Weird how similar to Chrome it is

Dan203  "I know it's using Chromium under the hood but it's weird how similar to Chrome it really is. I kind of expected them to have a little more distinctive UI. But it's darn near a clone. Not sure if that's good or bad."

The UI is very similar, good and bad alike.  Like you, I'm not sure if that's good or bad.  I have very mixed reactions on that score.

We've had considerable (and continuing) discussion about some of the most annoying UI downsides inherited from Chromium -- washed out color values, wimpy font rendering, "Whack-a-Mole" flyout favorites menus and so on -- but the requested UI changes (which amounted to "follow the LegacyEdge UI" for the most part) were largely ignored. I've come to the conclusion that Edge is so Chrome-like because Microsoft wants it that way.

I don't know what was behind Microsoft's decision to Chrome-clone the UI rather than Edge-clone the UI, but it might have been an attempt to make Edge "familiar" to Chrome users, in hopes bringing over Chrome users (as in "the browser you already know how to use, only better ...", somewhat akin to Zorin OS's "https://zorinos.com/" campaign to bring Windows 7 users over Linux). Or it may have been a case where the effort involved to change the Chrome UI to something more Edge-like was more effort than it was worth for technical reasons. I don't know, but we have what we have.

Microsoft has, however, done a lot of work under the hood to make Edge a better browser than Chrome, and that work has had results. Edge is currently "unGoogled", and that is a real plus. Edge is significantly better in terms of "resource hogging" than Chrome at this point, but the advantage is temporary because https://www.slashgear.com/google-chrome-battery-usage-could-go-down-thanks-to-microsoft-edge-20607172/.  Edge has brought over a number of features/functions from LegacyEdge that are not available in Chrome. That list is longer than you might expect from casual use of the Edge browser, and there is more to come.

All in all, I think that the new Edge browser is a solid effort. I'm not sure how it will work out for Microsoft -- whether the effort to gain market share will be successful or not.  I think that it is important to keep in mind that development is still in early stages and that the effort to gain market share is likely to play out over 3-5 years.

Right now I can't use Edge as my exclusive browser because it is not yet cross-platform to Android-Linux-Windows. When Edge is ported over to Linux, I'll consider making Edge my sole browser. Meanwhile, I'll keep using Firefox as my default on all Android/Linux/Windows production devices and use Insider builds on my test machine to keep abreast of the development process.