Microsoft gives its Edge browser a new icon, not just a new brain
The browser, overhauled with a new engine, also is getting a new icon.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Microsoft Edge is dumping its old icon for a new cresting-wave look that might get you thinking about surfing the web while still reminding you of the old lowercase "e" logo dating back to Internet Explorer.
Microsoft's overhauled Edge web browser is getting a new icon to go along with its new engine. A series of Microsoft Edge team teases ahead of Microsoft's Ignite conference next week revealed the new icon for those who could figure out the puzzles (or read the comments on Reddit). The new icon is a hybrid of the old lowercase "e" icon that dates back to Microsoft's old Internet Explorer years and a crashing wave that might have something to do with surfing the web.
Microsoft is in the middle of rebuilding its Edge browser as a variation of Google's open-source Chromium project. The Chromium-based Edge is beta testing now.
Two decades ago, Microsoft's Internet Explorer vanquished Netscape's Navigator to win the first browser wars, but Microsoft let the browser languish after its victory. Mozilla's Firefox, Opera Software's Opera and Apple's Safari chipped away at IE's dominance and sowed the seeds for a revitalized, independent web. Chrome has vaulted past them all since its arrival in 2008, and Microsoft has been trying but failing to reclaim its influence since then.
The company stripped down its old IE into the new Microsoft Edge but even the modernized approach didn't help. So now it's throwing out the browser engine on which its old Edge was based and swapping in Chromium. That's what's used by several other browsers, too, including Samsung Internet, Vivaldi Technologies' Vivaldi and Brave Software's Brave. Microsoft's new Chromium-based Edge is available far beyond Windows, too, including on Android and MacOS.
