Opera with an ad blocker vs Edge without it doesn't seem like an ubiased test.
* Edge (no adblocker) * Opera (default adblocker) * Opera (adblocker disabled) * Chrome (no adblocker) * Chrome (uBlock Origin)
Otherwise you're just lying through omission to make your product seem better.
Like it would be fine if they say "in next version we will retake the top" or whatever but don't try to dispute their results by providing something they had no way of measuring.
Essentially they did some power saving improvements and want to create a bit of noise about it to increase their popularity.
It's kind of same as how Apple, Google etc announce new features/products before you even can use them.
I just loaded up MSN.com and scrolled down the page. I count 3 ads total: one gigantic banner at the very top of the page before all of the content, and two smaller panners that pop into place as you scroll. These are served by AdChoices. When I turn my ad blocker back on, these all disappear, and the site loads much faster.
I think if Microsoft were to release a default ad-blocker, they would need to re-code their own website to use native advertising rather than a third-party network. I believe this to be an excellent practice, but I just don't see Microsoft going this route. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised though.
It even works without a network connection.
I'd think the user agent string is more likely to cause a huge discrepancy, as many frameworks will be utilizing polyfills and employing different technologies depending on what each browser supports. (Or, in the case of the user agent string, what the framework thinks the browser supports, regardless of how correct its assumptions are.)
If I understand both tests correctly, Opera ran with adblock and battery saver enabled (those are apparently not default settings), versus Edge without adblock, on sites which supposedly are ad-heavy - this will bias the results towards browser with adblock enabled.
The point to me is that the situation is more nuanced than Microsoft apparently chose to present it.
But there's no reason anyone should be running a browser without an ad-blocker in the first place. Edge should have a lightweight ad-blocker built-in by default.
EDIT: Downvotes? Really this is factually accurate:
http://lifehacker.com/windows-10-is-showing-ads-on-your-lock...
But you're right, Microsoft will have to decide which one is more important: driving ad eyeballs to Microsoft properties at the expense of Google properties -- or -- decreasing the share of users using Chrome and by proxy, the attractiveness of Google's integrated cloud email/drive/docs offerings.