The original Edge could have and
would have been nice if they didn't rush it out the door in a clearly unfinished state. But the Microsoft execs wanted so badly to include it with W10, they made [another] lousy executive decision to push it out unfinished then fix it later. That was simply
stupid. The initial version was extremely buggy, supported literally no add-ons or extensions, failed to render many sites properly - it was a mess. It's only virtue was that it was pretty quick.
All that fiasco did was give all the Microsoft haters and bashers another (but this time,
genuine) reason to bash Microsoft. And it was so half-baked and unpolished, it even gave the Microsoft supporters and fanboys reason to bash Microsoft.
I heard through two reliable and independent sources at Microsoft that the Edge development team was opposed to releasing it with W10 because they knew (everybody at Microsoft knew!
) it was not ready to go - it was not even ready for Beta. They wanted to keep it in development just a couple more months until they could release a product they could be proud of.
But once again, the MS marketing weenies, backed by the MS execs overruled the developers and pushed it out anyway. But who got the blame? The developers, of course.
It got so much criticism that Microsoft was forced to abandon it completely and go with a Chromium based browser - one that would support the plethora of Chrome extensions and add-ons.
In the end, consumers have an excellent browser in the "new" Edge. But at what cost? Microsoft is first and foremost a software development company and because of the reckless haste by the company execs, the
appearances are that they can't even do that!