Edge is one of those ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ browsers. Microsoft essentially coded their own version of the most widely used features of Chrome and Firefox and added them into their browser. You’re correct about Chrome - it’s a spyware monster and no matter how you tweak it, it’s a resource hog. I’ve tried dozens, if not hundreds of times over the years to tame it for end users, but about the only quick-n-dirty fix any of us could conjure up was to increase the page file size and tell the user not to have 10 apps open at once. (Try telling that to an engineer. God bless and good luck.) Firefox was a fun browser until it started to eat itself, then the old legacy plug-ins that were so much fun started to mutate and go rogue when they upgraded to stay abreast of the newer Firefox builds. They need to create a Geezernet for us 50+ types who were in IT back in the Wild West days when there were still dial-up modems and BBS sysops. E-mail was straight ASCII and not HTML.
They need to bring Netscape back >.<
I hear you, but you can use Firefox ESR 52, and run Quantum portable (not the standard install) both of which are linked to in one of my posts.