Conducting a test in which you declare your own product the winner can be a dangerous move for any company. For Microsoft, it’s just another day as the reigning king of underutilized web browsers. The company’s new “Microsoft Edge Experiment” is mean to show how much better Edge is than its competitors from Mozilla and Google, but it just kind of comes out looking like a convenient and all-too-predictable result.
Here’s what we’re looking at: Microsoft conducting a test in which one of its browsers competes against browsers from two other companies. The test is being done using whatever videos and “common browsing tasks” Microsoft decided upon, and each browser is running on Microsoft’s own Surface Books. Microsoft wins the competition in a land slide.
To be clear: Microsoft Edge might well be the most batter-efficient browser on the planet and the results which showed it besting Chrome by 35% and Firefox by an astounding 77% might be right on the nose. In fact, with how bloated both of those other browsers have become in recent years that wouldn’t be a shock in the least. The shiny new Windows 10 Creators Update brings with it additional improvements to Microsoft Edge as well, which serves to make this whole thing slightly more believable.
Still, there’s a reason any meaningful testing is always handled by independent third parties, as it’s all too easy for a company to pick test criteria that just so happens to favor its own products above all else.
