The new version of Microsoft's Edge browser, which is being built on Chromium OS,  is planned for release early next year. Its new logo has a "swoopy" design was meant to “capture the waves of innovation” that the new browser intends to deliver.

The new logo was initially revealed as an Easter egg hunt - part of a new surfing mini game hidden inside the latest Canary versions of Edge - ahead of the Microsoft Ignite 2019 event being held this week in Orlando.

We first reported that Microsoft was abandoning its own browser technology in favor of using Chromium, which is an open-source project in November 2018 and that it would be a Win32 app that would run on all versions of Windows, see Microsoft To Go Chromium.

Given that it was supposed to have been made available during 2019, the new browser, still called Edge, has take a bit longer to materialize than anticipated, but a version regarded as a Release Candidate can now be downloaded and, as Microsoft corporate vice president Jared Spataro announced at Ignite:

"... the general availability of the all-new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser is targeted for January 15, 2020. Microsoft Edge is now available across all your devices, including Windows 10, Windows 8x, Windows 7, macOS, iOS, and Android. Your passwords, history, favorites, and settings will roam seamlessly across all your devices, and with native Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) sign-in, you can search for work files right from your phone.”

New Edge is designed to be fully cross-platform, as Chromium is, but the Linux version is referred to as "available in the future".

For enterprises, the new Edge is coming to Microsoft FastTrack and App Assure in Q1 2020, and is being supported with a security baseline that’s now in preview. Microsoft is also including some new business-focused features in Edge such as the ability to type in the address bar to find co-workers, office locations, floor plans for a building, and even get definitions for company acronyms. 

So will the new Edge find favor with users? Being based on Chromium will make it faster but it has a huge hill to climb to challenge Chrome which now has over two-thirds of the desktop browser market, according to NETMarketShare.

Comparing figures from January 2019 with the latest ones, from October2019 Edge has improved from a share of 4.6%  to 6.1% but it still hasn't surpassed its Microsoft predecessor, Internet Explorer (IE), which still has a 6.5% share despite all its recognized shortcomings and the fact that Windows 7 reaches its end of life on January 14th - one day before the new Edge GA! While Firefox did reach a share of over 10% in  April 2019 it has tended to declined since then. So if IE's decline is hasted by Windows 7 EOL Edge does stand a chance of becoming the number 2 browser - but a very poor second to Chrome.

Although the Edge logo retains the e shape, which it inherited from IE, it has a wavelike quality - reinforced by combining blue and green.  There are respects in which is is reminiscent of the Chromium icon, closely associated with Chrome, and the latest Firefox icons - especially the multi-hued blue Firefox Developer Edition version. 

Is this an attempt to pickup on the associations of the better-loved browsers? Could it be that a casual user might think that Edge was something to do with Firefox or a "cool" new version of Chrome? Only time will tell, but it is clear that browsers are continuing to evolve towards a world where they all look the same.

More Information

Download Edge from Microsoft Edge Insider

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