
Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge - baud147258
https://www.neowin.net/news/these-are-the-google-features-that-microsoft-turned-off-in-chromium-edge
======
skrebbel
I'm still sad they didn't partner with Firefox instead. It would suit the
strategy of The New Microsoft very well to ensure competition in the browser
market, and making an Firefox-based Edge plus a Firefox-based Electron clone
would've been an amazing way to do that. They've shown competence in
embracing, extending, and _contributing back_ to OSS (eg they were
instrumental in Nodejs getting to its amazing cross platform support).

Plus their browser would be faster.

~~~
lowercased
I had a chat with an MS guy who had some insight on this issue. There was some
internal discussion about it, but there were 2 issues re: firefox which led
them against it (and they're somewhat related).

Firstly, I'm paraphrasing here, but FF isn't as much a business as it is a
religion (re: privacy). You can read a lot in to that, but I understood the
gist of what they were getting at.

Secondly, somewhat relatedly, but consider FF's primary funding/revenue: it's
Google. MS building on FF could mean Google would reduce their search deal,
meaning MS might end up being forced in to increasing their funding for FF to
help keep it an entity capable of operating at its current size. Or, FF simply
becomes smaller, and MS has tied themselves with a shrinking partner.

However you look at it, MS has not had a good run in promoting their own
browser tech against competitors, and ends up losing share, so why fight that?

~~~
realusername
> Secondly, somewhat relatedly, but consider FF's primary funding/revenue:
> it's Google

I don't get that one because Chromium IS Google, it's not even a primary
funding, there's just no separation between the two. They just handed the web
business directly to their competitors, no matter how they try to spin it. At
least with Firefox, MS could still have influenced the web, with Chromium,
there's just no way, they are insuring that MS will have no influence
whatsoever and Google is even closer to a monopoly.

~~~
saurik
The difference is that Google can't decrease the funding to Chromium to harm
Microsoft "because Chromium IS Google".

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nounaut
I particularly enjoy that they've kept the ability to mute single tabs by
clicking on the speaker icon on the tab which google recently removed from
Chrome and not having to go into the flags settings and switch the "mute site"
right-click option to "mute tab".

Feels like a snappier Chrome with better video playback.

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mikejb
I think this is a good step, but the cynic in me has to ask: How many services
were removed, and how many replaced? It's good that things like Single Sign-on
or Google Now aren't there (by default), but is it fair to assume they've just
been replaced by Microsofts versions (i.e. whatever Live is called now and
Cortana)?

~~~
WorldMaker
Cortana hasn't made it in yet in any form. Bing is the default search engine,
though.

The Single Sign-on was replaced with Microsoft Account (for home users) /
Azure Active Directory Account (for enterprise users) single sign-on support.

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harel
I wonder if we'll get Edge for Linux then... Considering the shift MS products
have gone (VS Code is great!) I would be happy to give it a try.

~~~
larkeith
Out of curiosity, why use Edge over Firefox?

~~~
daliusd
While I use Firefox daily on Ubuntu there are still some pain points that
affect me directly

* Offscreen canvas. E.g. samples from here do not work for me [https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/08/offscreen-...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2018/08/offscreen-canvas)

* There are two problems with development:
    
    
      1. Firefox does not catch some exceptions. This problem is fixed in 67 version so I can wait (but I still need to wait).
    
      2. Firefox crashes for me randomly sometimes when I restart React dev server.

~~~
alien1993
Offscreen canvas is disabled by default on Firefox because it's still
experimental, you can enable it though. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/OffscreenCa...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/OffscreenCanvas#Browser_compatibility)

~~~
daliusd
I know that. Still two problems:

* Samples in the link I have given are still not working even if you enable gfx.offscreencanvas.enabled. Therefore I conclude that this is not working at all.

* As well this is good option for development but Firefox 44 was released in 2016. I think it is safe to assume that Firefox will never release this or at least will not release in acceptable time frame. Most probably we will see messages like this soon "We see you use Firefox. This feature is supported on Chrome, Chromium or Edge browsers. We recommend using one of them if you need this.".

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supernes
I feel bad for Opera, seems they stand to lose the most in this battle of the
Chromium forks. They have a really good product that I use as my main driver
after being fed up with Safari on macOS, but Microsoft is well poised to
deliver a compelling experience across platforms (fingers crossed for Linux
support at some point.)

~~~
giancarlostoro
They were bought up by some Chinese firm though and thus a lot of people lost
trust in them. Not sure if anybody has done extensive research into what type
of telemetry they gather. I would recommend FireFox but I never gave up hope
for FireFox so you could consider me a fanboy. However FireFox Quantum has
changed a lot of people over to it.

~~~
supernes
Firefox still has some UX deficiencies on macOS, I do use it on Windows
though.

What really turned me off is how long it took them to implement video autoplay
blocking. I sent them about four dozen requests, reports and outright pleas,
and they didn't even add it to the roadmap until after I had given up hope.
They were about two to three years late on that one.

Chromium's dev tools are still ahead by a mile as well, the Performance
inspector has saved me days worth of debugging time.

~~~
saber1
I wondering if you aware the profiler tool that FF has
[https://profiler.firefox.com/](https://profiler.firefox.com/)

~~~
supernes
I somehow managed to miss that, thanks. It looks exactly like what I needed.

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dooglius
How many of these are enabled on Chromium (as opposed to Chrome) to begin
with?

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cris-ward
Hope they haven't got rid of the killer feature - the offline dinosaur game.

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jdlyga
The dev build is pretty good. I could see myself using the new Edge if it had
Windows-specific features or support for things that typically only work on
Edge/IE.

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Guillaume86
Well time to lobby for MRU tab switching in their community forums, don't want
another chromium situation with the next big browser.

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johnchristopher
Will they do a Chromium edge for mac ?

Wait, did MS drop the internet explorer branding ?

~~~
ygra
IE11 is the last version of IE and came out in 2013. Internet Explorer as a
product and brand has been dead for quite a while.

~~~
svenfaw
Dead is not quite correct. IE has been put on a permanent feature freeze, but
MS has committed to keep releasing security updates for IE11 during Windows
10's entire lifetime. It is also the __only __browser shipping with the
current Server editions. So I would argue that immortal would be a more
accurate term.

~~~
bshacklett
Undead, perhaps?

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PatrolX
There's no dark mode in dev or canary.

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Chico11Kidlet
Wow what are even some of those services?! "IOS Promotion Service"?! Realised
where part of chrome's "memory hog" stereotype may come from...

~~~
pgeorgi
Some of those services seem to be target specific: Everything starting with
"Chrome OS" aren't part of any chrome build outside Chrome OS.

IOS Promotion Service might be
[https://codereview.chromium.org/2643723004/](https://codereview.chromium.org/2643723004/),
so that's running on iOS and nowhere else. As for its value, that's for
somebody else to decide (or everybody for themselves).

(Disclosure: working on Chrome OS firmware, which shares approximately no code
at all with the components that end up in Chrome userland or any of its
derivatives)

~~~
giancarlostoro
So when they say they removed these they mean source code wise not just some
compiler flag? Thus making it a proper fork that will deviate over time, not
some simple Chromium renamed project. So we may or may not see them pull in
Chromium changesets depending on needs.

My biggest hope is that no matter how much Microsoft changes (Chakra instead
of V8 would be very interesting to see) that it will remain fully and properly
open source moving forward. I wanted to see the original Edge go this route
but at least now they can.

Funny how these are now all browsers derived from work by Apple.

~~~
vbezhenar
Webkit based on KHTML, component of KDE.

~~~
giancarlostoro
This is true as well, although my understanding is that they reworked all of
that original code if I'm not mistaken, but nonetheless, a huge amount of
credit belongs to both KDE and Apple regardless, which I find fascinating
because: Google, Microsoft, and even Amazon (with their Chrome fork for their
Fire tablets) benefited from it.

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wayneftw
There is a lot of Mozilla brigading on these articles, so I think it's
important to point out that they're in a very small minority. The vast
majority of developers have already voted with their feet on this and the
results are in: People don't want Firefox. We want Chrome.

Furthermore, practically nobody is wringing their hands over having a possible
"mono-culture" and neither should they be. That's just another Mozilla party
line. Every consulting firm I've worked for in the past decade has pretty much
ignored Firefox and lived happily with that decision.

~~~
wayneftw
Interesting observation Wayne. The lack of a rebuttal to the facts presented
here, in addition to this comment holding the prestigious bottom slot seems to
underline your assertion in a spooky way.

I wonder how many people you need to over-represent a minority mind-share on
other topics here...

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stefan_
Disabled "Ad blocking", turned on PlayReady DRM. Bring on the new webbrowsing
experience.

~~~
aboutruby
Chrome has a built-in ad blocker that blocks the ads Google finds too
disruptive for the users: [https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chromes-built-
in-ad-blo...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-chromes-built-in-ad-
blocker-to-roll-out-worldwide-on-july-9/)

~~~
fxfan
I'm betting none of those would be an 'Ad by google' in which case this is
very unethical (I'm pro adblocking but google is targeting competitors)

