Microsoft Edge Racked Up 9K Years Of Casual Gaming In 2023, Saved Shoppers $400 Each
Another year is in the books and to celebrate an "unforgettable 2023," Microsoft is sharing some interesting stats related to its Edge browser. There are several that stand out, including Microsoft's claim that Edge users in the United States saved an average of $400 on online shopping, while worldwide savings added up to more than $4 billion.
We had to do some digging to find out exactly how Microsoft came to those figures. What we found is that the $400 figure is based on savings "calculated using value of coupons from presented to users signed into their Microsoft account. You can find these by clicking on the Shopping icon in the right-hand toolbar in Edge.
It's also worth noting that brought AI-powered shopping into the fold by introducing Copilot. You could, for example, ask Copilot to find the best deal on an Xbox Series X game console and it will tell you that it's on sale for $349.99 at Walmart.
That other stat that stood out to us is the claim that Edge users logged nearly 9,000 years (yes, YEARS) of casual free games in 2023. That works out to around 4.7 billion minutes since Microsoft added a Games tab to Edge. You won't find any blockbusters in the Games tab, though there are plenty of fun time wasters across a broad range of categories. Certainly more than we had access to in the old days, when free games in Windows mostly consisted of Minesweeper, Solitaire, and SkiFree.
According to Microsoft, Edge users logged more than 1.9 billion Copilot chats, which is the equivalent to the number of websites that existed on the internet last year. Edge users also created over 1.8 billion AI-generated images.
"We believe that 2023 will be remembered as the moment we began to harness the power of AI in our daily lives, unlocking new ways to achieve more than we thought possible. And that this era will be as important as PC was in the 80s, web in the 90s, mobile in the 2000s, and cloud in the 2010s," Microsoft says.
Here are a few more stats...
- Edge stopped over 127 million phishing attacks
- More people played the Edge surf game, daily, than the entire population of Huntington Beach, California (the original "Surf City")
- Gamers earned 148 million rewards points on Edge, which is enough to pay for 1,000 years of Xbox Game Pass Ulltimate
Microsoft's numbers are impressive in a vacuum, though it would be interesting to see how they compare to Chrome and Safari, the two most popular browser on the planet in terms of market share. Looking at StatCounter's data, Chrome is still the dominant browser with a 62.85% share, followed by Safari at 20.04%. Meanwhile, Edge sits in third place at 5.5%, followed by Firefox at 3.23%, Opera at 3.17%, and Samsung Internet at 2.44%.
If narrowing the focus to the desktop, the rankings stay mostly the same: Chrome sits at 61.94%, Safari at 13.44%, Edge at 11.19%, Firefox at 6.66%, Opera at 4.59%, and 360 Safe at 0.58%.
