Do you use Chrome or Microsoft Edge

[lowell holmes]

Just curious.
I started with Chrome and added Edge later, I just use Chrome. It is difficult to teach an old dog new tricks.

[Lee Schierer]

I use Firefox.

[Ron Selzer]

Chrome at work, edge at home

[Kev Williams]

Firefox.

Programs that self-install and assert themselves as the default program are no better than viruses IMO...

[Dan Bundy]

I use the Brave browser.

[Rob Luter]

Both. Mostly Chrome for Mac at home but both Chrome and Edge at work with a PC. It depends. Most of our web based apps at work run better on Edge.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Chrome on both PC and Android phone.
I enjoy the ease of how they work together.

Probably death on any kind of security - but - it's still really convenient.

[Alan Lightstone]

Chrome. Every once in a while Firefox, as weirdly there are a few sites that don't seem to work correctly on Chrome and freeze.

[Erik Loza]

My wife works with patient-facing electronic health record software. Because of this, she has access to extremely detailed statistics as far as what browsers the “average person” (being the random person who checks in for a doctor’s appointment) uses. According to her, it’s primarily Chrome. Firefox is in the minority and decreasing, from what she sees.

Erik

[Ole Anderson]

Chrome on my PC.

[Jim Becker]

Hasn't changed...Chrome is my go-to across multiple devices and operating systems.

[Ted Calver]

Firefox and then chrome when something won't work on FF. After fifteen minutes consulting customer service, I found out that my local water utility on line bill pay will only work on Chrome. I agree with Kev's post #4 on not liking programs that self install as defaults. A friend's new microsoft laptop defaults to edge and there's apparently no way to change the default to anything else.

[mike stenson]

No, and requiring either means the websites programmer needs to learn what they're doing.

[glenn bradley]

I've used many. Firefox for the last several years. I keep others around for when I run into a site that's poorly done or doesn't stay current and "needs" another browser. Ah, I just noticed Mike shares my thoughts on the current herd of programmers out there. I am never sure if it is inexperience, bad QA, or just laziness but you see some weird stuff out there :D:D:D

[Curt Harms]

My wife works with patient-facing electronic health record software. Because of this, she has access to extremely detailed statistics as far as what browsers the “average person” (being the random person who checks in for a doctor’s appointment) uses. According to her, it’s primarily Chrome. Firefox is in the minority and decreasing, from what she sees.

Erik

I'm a little bit curious about the decrease in Firefox numbers. There's something called user switcher agent. It identifies one browser as another to connected devices. It was a big thing when Internet Explorer ruled the roost. A site wouldn't work correctly if it wasn't connected to Internet Explorer. There became a Firefox add-on that identified Firefox as Internet Explorer to connecting devices. The web site in question worked fine with Firefox but didn't want to if the client browser wasn't Internet Explorer. I wonder if we're seeing the same thing with Google Chrome today. There was a time when Firefox was slow and Chrome was fast on Windows - I never noticed slow on Linux- but today Chrome is reputed to be more of a slug and more resource hungry than Firefox. It also helps to have a couple add-ons in Firefox to limit ads and Javascript. Google makes $ billions slinging ads, do you think they want browsers to limit ads? Particularly one that bears their name?

[Jim Becker]

Curt, Professor Dr. SWMBO was always a major FireFox user over the years, but even she has moved over to Chrome as primary at this point since some of the University systems get ornery with other browsers. The Chromium "heart" is also beating in a lot of other places now, including in Microsoft's Edge.

[Curt Harms]

Curt, Professor Dr. SWMBO was always a major FireFox user over the years, but even she has moved over to Chrome as primary at this point since some of the University systems get ornery with other browsers. The Chromium "heart" is also beating in a lot of other places now, including in Microsoft's Edge.

I agree with Mike Stenson above. I did read an article recently that the major browser publishers are going to work to remove the interoperability issues. Let's hope. I have Vivaldi (chromium based) installed as a secondary browser. In my experience if a web site isn't happy with Firefox, it isn't happy with Vivaldi either. I imagine intranets could be more of an issue - ONLY WORKS WITH I.E.6. :rolleyes:

[Rollie Meyers]

Firefox for me, I under no circumstances use Google products, once in a while use the Edge browser when a site does not function on Firefox.

[Alan Rutherford]

... it’s primarily Chrome. Firefox is in the minority and decreasing, from what she sees. ...

Yep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers)
Even that source has different statistics depending on what you want to count but the message is about the same. Making a browser the pre-installed default on a major operating system helps a lot with its popularity so it's no surprise Chome is doing so well. Safari is hanging in there. Those of us who never touch an Apple product also never use Safari but few Mac and iPhone owners use anything else.

And how many people these days will install a browser? I still occasionally have to explain what one is.

I use Firefox on the desktop but had to look to see what the browser is on my phone. Turns out it's "Samsung Internet Browser". Google tells me that's really Chrome, so I guess I'm contributing to the popularity of the Google family.

[mike stenson]

Safari is a pretty slim browser, compared to the bloatware that Chrome has become. If your phone is google based (which android is), it's going to use a chromium browser. I agree, however, the days of third party browsers really are over. Which is why you see what you see. It's predominately marketshare of mobile devices.

[Andrew More]

Making a browser the pre-installed default on a major operating system helps a lot with its popularity so it's no surprise Chome is doing so well.

Sorry, where is Chrome the default on an OS?

@Mike Stenson - FWIW, Safari is WebKit, which is what Chromium is based on, so they're still pretty closely related in a way that Firefox is not.

For the record I use Firefox because I'm concerned about Chrome's dominance, and the conflict of interest Google's ad business represents to Chrome. I suspect that ad blockers are going to continue to get worse and worse on Chrome, because Google wants to sell you ads. Not sure what they'll do if they start to lose market share over it. (And too many annoying ads might be a good enough reason for people to switch to Firefox).

[Terry Wawro]

I've been a Firefox user for many years. It's FF on my PC and Chrome on my Chromebooks.

[roger wiegand]

Seems to me that "which browser" is a question that used to be important, but that now, with the amount of convergent evolution that has gone on, there is effectively no significant difference. I like the integration of Google Translate into Chrome, but that is quite literally the only feature I can think of that distinguishes one over the others. I use Safari and Chrome interchangeably on an everyday basis. I've never actually seen Edge, so have no opinion on it. I used Firefox for a long time back when and was forced to use IE from time to time.

My current experience is that all the browsers work on pretty much every site, that they are all so fast that any differences are unnoticeable, and that there are very, very few functional differences.

AdBlock Plus still seems to do a very creditable job of blocking a lot of irritating ads. Google will know what I'm searching and target ads no matter which browser I use to access it.

[Alan Rutherford]

Sorry, where is Chrome the default on an OS? ....

It was the default on my Android phone, disguised as Samsung Internet Browser and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the default on all Android phones since Android is Google. Smartphones overtook PC's in popularity several years ago so the phone statistics are significant. It's probably also the default on the Google Android tablets, Chromebooks or whatever they make now.

[Andrew More]

It was the default on my Android phone, disguised as Samsung Internet Browser and I wouldn't be surprised if it's the default on all Android phones since Android is Google. Smartphones overtook PC's in popularity several years ago so the phone statistics are significant. It's probably also the default on the Google Android tablets, Chromebooks or whatever they make now.

Probably so, though at least you can still install a different browser on Android.

ALL browsers on iOS are Safari by legal requirement. They might have a little different skin on top, but it's all the same control underneath.

[Roger Feeley]

Firefox mostly. If I think the website is a bit sketchy, I use brave on the advise of a family member who heads the cyber security group at a fortune 100 company.

[Matt Day]

Lowell is back!!!

[Jim Becker]

Probably so, though at least you can still install a different browser on Android.

ALL browsers on iOS are Safari by legal requirement. They might have a little different skin on top, but it's all the same control underneath.

I'm an iOS user and my default browser is Chrome and has been for some time. The "initial" default is Safari, but iOS has supported other browsers being default for awhile now. All of my devices use the same Chrome settings, bookmarks, etc., including iOS.

[Curt Harms]

Safari is a pretty slim browser, compared to the bloatware that Chrome has become. If your phone is google based (which android is), it's going to use a chromium browser. I agree, however, the days of third party browsers really are over. Which is why you see what you see. It's predominately marketshare of mobile devices.

Some browser publishers offer an android version. How many android users even know about non-Google web browsers let alone how or why they should install one? I'm using Firefox on android. It seems to work fine for what little web browsing I do on a 'phone'. And yes, phones have a fair bit to do with Chrome's usage. Another issue I've heard of in the enterprise space is that Firefox hasn't supported corporate administration until recently.

[Andrew More]

I'm an iOS user and my default browser is Chrome and has been for some time.
We're talking about two slightly different things. On iOS ALL "browsers" must use the underlying Webkit control (https://www.baekdal.com/thoughts/apple-is-limiting-the-new-google-chrome-for-ios/), which is the same control that does the heavy lifting in Safari, including Chrome on iOS. This is a requirement (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25850091) of their app store rules (https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/). So you might have a Chrome "skin" around Webkit/Safari, but it's still Webkit/Safari rendering the HTML, CSS, and javascript, even if it looks like Chrome, and allows some of the same settings and bookmarks. For the most part this doesn't matter, until it does. One place it might matter have been the shift in Chromium (which is the engine/control in Chrome everywhere that's not iOS) to restrict the ability of ad blockers to work. It also might mean some quirky results on various websites. Probably also means that some of the extensions for Chrome don't work on iOS.

[Jim Becker]

I can accept that relative to "under the hood", Andrew. I'm not a software guy. But regardless, the behavior that matters to me cross platform is still there. :)

[Andrew More]

I can accept that relative to "under the hood", Andrew. I'm not a software guy. But regardless, the behavior that matters to me cross platform is still there. :)

I hear you. I am, and I've worked pretty closely with some of this stuff. While it might not matter that much to end users, until it's really bad, it's generally considered a bad idea to allow one company to determine how browsers work. Having iOS keep Chromium out (however odious their approach) is good, because it means that the web will continue to be designed to standards, rather than the whims or needs of a single company. We had issues with IE was the defacto standard, we might be going back there again with Chrome/Chromium/Google.

[Charles Parnell]

Definitely Firefox

[Luke Dupont]

Firefox or Brave. Or Chromium if I need.

Chrome and Edge are basically spyware and should really be avoided.

I can't run Edge or Safari anyway because I'm on Linux, but I have no real desire to, so that's fine.

[Curt Harms]

Firefox or Brave. Or Chromium if I need.

Chrome and Edge are basically spyware and should really be avoided.

I can't run Edge or Safari anyway because I'm on Linux, but I have no real desire to, so that's fine.

You could run Edge on Linux, at least the Debian based distros. Why you'd want to is another matter.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/2/22759123/microsoft-edge-linux-stable-channel

[Michael Drew]

Based on some comments in this thread suggesting/recommending Brave, I downloaded that browser engine a couple weeks ago. I was a Chrome user, but found it to be irritating. So far, I'm pretty happy with Brave. The transfer from Chrome was quick and painless. It blocks adds better than I had hoped, and my searches do not appear to be sending me towards advertisers.