Last Updated on July 24, 2020 by Mathew Diekhake

With Google Chrome continuing to gain record browser market share at an alarming rate, Microsoft knew it had to do something to try to stand in Google’s way. At this pace, nearly everyone will be using the Google Chrome web browser in about another five years, and as of today, nearly three-quarters of the Internets views are coming from Chrome.

The Internet Explorer web browser that has always been available in Windows operating systems was ditched at the end of Windows 8, and Microsoft decided to try to rebrand their browser with a new name, design, and features. That new web browser is Microsoft Edge.

The Microsoft Edge web browser comes with all versions of the Windows 10 operating system by default, so there isn’t anything you need to do to install it. After you log in to your Microsoft account or your local user account in Windows, you will see a blue “e” logo in the taskbar (the bar at the bottom of the screen.) That logo is what you need to click to open up the Edge browser and start surfing the web.

Related: How to Make Mozilla Firefox Look Like Microsoft Edge with Firefox Edge

Due to Google’s dominance over the internet, owning both the Google search engine and YouTube websites, it won’t be long before you get a message on your screen asking if you want to install Chrome. If you want Microsoft to continue to do well, you should install it but continue using Edge. If you don’t install it, then the bright red banners and annoying pop-ups telling you to install it every time you visit Google or YouTube will be forever in your way. And when these statistics come out about market share, it isn’t related to installations but rather the number of people browsing the web from a particular browser — the kind of statistics certain sites like Google Analytics or StatCounter can produce.

As great as Windows 10 is, it still isn’t the operating system of choice among Windows users. The owner of that award still belongs to Windows 7. However, you can expect many of those Windows 7 owners to be willing to update to Windows 10 if a) they knew how and b) they had a device that could do it for free. The dominance of Windows 10 is coming, but it isn’t there yet.

Related: How to Disable Flash Player in Microsoft Edge and Uninstall It in Windows 10

If you were hoping to download Edge for Windows 7 or Windows 8/8.1, there is some bad news: it isn’t possible to install Edge on any operating system that dates back before Windows 10. It’s not necessarily about Microsoft not wanting to offer Edge on earlier versions of Windows either. There are two things working against it from being able to do that. The first is that it is built in to Windows 10, so there are likely certain things in Windows 10 that it needs. The second is that it is part of the new Universal App platform introduced in Windows 10.

You might also be interested in:

You can subscribe to our RSS, follow us on Twitter or like our Facebook page to keep on consuming more tech.