It’s no surprise Google is desperate to keep Chrome within its stable, pushing back on the DOJ’s campaign to force a sale of the browser. But Chrome is proving itself to be remarkably resilient—just as it is with a new update that’s particularly bad news for Microsoft and its Windows OS.
Microsoft has campaigned hard to switch Chrome users to its Edge browser, taking flak for the nags and ads stitched into Windows itself, including ones that interrupt Chrome installations on a PC. While this has proven broadly ineffective, Microsoft has also deployed a more potent tactic, pushing users to switch to Edge for security reasons, especially within an enterprise environment. As I’ve commented, if users switch to Edge at work perhaps they’ll do the same at home.
But while Edge is steadily growing its market share, up more than 2% year-on-year to 13% of the desktop market, the already dominant Chrome was actually growing more quickly as 2024 ended. As picked up by Neowin from Statcounter’s latest numbers, “Chrome opens 2025 with a strong and unreachable 66.88% market share, increasing its market share by 0.5 points in one month and 1.65 points year-over-year.” As such, it seems the Microsoft Windows campaign is just not working.
The latest Windows ads pushing users to the Edge cropped up in development just before the holidays, with Windows Latest reporting that “Microsoft Edge won’t stop nagging users to set itself as default on Windows 11.” But while there is clearly some conversion it’s not nearly enough to dent Chrome.
To be fair to Google’s PR team, they have proven themselves to be equally resilient, batting away all manner of recent Chrome headlines—the reversal on tracking cookies, Apple’s fabled ad mimicking The Birds, security warning after security warning, and the unimaginably painful Privacy Sandbox regulatory stalemate. They don’t need to overreact—Chrome’s user base has proven that it cares much more about the browser’s features and performance than its record on privacy and security bugs.
But 2025 could be different—we don’t yet know where the U.S. antitrust campaign will end, and while Apple has jumped to its frenemies defense on Chrome, there’s a lot of ground still to cover. That said, Microsoft has its own concerns here. As Neowin explains, “browser makers and advocacy groups recently sent a letter to the European Commission asking it to subject Edge to DMA regulations and mark Microsoft as a gatekeeper that hurts other businesses with predatory practices.”
Happy new year? Maybe not for long.
