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0 pointsjpc01y ago0 comments

I do a lot of IT support. Edge is the default on every single prebuilt / laptop I have setup for people.

This is ancedotal sure but it's several hundred datapoints from the cheapest student focused budget laptops(running windows not chrome os) to business grade laptops from the big 3 (HP/Dell/Lenovo). Apple ships Safari by default and every linux distro I have used ships firefox or a spinoff of firefox by default.

So in my experience Chrome is actively installed by the local it help (me, things are just plain broken for some use cases on non-chrome). I personally do not use Chrome, that doesn't mean I won't make it the default for every PC I touch for an enduser purely because I get less calls for support when users are using chrome.

It's no secret that I feel like other search engines are worse that Google even though Google's results are nearly unusable.

Google built a mote by having a better product, nobody else tried to compete and now it's become nearly impossible to compete. I actively avoid Chromium based browsers personally but even then I need to have one installed because even in Firefox and Safari derived browsers things are broken or website just plain don't work (https//f1.tv actively does not work on firefox as an example, unless they have since backtracked)

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5 comments · 3 top-level

nmstoker1y ago· 1 in thread

>> I feel like other search engines are worse that Google even though Google's results are nearly unusable.

Give Kagi a go - the usability thing is superb, as you can down rank common awful sites so they never appear in the results and they aren't stuffing ads into the results either

I find the results excellent 99% of the time and for those odd cases I'm not convinced it found the best results I pop back to Google. I tend to find that I do that most with subtle image searches (which are kind of rare but you are usually after something very specific where Kagi occasionally struggles with on the image side)

robwwilliams1y ago

For me almost all conventional search is dead now. Sure, perhaps useful for “what going on tomorrow where I live” but for everything else I now rely on LLMs.

Tijdreiziger1y ago· 1 in thread

Edge moved from their own engine to Chromium’s Blink engine, so from an IT support perspective, it should work equally well.

jpc0OP1y ago

Mostly correct yes and for certian users I actually do encourage them to try out edge.

Many users are so used to Chrome though it is jarring to switch to edge. Open them in two workspaces and flip between them, although the UI are both browsers, edge feel like the Temu version if a browser, at least to me.

But then I use Zen/Vivaldi so I personally find most other browsers these says a little weird.

epoxy_sauce1y ago

I wasn't sure where to say it but your comment seems appropriate. It must impact install numbers when companies(ones I've been at) only want you to use chrome. Wasn't really an option for our regular staff. I was able to get away with using ff.

Agree as well - I still end up mostly using Google search, tho half the time when I don't get any decent results I realize it wasn't that important anyways. Interesting side effect of poor search results.

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