Edge Competitor: Firefox | History and Usage Stats and 2 recent Edge & Firefox Reviews ...
Firefox (and Chrome) have a legitimate new competitor and it is highly likly will both shed share as a result of Microsoft's forcing the install of their new entry on Windows users.
Th following is excerpted from Wikipedia's comprehensive overview of Firefox, which is constantly updated and the latest version is always available here: en.wikipedia.org
>> Firefox was created in 2002 under the codename "Phoenix" by the Mozilla community members who desired a standalone browser, rather than the Mozilla Application Suite bundle. During its beta phase, Firefox proved to be popular with its testers and was praised for its speed, security, and add-ons compared to Microsoft's then-dominant Internet Explorer 6. Firefox was released on November 9, 2004,and challenged Internet Explorer's dominance with 60 million downloads within nine months. Firefox is the spiritual successor of Netscape Navigator, as the Mozilla community was created by Netscape in 1998 before their acquisition by AOL.
Firefox usage grew to a peak of 32.21% at the end of 2009 with version 3.5 overtaking Internet Explorer 7, although not all versions of Internet Explorer as a whole. Usage then declined in competition with Google Chrome.
As of July 2020, Firefox has 8.48% usage share as a "desktop" browser according to StatCounter, but 7.58% according to NetMarketShare, making it the third-most popular browser after Google Chrome with 69% and Safari with 8.74% usage share across all platforms is lower and is third-most popular overall at 4.25% according to StatCounter, and 3.55% according to NetMarketShare. <<
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Two Recent Top 2020 Browser Ratings and Reviews
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TechRadar | The Best browser 2020
techradar.com
1. Mozilla Firefox
2, Microsoft Edge
3, Google Chrome
4, Opera
5. Vivaldi
It's a very close-run thing, but we believe that Firefox is the best browser you can download today. It's not without its flaws, but developer Mozilla has committed to supporting its users' privacy and developing tools to stop third parties from tracking you around the web.
The newly released Chromium-based Edge comes a close second. It supports all the same browser extensions as Google Chrome, but is noticeably less RAM-hungry, allowing for faster performance.
>> 1. Mozilla Firefox
The best browser for power users and privacy protection
Operating system: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS
--> Incredibly flexible
--> Cross-platform sync
--> Good privacy protection
--> A bit slower than rivals
Firefox has long been the Swiss Army Knife of the internet and our favourite browser. Version 72 [now at 78] is particularly good: it can alert you if your email address is included in a known data breach, it blocks those annoying allow-notifications popups, it blocks “fingerprinting” browser tracking and it brings its picture in picture video mode to the Mac version. As before it’s endlessly customizable both in terms of its appearance and in the range of extensions and plugins you can use. Last year’s overhaul dramatically improved its performance, which was starting to lag behind the likes of Chrome, and it’s smooth and solid even on fairly modest hardware.
As much as we love Firefox – right now it’s still our favourite browser – we’re worried about its future. 2019 wasn’t a great year for Mozilla, with a major add-on crisis in May that Peter Saint-Andre and Matthew Miller claimed “was the result of having an interlocking set of complex systems that were not well understood across the relevant teams”. The lack of in-house quality assurance teams was also highlighted – much of Mozilla’s QA is outsourced – and in early 2020 the QA leads were reportedly let go in a round of layoffs. Mozilla’s struggling for income, so if you value Firefox you might want to visit donate.mozilla.org to help secure its future.
>> 2. Microsoft Edge
A genuinely great browser from the former browser bad guys
Operating system: Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Linux coming soon
--> Very, very fast
--> Crystal clear privacy tools
--> Can save sites as apps
--> Windows really wants it to be the default
Older readers will remember Microsoft as the villains of the Browser Wars that ultimately led to the rise of Firefox and Chrome. But Microsoft is on the side of the angels now and its Edge browser has been rebuilt with Chromium at its heart. It’s Windows’ default browser and there are also versions for iOS, Android and Mac.
The new Chromium-powered version is considerably faster than its predecessor and includes some useful features including Read Aloud, the ability to cast media such as inline videos to Chromecast devices, an Opera-style start page and a good selection of add-ons such as password managers, ad-blockers and so on. You can also download web pages as apps which then run as stand-alone applications without having to launch the whole browser. That’s useful for the likes of Google Docs or Twitter.
There are lots of customization options and we particularly liked the Privacy and Services page, which makes potentially confusing settings crystal clear, and the Site Permissions page. That gives you fine-grained control over what specific sites can do, including everything from pop-ups and ad blocking to MIDI device access and media autoplay.
Edge looks like Chrome and works like Chrome, but we like it more than Chrome: it’s noticeably faster on our Mac and the customization options are superb. <<
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Digital Trends | The best web browsers for 2020
digitaltrends.com
They choose Google's Chrome as the best web browser
>> The best Chrome alternative: Mozilla Firefox
Firefox comes in a close second — a very close second. Mozilla takes real strides to make its browser a truly modern way to surf from site to site, thanks to efforts like its upgrade to Firefox Quantum and the virtual reality-focused alternative, Firefox Reality. It wasn’t too long ago that Mozilla rebuilt the familiar old standby browser’s interface, offering a cleaner, more modern take on what a web browser should be, and even introduced a password-free browsing experience.
The changes weren’t just skin deep, however: There’s some impressive engineering going on behind the scenes. Firefox Quantum is designed to leverage multi-core processors in ways that its competitors just aren’t doing. It’s not going to make a huge difference in your day-to-day browsing, but the Mozilla Corporation hopes this design will give it an edge moving forward. By engineering for the future now, Firefox Quantum is in a better position to take advantage of quicker and quicker processors as they emerge year after year.
More recent updates include better privacy protections with anti-tracker support, improved password syncing across devices, improved readability, and integrated breach alerts.
Beneath those changes, it’s still the same Firefox we all know and love. It’s a capable browser, with a deep catalog of extensions and user interface customization. The new Firefox Mobile app also received the Quantum treatment, so it’s quicker and more streamlined than ever before. Grab the mobile Firefox app and you can share bookmarks between devices, but you must sign up for a separate Firefox account. Unfortunately, managing settings across platforms isn’t as seamless as Chrome.
Even with a few major overhauls, Firefox is a comfortable, familiar standby. There’s a bit of a fringe benefit, too. Since it’s been around longer than Chrome, some older web apps — the likes of which you might encounter at your university or workplace — work better on Firefox than they do on Chrome. For that reason, it never hurts to keep it around. The most recent version, Firefox 76, does an even better job than ever of keeping you safe from sites that want to track your activities as you surf the web.
As a primary browser, Firefox is more privacy-centric than Chrome and is comparably fast, but its feature set isn’t quite as expansive elsewhere. >>
>> The web browser with the most potential: Microsoft Edge
Microsoft developed an integrated browser for Windows 10, dubbed Edge, that uses an in-house browsing engine and updates along with the operating system. This project is arguably a failure, as Edge remains unable to gain a substantial market share despite it serving as Windows 10’s default web browser.
In response, Microsoft rewrote Edge using the open-source Chromium web browser engine, taking Google’s lead and making something all its own. The new version launched on February 5, 2020, which replaces the legacy version pre-installed in Windows 10. Currently, you must download and install this browser versus upgrading through Windows Update.
At first glance, Microsoft Edge looks and feels like Chrome. It prompts you to import Chrome’s bookmarks toolbar and other settings. This is great if you previously hated Edge and want to give Microsoft’s browser another shot. Even more, it supports Chrome extensions, though the browser leads you to the Microsoft Store for add-ons. You must manually load the Chrome Web Store to install anything not listed in Microsoft’s repository.
The big news here is performance. Microsoft optimized the Chromium-based Edge for Windows 10. As a quick experiment, we loaded six identical pages/tabs in Chrome and Edge. Looking at Task Manager showed Chrome consuming 1.4GB of memory while Microsoft Edge only used 665MB. That’s extremely good news for PCs with low memory amounts.
Microsoft Edge provides simpler privacy settings, too. In Chrome, you merely have a list of toggles for safe browsing, “do not track” requests, page preloads, and more. Microsoft Edge provides a more graphically friendly interface, displaying three security levels: Basic, Balanced, and Strict. With Balanced set as the default, many sites request you to disable your pop-up blocker even though one isn’t manually installed.
At this point, the new Microsoft Edge shows promise, but it won’t gain any real ground serving as a separate download. Microsoft said in January that this version will roll out in a future update. As of May 2020, this version of Edge still remained as an optional download. [This obviously changes now that Microsoft will be forcing updates to the New Edge for all Windows Users on a 6 week schedule for updates to the initial update to it] <<
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- Eric L. - |
