Microsoft Edge Browser in 2025: Ongoing Issues, Vulnerabilities, and User Frustrations

In 2025, Microsoft Edge remains a paradox: a browser packed with features and security promises, yet dogged by persistent technical and compliance issues. For users and IT teams, Edge's evolution is a story of innovation colliding with reliability gaps.

Performance and Stability Issues

Edge 136, the latest release, is plagued by critical PDF rendering failures—especially with Japanese fonts—broken New Tab Page feeds, and sidebar glitches. Enterprises are forced to disable features via policy just to maintain workflow stability. High RAM and CPU usage, as reported in user troubleshooting guides, degrade performance, requiring manual fixes like disabling extensions or resetting settings. Users on community forums describe persistent crashes, UI overlap in non-default themes, and background processes that refuse to close, compounding frustration.

Security Vulnerabilities and Exploits

Security remains a moving target. In February 2025, multiple critical vulnerabilities (e.g., CVE-2025-21408) enabled remote code execution and data theft, requiring urgent updates. Despite Microsoft's Secure Future Initiative, critical CVEs rose by 125% in 2024, exposing users and enterprises to ransomware and breaches.

Privacy and Data Collection Concerns

Edge's privacy posture is under fire. The Edge3P Telemetry system—enabled by default—collects third-party search data, raising GDPR compliance questions. Meanwhile, Edge's adoption of Google's Privacy Sandbox API has triggered complaints for enabling first-party tracking under the guise of privacy features, eroding user trust.

Developer and Compatibility Challenges

For developers, Edge's DevTools remain unreliable, with broken network request logging and unresponsive shortcuts disrupting debugging. The new Adobe Acrobat-powered PDF viewer, while promising, breaks Japanese font display, forcing IT teams to implement workarounds.

Enterprise and Market Adoption Struggles

Despite aggressive promotion, Edge's market share remains stagnant at 5%, far behind Chrome and Safari. Forced Windows 11 integrations and compatibility gaps have failed to win over users, as recent market data shows.

UI/UX and Feature Limitations

Edge users continue to report UI glitches, profile management errors, and incomplete theme rendering. Even new features like inline data protection lack the granular controls enterprises need, complicating deployments.

Synthesis: The Road Ahead

Edge's ongoing challenges—chronic performance overhead, rising security gaps, privacy missteps, and developer tool instability—underscore the difficulty of balancing innovation with reliability. For Microsoft to regain user confidence, the focus must shift to performance optimization, transparent privacy controls, and robust developer support.