On Thursday, February 9th we looked at the latest versions of Edge and Chrome for the desktop and had fun finding our way around. Chris had to update Chrome during the session, which didn’t take long. Both browsers are continually being updated. Everything we describe here will soon be out of date!
We noted that the default start-up page for Chrome is minimalist, while Edge displays an active news-feed, although you can change this in Settings.
To see what’s new in Chrome, take a look here: https://www.google.com/intl/en_US/chrome/whats-new/m117/ What’s New in Chrome
…here’s the relevant article for Edge: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/features When searching for the information in Edge, we were soon led to a Chatbot (Co-pilot) which produced a ticker-tape response.
Chris tried querying the Chatbot using voice (via a microphone icon) , and received the answer in ticker-tape text and audio in the form of a female voice reading out what the text said. (Chris eventually stumbled on how to turn off the voice by clicking on the microphone). We were led through a series of screens highlighting Edge’s new features. Unfortunately, the built in VPN could not install (perhaps it’s not rolled out in Europe yet)
We customised both browsers with “pretty” backgrounds and then played around with Edge’s sidebar on the right of the screen below the co-pilot icon:
From Top to bottom:
— Co-pilot (AI Chatbot)
— Search
— Microsoft Shopping
— Tools (Calculator and scroll down to Translate)
— Games
— Microsoft 365
— Outlook
— AI Image generation
— Drop (File transfer between devices)Chris clicked a button “Auto-hide sidebar” below the main list of icons and couldn’t get it back again. Unlike most autohidden things, it did not appear when the mouse was hovered over where it used to be – i.e in his case the right edge of the screen. The secret is to launch Co-pilot (the AI chatbot) by clicking on it’s icon in the top right corner, then the sidebar re-appears (thanks for the tip Tom) . She also clicked on a “Detach from Edge” thinking this might get rid of it for good – however, this button merely took it out of Edge and put it on the Windows Desktop. There doesn’t seem to be a way of getting rid of it entirely.
In contrast to all this fun, Chrome seemed to be quite boring, though getting at Favourites/ Bookmarks was easier to do in Edge than in Chrome. Both browsers enabled easy translation of web pages on the fly, and searching for information about individual words: Edge: Double-click on the word to use Co-Pilot; Chrome: Right- click on the word and use Google Search. Chrome users can add a Chatbot like Co-pilot if they wish by installing the ChatGPT extension.
We noted that Edge uses Microsoft Bing search by default, though you can easily use Google’s Search engine if you wish. It’s important to differentiate between Google’s different products: Google Chrome (browser), Google Search (Search engine) Google Mail (e-mail) etc.
…oh and Chris forgot to mention Edge’s Vertical Tabs feature (which is not yet available in Chrome)
Here’s a summary from a pundit on LinkedIn:
When it comes to syncing, customization, user support, performance, and security, both Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome have their strengths. Edge offers a more resource-efficient experience with strong integration into the Microsoft ecosystem, while Chrome provides a vast array of extensions and a speedier performance for web applications. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/edge-vs-chrome-feature-security-showdown-cody-krissberg-cgkac/
It’s horses for courses – though Edge is a no brainer for people who use Microsoft Office 365 (mostly the corporate world) since the browser is so integrated with the Office tools and Windows.
Here are some stats:
How Many People Use Google Chrome? Google Chrome holds over 65.29% browser market share in December 2023. Considering there are 5.3 billion monthly active internet users, the number of people using it is estimated to be 3.46 billion worldwide.
In December 2023, Microsoft Edge had 4.97% of the worldwide browser market, with an estimated 263 million people using it today. Edge performs well in the desktop market share at 11.89%, and a much lower 0.24% for mobile browser use. https://backlinko.com/browser-market-share
Chris Betterton-Jones, Knowledge Junkie