Web browsers 2018 Opinion

I am a Web developer who uses Windows 10 and an Android Phone. My personal PC has large usage history of Firefox and Edge. While my Office PC has Chrome as the most prominent and Firefox and Edge with less usage.  I like to talk about the dominance of Chrome, my usage of Chrome, Firefox and Edge, the disappointment of Edge and what I hope in the browsing trends in the years to come.

The web browsers I use are Firefox, Edge and Chrome. The browser wars have a clear winner in 2018 and that's Chrome which I use at work and on my Phone. Other people I know like present and former colleagues uses Google Chrome frequently. I read from a site that the dominance of Google Chrome on browser is real. Despite Google Chrome's issues such as creepy telemetry, high memory and storage usage and perceived high battery consumption on the desktop.  Moreover, most Android phones have Google Chrome. Certain Android OEMs like Samsung offer another browser app but the people I met say they use Chrome and Statcounter seems to indicate that also as of writing.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share
Chrome's features like browser crash prevention when on tab crashes, simple UI, extensions and Dev tools did win me over when I work. Most importantly, my current employer gave us Google corporate accounts and I like the integration with the browser. I developed an attachment to Google Chrome's dev tools when I develop Web Apps. The attachment was when I was a student and I appreciated Chrome's friendlier dev tools compared to IE. Sadly, I got used to Chrome dev tools UI and flow when debugging front end code. As for personal non work related browsing I use Firefox after the Firefox quantum update. I noticed the greater speed and stability over MS Edge on general browsing when I my personal Windows 10 machine. I browse Google websites except YouTube on Firefox and I prefer searching there. I also like the spell check over Edge. I also debug my web apps on Firefox from time to time. When I go for private browsing(Reddit, Flight bookings, Hotel research, PayPal and etc), I use Firefox on these cases I don't like having certain data being cached. With Google and  Microsoft's adamant and opaque telemetry stance, I don't trust their Browsers' private modes not caching any data after session close. As for MS Edge, I use it for browsing Microsoft apps like Outlook.com, MSDN, VisualStudio.com, Onedrive.com and Azure.com. The integration with my MS account and Timeline can be handy when I'm reviewing my actions and work.

I tried Edge when i first used Windows 10 and it disappointed me. i know that it is not as feature rich as Chrome and Firefox and that changed over time. However, the crashes and page load failures(that are less frequent in other browsers) made me looked for another browser. I'm glad Firefox quantum came cause it got me an alternative to Edge aside from Chrome which ate up alot of memory and storage(so much cache) on my PC. Edge uses alot of memory and CPU but it did not perform as well as Firefox. Edge's lack of usage worldwide is well deserved. it came with Windows 10  and it ain't available on Windows 7. it's reader mode is not as intuitive as Firefox's. MS aggressive push on Edge is understandable but competition made it look inferior. Heck it does not even has the privacy focus of Safari that Apple introduced in June 2018. Just another browser great for note taking.

below is desktop Market share statistics.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share