Edge - Time to stop carrying it forward

[+Warwagon MVC]

With the new Microsoft Edge chromium browser being released for testing (It's actually really good, I'm using it right now), I wonder if they should stop carrying things forward. Let's take the Blue E Edge icon. In my opinion, I think they wanted people to see a blue E and go for it. There was a reason why the name they chose started with an E.

 

A lot of my customers tell me they are using "Internet Explorer" when in fact they are using Edge simply because they click a blue E. So, for old people and computer illiterate users, that was a success.

 

On the other side you have people who look at a blue E and think (if even subconsciously) "internet explorer" and not in a good way.

 

Long story short they shouldn't have picked a name that started with E and they should have given it a different icon.

 

Now we have a failed Edge browser that not a lot of people used, and so they are starting over with a chromium based browser. So what do they call it (at least so far)? Edge with a blue E. Oh sweet Jesus.

 

 

[Dick Montage]

When Edge was proposed, everyone then suggested they would rebrand also.

[+Warwagon MVC]

2 minutes ago, Human.Online said:

When Edge was proposed, everyone then suggested they would rebrand also.

Kind of like Intel and Atom. To this day when I think of an Atom CPU I think "total piece of ####", even though they are much better than they use to be. When I hear the word Atom I just get taken back to a day working on netbooks.

[Dick Montage]

3 minutes ago, warwagon said:

Kind of like Intel and Atom. To this day when I think of an Atom CPU I think "total piece of ####", even though they are much better than they use to be. When I hear the word Atom I just get taken back to a day working on netbooks.

And therein lies the issue.  You and I even care, most users?  Do they?  I bet they just use what they use, and the brand familiarity is what MS are banking on.

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

To be fair, I keep trying to impress into my dad to "click the red circle icon, not the blue e icon, to open the internet", since she keeps still using Internet Explorer. Even though I put Firefox in the taskbar. Keeping with "the blue e" is just the way many casual users keep up with things. They have no idea if they're using Firefox or IE, much less what the hell Edge is, even after being told repeatedly.

 

It would be nice for them to at least stick a warning on IE's UI somewhere that it is not secure and give a button to open Edge.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

3 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

They have no idea if they're using Firefox or IE, much less what the hell Edge is, even after being told repeatedly.

This is why I always ask someone to "go to the Internet" rather than "open <program X>." It does make me a bit sad though when I see them go to either IE or Edge when I can see Google Chrome or Firefox sitting right next to them.

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

Yea, or something like just "open your email"... they know the steps to do that without knowing what they're actually doing. Sometimes you just need to see to know what the hell they are doing. Half the time they don't know if they are using Windows or Mac. Tech support is fun!

[+mram Subscriber²]

Rebranding is difficult.  It also comes with its own baggage.  Look at this site in general, there's a lot of people who say "MS can't do anything right" and if the new brand isn't perfect, it starts potentially worse than carrying the baggage.  It's subjectively better to just try to turn the Titanic.

 

Philosophically though, totally agree.  I just think MS is between the rock / hard place.

[Tuskd]

What if I told you for a particular type of users, it doesn't make a difference? In the developing world, Mobile phones are the primary (and first) computers, Android is king and Chrome is synonymous with Internet. PCs and laptops are more appliance/secondary devices. You cannot help but notice the colourful wheel because Google is the only search engine there exists (Sorry Bing). I have seen people minimize all the windows open and double click on the Google Chrome desktop shortcut even though Edge is pinned to the taskbar.

Even if people switch to Edge/whatever they rebrand it as, how long because Google knowingly/unknowingly switches them to Chrome?

IMHO, there's got to be a different way. Rebranding now is only a sign of defeat. Has any product actually succeeded with just a rebrand?

[Nick H. Supervisor]

6 minutes ago, Tuskd said:

Has any product actually succeeded with just a rebrand?

Starburst were once called Opal Fruits...

(I get your point though, it just came to my mind when I read it  )

[Brandon H Supervisor]

47 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

To be fair, I keep trying to impress into my dad to "click the red circle icon, not the blue e icon, to open the internet", since she keeps still using Internet Explorer. Even though I put Firefox in the taskbar. Keeping with "the blue e" is just the way many casual users keep up with things. They have no idea if they're using Firefox or IE, much less what the hell Edge is, even after being told repeatedly.

 

It would be nice for them to at least stick a warning on IE's UI somewhere that it is not secure and give a button to open Edge.

I've gotten around that with people by just changing the icon to the E lol

[+Warwagon MVC]

35 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

Yea, or something like just "open your email"... they know the steps to do that without knowing what they're actually doing. Sometimes you just need to see to know what the hell they are doing. Half the time they don't know if they are using Windows or Mac. Tech support is fun!

That's another thing Microsoft did horrible at. Lets create a web service people can log into their email with and let's call it Outlook. 

 

"I use outlook for my email" the website or office application?

[Brandon H Supervisor]

6 minutes ago, warwagon said:

That's another thing Microsoft did horrible at. Lets create a web service people can log into their email with and let's call it Outlook. 

 

"I use outlook for my email" the website or office application?

to be fair on that one that confusion started back in the day with Outlook Express

 

at least that's just called 'Mail' now in windows 10

 

 

I'd say their multitude of email domain names over the years has been more confusing. we've had @msn/@hotmail/@live/@outlook and possibly a few others I'm not aware of all for the same email service 

[+Zagadka Subscriber²]

Good thing almost everyone and their mother (literally) uses Gmail.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

6 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

I'd say their multitude of email domain names over the years has been more confusing. we've had @msn/@hotmail/@live/@outlook and possibly a few others I'm not aware of all for the same email service 

I still go to www.hotmail.com if I need to access my email from somewhere. And I've just realised that now we have moved over to Office 365 I can start doing it for my work email as well. 

 

[Brandon H Supervisor]

8 minutes ago, Zagadka said:

Good thing almost everyone and their mother (literally) uses Gmail.

my gmail is so spam ridden I never touch the email side of it anymore; I use it just for my google services.

 

my primary email is an @outlook domain

[+Warwagon MVC]

12 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

my gmail is so spam ridden I never touch the email side of it anymore; I use it just for my google services.

 

my primary email is an @outlook domain

 I tend to use my other gmail for crap, plus I go through and have unsubscribe parties on emails I know I've subscribed to. That's kind of fun. So my main 2 Gmail addresses are relatively spam free. wake up every morning and there is no spam in my inbox. Out of all my gmail addresses, I don't really get any spam in my inbox.

[Brandon H Supervisor]

2 minutes ago, warwagon said:

 I tend to use my other gmail for crap, plus I go through and have unsubscribe parties on emails I know I've subscribed to. That's kind of fun. So my main 2 Gmail addresses are relatively spam free. wake up every morning and there is no spam in my inbox. Out of all my gmail addresses, I don't really get any spam in my inbox.

yeah the thing with my gmail address is I started it back when gmail first went public beta around 2003 or 2004. I was a child then and didn't know good practices with email so it gets thousands of spam emails pretty much daily; would be almost impossible to clean out haha

 

I quite like the feature set of @outlook though especially with Exchange ActiveSync in the Windows 10 mail app and Office Outlook so I don't mind only using my gmail for google services.

 

but we're getting a bit off-topic here now so I'll end my rant 

[+Warwagon MVC]

8 minutes ago, Brandon H said:

but we're getting a bit off-topic here now so I'll end my rant 

 

Na it's ok. I love off topic. Comment's are comments and comments are bumps!

[George P Global Moderator]

I get what you're saying but with this change to chromium and other stuff, I think keeping it called Edge is fine.  Heck since you already have tech users who know the difference swtiching to it from other browsers, then the word will spread.  It's how FF grew and how Chrome grew really.

 

At the end of the day if they keep going down the right path with new Edge then I only see it's usage growing, at which point the name or the icon style and any need to change them will have little meaning.  I'm also on new Edge canary, waiting to see more features added each time I restart to update it.