Genuine question: In what way does Microsoft benefit from people using Edge? It's a web browser. It's a rather neutral piece of technology. How can they make money out of it?
Put shortcuts to your other products. An Xbox bookmark/button is an ad for the Xbox.. increasing Xbox sales, but also reducing the money they need to spend to promote the Xbox
If users decide they want a completely Microsoft platform- they login to windows with their msft online password, use ms office, etc they’ll be more likely to pick a windows phone or other Microsoft products that integrate with the products they already use (saving them setup time, transferring settings, etc).
If they have more information about you, they can make ads in bing more relevant and perform better.. increasing the price of the ads, and the ctr
There are a few ideas off the top of my head.
Every installation of Chrome on Windows is an opportunity for their most dangerous competitor to siphon off future opportunities. Anything which reduces that number is a fundamental win.
They also get to direct some percentage of users towards their properties (e.g. Bing) which do make revenue.
Finally there's the opportunity cost of not being in the game: having users in their camp gives them moves which they would otherwise not have. (Similarly Bing—some might call it a relative failure, but it's a roaring success compared to never trying in the first place. It was a good decision.)
1) Information gathering. This one I think needs no explanation
2) Controlling a platform is incredible powerful in influencing your users. Lets say you control an OS. Then you can nag on your users to also use your browser! If you control the browser, you can nag your users to use you mail system. Perhaps someday they will nag on the users to use their marketplace, their movie distribution system, their whatever.
They're nowhere near striking distance of making that happen; but you can bet your life that if they were, that they'd make a run at it.
All the other comments here are also true, but this is the main reason. They directly benefit every time you open Edge. I wouldn't be surprised if some ad sales VP made this decision after seeing the numbers broken down by "edge new tab impressions" vs "everything else."
Also, a browser can track your browsing behavior, data that can be sold.
But it is a bit of a bait and switch, making a weird transition toward the very end into an advert for brilliant.org.
That fact doesn't negate the well-done informational portion, and brilliant.org sounds like a cool offering, but what a yucky tactic for such a high-ground video.
Well for one thing, keeping people away from Google's browser keeps people away from their office suite, one of the biggest moneymakers outside the X-box division for Microsoft.