Web browsers are face to the internet on our computer. You need browsers to perform daily tasks like searching for information or checking emails. Considering your work and functionality requirements, you can choose the browser which best caters your requirements. As we all know there is a long list of available browsers, the popular ones include Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge as both of them have to offer great support for their users.
Microsoft offers Edge is a default browser in Windows 10 replacing the iconic and ill-fated Internet Explorer. Whereas Chrome is a benchmark browser from Google that works of all platforms. Both of them having their own respective perks and features, but still there is a lot of space to compare and choose the best suitable browser.
In this article, let us do some comparison between Edge and Chrome about performance, capability and features.
1. Brief introduction
Microsoft Edge
Although Microsoft Edge is a new browser, it still delivers great performance and efficiency for Windows users. With a wide range of features and growing extension library, Edge is now linked with Windows 10 internal tools such as OneNote and Cortana. Furthermore, the browser is safer and secure as it features powerful anti-phishing technology as well.
The browser now features tab casting and accessibility restrictions for websites along with the facility of Windows Defender Guard Application.
Google Chrome
Google Chrome is a benchmark tool based on the open source Chromium project built to deliver matchless internet browsing experience. Based on a simple yet effective outlook, Chrome is absolute a pleasure to use and is integrated with a bunch of useful features and facilities. Allowing users to sync passwords and bookmarks, the browser now has to offer multi account support and built in Google Translate as well.
2. Performance
Microsoft claims that Edge has 29% faster and offers 14% more battery life than Chrome. But when you use Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge together, you will not find huge difference in terms of performance. In fact, Chrome loads very fast compared to Edge as it supports all latest web developments.
On certain occasions, Chrome will crash like when you have large number of open tabs. Here we have not noticed Edge crashes like Chrome.
Learn more on how to fix slow Edge and Chrome browsers.
3. Features
Starting with exciting and helpful features of Google Chrome, you can now create multiple accounts, sync data automatically and take benefit from the built-in PDF viewer. On the other hand, Edge lets you to browse easily through their casting feature which makes it simple to pin websites over taskbar, manage website permissions and edit URLs as well.
Similar to Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge allows you to avail automatic form fill facility, mute tabs and clutter free printing. Furthermore, Edge now has improved eBook reading experience and annotation feature combined with complete Cortana support as well.
4. Security
Although both of the browsers are developed with high end security protocols, we could find no certain weakness or data handling threats for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. According to the cybersecurity reports available online, Microsoft Edge has to offer the strongest browser security and is faster as compared to Google Chrome.
Though Google Chrome is popular among individual users across world, it is yet to be recognized in corporate world. This is not mainly due to Chrome’s security; it completely depends on company’s ability to shift the interfaces they have with Edge to Chrome. For individual users, Chrome’s malware scanner and cleanup tool are good tools to protect the computer from malicious sites on the internet.
5. Design and User Interface
Google updated Chrome to a sleek design with version 70 making it more appealing than ever. It is also very easy to use similar functions on Mac and Windows without getting lost. There are some annoying features still left over like no option to remove the history thumbnails on the new tab page.
Edge has a blended app design to mix with Windows 10 interface. Unfortunately Windows 10 still offers Internet Explorer 11 making it two browsers. Many of the corporates and governments still use IE11, as they can’t upgrade all their systems to match with Edge. Also when you want to repair Edge, you need to navigate to Windows settings for doing that. This makes very clear the entire user interface depends on Windows 10 platform instead of making platform independent browser.
In our opinion, browser can’t succeed globally when it depends on a platform like Edge on Windows and Safari on macOS. This reflects clearly in the browser’s market share that 65% of users use Chrome while less than 15% of the people uses Edge. This is the fact despite Windows 10 being used by 40% of the desktop users.
6. Developer Friendly
Both the browsers offer developer console for analyzing and auditing web pages. Edge has simple developer console, as Microsoft is the main developer of the browser. While Chrome has end-to-end developer console integrated with many useful features.
Unfortunately Edge does not support some of the latest CSS attributes and has very few experimental features. On other hand Chrome has different channels for releasing developer and canary version in addition to large number of experimental flags that you can try directly on the stable version.
7. SEO Features
Chrome developer tools has an integrated SEO auditing feature with Lighthouse extension. You can do the SEO auditing directly from the browser. Also Google pushes webmasters to improve the page loading speed on Chrome by referring the Chrome User Experience report.
Edge is not much relevant to SEO, as Microsoft don’t link Bing and Edge in any terms.
8. Extensions and Themes
Google has a dedicated Web Store for Chrome offering thousands of themes and extensions for free as well as premium. Though these extensions tend to slow down or cause other problems, you may find them very useful for doing your chores.
Microsoft by default discourages using extensions to protect the browser from unnecessary vulnerabilities. Even you want to install, there are hardly few you could find in Windows Store making them not attractive.
Similarly you can find large collection of theme for Chrome browser while Edge has not many options.
9. Integration with Apps
Since extensions are not supported as an important function, Edge lags in integrating with the popular Microsoft productivity tools like Skype or Office packages. On other hand, Google make use of Chrome as a marketing platform by adding Gmail and apps on the home page.
Since Gmail is the most popular mail application, users tend to use Chrome and sync the activities using single sign on feature.
10. Availability on All Platforms
Microsoft does not offer Edge on macOS. Also, Edge app was released very late on Android and iOS devices. Google’s major strength is to have Android and iOS apps from long back. Most importantly, once you sign in to one of the app, Google will automatically use the details when you use Chrome on mobile devices.
Though this will touch upon privacy, it offers an easy way to use the browser as a single user.
11. Privacy
One of the important selling points for Edge and Firefox against Chrome is the privacy policies of Google to collect and use data for advertising purposes. Now Chrome also has option for not tracking and stops intrusive ads on specific sites.
Google also added option to disable automatic sign-in to Chrome when using Gmail or other Google applications. So in our opinion, there are much difference in privacy point of view as the internet is getting matured and advertising is part of any website nowadays. If you are not happy with advertising then use ad blockers and disable the ads on browser.
Conclusion
By comparing performance, security and efficiency of Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, we have found that both of these browsers deliver high end adaptability and unique browsing experience. Considering your work requirements and adaptability aspects, you can choose any of the browser by focusing on the aspects as explained in this article.
In our opinion, Edge is the best browser when you strict your activities within Windows 10. Chrome makes your world bigger with easier integrations with Google’s top apps like Gmail. Also Chrome supports all the latest web developments and offers platform independent experience. This makes Chrome to stand out in the crowd and attract most users towards it.
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