won't be really hard to improve the market share:
- make edge cross platform.
- make the extensions system on par with chromes and as easy to launch an extension
- fix its UI lag on Windows 10
- maybe open source it
Honestly I think the numbers on this would be poor. OS X users use Safari, and rightfully so because the performance tends to be very good compared to other browsers on Apple hardware. At best they could hope for bundled installs with Office 365 to bloat their numbers, but I'm just not sure it's worth the effort.
The rest I'm not really sure that there is much benefit to it save the UI lag fix. The oft-tossed about technical debt is incredibly real with Microsoft's browsers, and I believe a lot of the debt that IE had was inherited by Edge to ensure a transition for Microsoft's clientele relying on the IE support for their sites.
Unless Microsoft wants to branch into having a "business browser" and a "consumer browser", they can't give users a clean and non-burdened version of a Microsoft Internet Browser. I really doubt they're going to want to deal with the headache of splitting the focus to two versions. They can make all the changes they want public facing, but as long as they have a sacrosanct part of the browser that can't be altered or removed, they're destined to be an afterthought if a thought at all.
My point is OSX + Linux is like 5% of the desktop OS. No matter how awesome Edge team made it, 1-2% more users will do VERY VERY little compared to the 50% of users they have lost on desktop machines in the past 5 years. They would be absolutely insane to even spend 1 money on adding new OSX users when Windows users (who get their app for FREE and with NO WORK) are leaving left and right. Gotta fix the bleeding before you worry about the lipstick.
Opening a new tab on Edge for me takes 2-3 seconds - and it feels like it freezes while the page loads. On the same machine Chrome and Firefox peform much better in this respect.
p.s. when the page loads in Edge its actually quite fast and scrolling feels smoother than other browsers - but the initial delay breaks the whole experience for me.
The rest I'm not really sure that there is much benefit to it save the UI lag fix. The oft-tossed about technical debt is incredibly real with Microsoft's browsers, and I believe a lot of the debt that IE had was inherited by Edge to ensure a transition for Microsoft's clientele relying on the IE support for their sites.
Unless Microsoft wants to branch into having a "business browser" and a "consumer browser", they can't give users a clean and non-burdened version of a Microsoft Internet Browser. I really doubt they're going to want to deal with the headache of splitting the focus to two versions. They can make all the changes they want public facing, but as long as they have a sacrosanct part of the browser that can't be altered or removed, they're destined to be an afterthought if a thought at all.