2025-08-06 00:00:00

My main browser has always been Firefox, and as you probably know, using Firefox isn’t always the best. So usually, people like me - and perhaps you too - tend to have a second browser in hand, a Chromium-based one.

I used to use Google Chrome for quite some time and it has been quite useful for quite a while, but then, having your browsing data slurped without adblocking hasn’t been quite interesting, to put it mildly. As a result, I chose to look into two browsers: Brave Browser, and Microsoft Edge.

At first, I used to use Brave Browser, but Brave sneaking behind your back to inject their own affiliate links or to install a f*cking unwanted VPN of their own (that’s obviously paid), that’s plain wrong. And it had been a tough nut to crack, to uninstall i, proved to be a dealbreaker for me.

So, I settled for Microsoft Edge. Now, hear me out; you probably tell yourself, ‘Why, man, would you use Edge? Doesn’t it slurp your data like Chrome?’

Well, not exactly, I mean, some of it is also done by Microsoft, but there are differences. For one, Group Policy Objects (GPOs) are usable on Microsoft Edge, and can drastically limit the level of telemetry sent back to Microsoft. It does follow Microsoft Windows’s entire telemetry setting. So if you are using an Education or Enterprise version of Windows (and notably, not a Pro version), then you can cut almost all telemetry out.

And second, of course, Microsoft Edge still supports Manifest v2 addons like uBlock Origin, which is by far the best wide-spectrum content blocker that in practice serves as the best adblocker all around.

So to me, Microsoft Edge, despite its horrible reputation (largely due to Microsoft’s shitty and catastrophic PR) is actually quite an impressive thing.

Now of course, I do hate Microsoft Edge a lot for various reasons, like occasionally asking the user to sign in with a Microsoft Account - now, only even a single popup like this is one too many, I hate having my toes stepped on (though, you can block MSA logins with GPOs).

Also, it’s not un-installable outside of the European Union, when in reality, Microsoft already did all the work to unbundle the browser from the WebView components, preventing a repetition of what used to happen back with the dreadful Internet Explorer.

Microsoft Edge is fast, but it has the stupid tendency to preload itself at boot, so while it starts impossibly fast (faster than Chrome or Firefox) it’s also pretty cretin as it refuses to properly close.

But in the end, since I do actually use Edge, it ain’t that bad. It’s a mediocre experience.