Edge’s doomed challenge to Chrome is embarrassing for Microsoft – is it time to stop forcing the browser on us in Windows 11?

• Microsoft Edge slipped slightly to 13.29% according to Statcounter’s latest figures for the browser market in April 2025
• Edge has been stuck around the 13% mark for over a year now
• To make progress, Microsoft needs to rethink its strategy, and stop overzealously promoting Edge in Windows 11

Microsoft’s Edge browser appears to be facing a distinctly uphill battle in the browser wars, with its market share having clearly stalled over the past year.

Granted, that percentage share of the browser market has been bobbling up and down a bit as time has passed, going by analytics firm Statcounter’s global figures. But the upshot is Edge doesn’t seem to be making any real headway against Google’s Chrome browser.

As Neowin noticed, with April’s browser stats, Edge is on 13.29% which is a slight loss of 0.08% on March 2025. If we rewind a year, it’s actually up a little bit, but the increase is marginal with a 0.32% gain.

Essentially, Edge has been stuck around the 13% mark for over a year now, and has been unable to break free of the shackles of that particular number.

At the start of 2024, it crept over 13%, then hit 13.8% in August 2024, seeming to make some decent progress – except it dropped back down under 13% towards the end of last year.

Then it rose like a phoenix (ahem) to reach 13.9% in February 2025, again a solid uptick, before dropping back down (like a phoenix somebody turned a fire hose on) to 13.29% this past month.

In short, whenever there’s an increase that makes it look like Edge could get over 14%, the browser appears to shed users again. And given how far away Microsoft’s app is from Chrome – which is way in the lead on 65% – it’s not looking good for the overall campaign to dethrone Google here.

Analysis: Drop the promos, Microsoft – or, erm, just buy Chrome

Actually, looking at the entire browser market in recent history, nothing is really doing much – it’s a very static overall picture. All the major browsers have pretty much flatlined, and are maintaining a strict balance of power, with only minor fluctuations from month-to-month.

Chrome holds most of that power, as noted, and Edge is a very distant second, ahead of Safari and Firefox which are a good way behind it (relatively speaking at the low-end). Opera is the other minor player bringing up the rear, but whichever graph you look at, it’s pretty much a straight line through the months for all these browsers, with very slight bobbles.

What is Microsoft getting wrong? Well, I know it’s a well-beaten drum, but I’m convinced part of the problem is the overzealous promotion of Edge in Windows 11 (and 10). These kind of exercises – which have been numerous in recent history – only smack of desperation, and will likely turn off people, rather than persuade them to give Edge a chance.

I know that repeated prompts to make Edge my default browser have annoyed me quite a number of times, cropping up here and there, and I’m sure I am not alone (a quick rifle through some online posts on typical forums like Reddit underlines this).

The crying shame is that Edge is actually a good product. Indeed, it’s rated as the top pick in our roundup of the best web browsers, so it deserves to be a meaningful rival to Chrome, even if it’s not perfect. And Microsoft is working to iron out some of those imperfections, like bloat, slowly but surely.

What does Microsoft need to do to stand a chance of breaking through the 15% barrier, then? Well, keep on the path of streamlining by all means, but just shut up about Edge in Windows 11 (or elsewhere), and try to get a turnaround in the public perception of the browser being overly promoted. Because that only leads to suspicion that Edge needs to be promoted because it’s not all that great – which isn’t true.

Microsoft positioning itself to gain favor and more goodwill from the computing public in this way could stand Edge in good stead, given that the top dog browser is currently navigating some unsteady waters, with Google currently under fire regarding selling off Chrome.

Or there’s an idea: just buy Chrome, Microsoft. Of course, that remote prospect would be highly unlikely to fly with regulators as it’s rather an ‘out of the fire and into the frying pan’ solution.

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