Oh yeah, Edge has a coupon and reward service. They can save you money by scraping your web browsing habits and potential products then push you towards chosen vendors and their own services. Just like every other big tech company!
I don't understand how people can use browsers developed from two of the biggest ad companies. On the other side, Firefox has tracking enabled by default (technical, marketing and studies) that need to be manually disabled.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, especially in a place like Lemmy, but I use Edge for my browser and Authenticator for password management. Easy, don't have to think about it, and support for chrome extensions with less memory overhead, ime.
I felt like people dislike Edge due to brand awareness + bad experinece in the past (Microsoft, Explorer, Edge, all have a negative and comical association for many people who grew up with Windows).
If given a chance, I bet even Edge would be a decent enough browser on production level. But still, I find it funny and desperate to leave such messages to try to persuade users not to churn away to other browsers.
I made the switch to Edge from Chrome because something borked in my Chrome with it trying to synchronize my theme colors and either not doing it correctly, or not contrasting the text correctly.
They undoubtedly fixed the bug by now, but after switching to Edge and messing around with the settings, I can say I like it just the same as Chrome. Maybe even a bit better in certain areas (i.e. not eating all of my RAM)
What does Microsoft even benefit when people use its Chromium skin called Edge. It's not like they want to help people and it's not like people pay to use Edge.
They get to spy on those people's web data instead of Google; they lock people in a program they control what runs in it and where it runs; they get a saying on web standards...
They keep it all Microsoft? I guess their selling point is to provide a full suite of products to serve an office or home. A browser is integral to that recipe, and it needs to be branded in their colors.