sends an alert if a user lands on a website using HTTP instead of HTTPS, letting them know their traffic is unsafe.
• However, Edge is bogged down by its infrequent updates. Usually, Edge updates come once in six weeks, which gives unsavory individuals enough time to identify and act on weaknesses.
• Like Edge, Chrome notifies users when they have landed on an HTTP page.
• However, Chrome wins out because of the high frequency of its security updates.
• With updates every few days (faster than any other browser in the market), Chrome keeps refining and eliminating possible vulnerabilities in its code.

Privacy

• Edge offers three protection modes from tracking – basic, balanced, and struct. Users can also allow individual websites to circumvent protection protocols for all three modes. They can look at the list of blocked trackers so that users know who/what they are being protected from.
• However, since Microsoft has many products, it is confusing to figure out which rules appear to Edge and which apply to software like Windows 11.
• It’s well known that Chrome leverages user data to tailor the data, search results, and ads appearing when they browse the internet.

Platform Compatibility

• Chrome has been around for a while and runs on most platforms – Windows 7 and up, Linux (support for Ubuntu), macOS (10.10 and up), iOS (12.0 and up), iPadOS, Android (5.0 and up), Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE, and ChromeOS.
• Edge runs on Windows 7 and up, macOS 10.12 and up, iOS (iPadOS) 11.0 and up, and Android 4.4 and up. Support for Linux is currently in development, enabling compatibility with Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE. There don’t seem to be any plans to offer Edge compatibility with ChromeOS.

With multiple operating systems and platforms in usage, the global online population will access websites via different browser-OS combinations—test websites on 3000+ device-browser-OS combinations on BrowserStack’s real device cloud.

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Is Microsoft Edge better than Google Chrome?

• Edge is a dark horse in 2023 that showcases the potential to go head-to-head with Google Chrome and reinvent the search as we know it. It has set itself apart with many impressive features and performance highlights.
• However, since Chrome browser features have been around for a while and had an astronomically high adoption rate, it will take something exceptional to dethrone it.

Instead of declaring one browser better, look at it this way.

• Chrome is the way to go if someone frequently uses Google Suite.
• However, if someone has a Windows PC, it’s worth giving Edge a shot.
• Since it can’t be uninstalled, one might as well see what the hype is about instead of just wondering, “Is Microsoft Edge better than Google Chrome?”

Microsoft’s significant, continual improvements to the browser promise a more robust browsing experience than IE had offered, and Edge might not be too easy to dismiss in the coming days.

To make an informed decision, go through the aspects detailed above. The browsers don’t have major differences in functionality, but users can stick to a browser simply because of its UI and the effort involved in making a shift.

From a web developer’s point of view, Edge’s increasing popularity makes it a strong contender for cross browser testing. Expect a significant number of only users to be accessing any website through Edge, which makes Microsoft Edge testing an absolute necessity. This would be in combination with Chrome testing for maximum cross browser compatibility.

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