
Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10 - rattt
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-building-chromium-powered-web-browser-windows-10
======
ToFab123
What other options do they have? Even on HN you hear "I use Egde to download
Chrome". Many of you here don't test your own work in Edge. At the same time
Microsoft is getting the heat that Windows 10 is unstable and the last major
update shows that it is. Very urgently, I imagine, Microsoft is trying to
change the perception of Windows 10 by doing everything they can to make it
more stable. Changing the browser engine is a big step in that direction. It
is a step they have to do because.. and now comes the down votes... YOU don't
test your work in Egde and because YOU tell all friends and family to use
Chrome instead of edge. I bet many of you even helps friends and family in
downloading it. So stop complaining about monoculture. Many of you helped
create it.

~~~
happymellon
How can I test Edge when Microsoft don't release it for Mac and Linux?

A browser for a single OS? Talk about monoculture.

~~~
cmsimike
[http://modern.ie](http://modern.ie) Free Windows VirtualBox images you can
use for testing!

~~~
sho
Not sure if you are being sarcastic, but if testing on your browser means
downloading a 4GB+ image every couple months and having it take up all my
memory in a clunky VM and messing around with how it gets its IP and then
trying to update itself with another multi-gigabyte windows update while I'm
tethering and did I mention you have to redo it all every couple of months?...
then I'm not testing against your browser.

~~~
millstone
Then how are you testing your browser? Are you assuming that testing Chrome on
ThisOS is sufficient testing for Chrome on EveryOtherOS?

~~~
UweSchmidt
One thing is testing if the fancy custom react component works properly in a
particular browser at all, that should be the case in a certain
browser+version across OSes and you'd want that available all the time.

The other thing is testing if some CSS is acting up in a specific
Browser/Browserversion/OS/Screensize/Phone combination; that is probably a job
for QA.

------
jccalhoun
As a firefox fax, I hope this isn't true. The dominance of chrome isn't good
for anyone. This will lead to (even more) sites not bothering to be made
compatible with Firefox. We are headed back to the "designed for IE" days.

~~~
samspenc
My understanding is that they'll be using the Chromium engine underneath, but
still their own Edge "browser" and UI on top.

IMHO, I personally think it's a good thing to consolidate on one engine to
render HTML cross-platform for these two reasons:

1\. Web developers no longer need to worry about supporting CSS and other
edge-cases across various browser engines.

2\. The Chromium engine itself is open source. There are other browsers
(Vivaldi, Opera, etc) that run on top of it.

3\. While I think it's great the engine underneath is the same, I think it's
equally great that there is a variety of UIs and browsers built on top of the
same engine - the innovation happens in the browser space, not the engine,
anymore.

~~~
kibwen
_> The Chromium engine itself is open source_

Being open source is a red herring in this instance.

Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. You fork the browser
and remove that feature. But websites expect Chrome, and they use that
feature, so your fork doesn't work with those websites.

Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. You fork the browser and
add the feature. But websites expect Chrome, so they don't use your feature so
as to not break for their Chrome users, and your fork is no better off.

The insidious part of a web monoculture is allowing Google to dictate the
standards of the web platform. Being able to fork the codebase only gives one
the power to change things that are strictly client-side.

~~~
joesb
Your examples have nothing to do with whether you use Chrominum engine,
though.

Say that Chrome implements a web feature you don't like. MS use their own
MSengine for their Edge browser that doesn't have that feature. But websites
expect Chrome, and they use that feature, so MS Edge doesn't work with those
websites.

Say that Chrome refuses to add a feature you want. MS use their own MSengine
for their Edge browser that has that feature. But websites expect Chrome, so
they don't use MS Edge feature so as to not break for their Chrome users, and
MS Edge browser is no better off.

~~~
kibwen
Not sure what this is attempting to refute. Your comment is about why
monocultures are bad for competition, which I happen to agree with. My comment
is about why Chromium being open-source doesn't alleviate any concerns about
monoculture.

~~~
cortesoft
How is the situation better if there are two browsers with 50% market share?
You still can’t add a new feature the other side doesn’t want, because 50% of
users won’t be able to use it.

Any feature that requires a site owner to do something to support it isn’t
going to be added.

~~~
kibwen
You've just illustrated the advantage of a polyculture: changes to the
platform are not unilateral decisions, and therefore require discussion,
communication, and documentation. Furthermore, if one actor tries to do
something out of blatant self-interest that would be a detriment to the
platform as a whole, that action can be blocked. With a Google monoculture, at
the end of the day, the web will be whatever the CEO of Google allows it to
be. Imagine how little control users have over the Android platform; envision
a future where that's the web's model as well.

~~~
Karunamon
The difference being now that we're in no danger of IE6-ification. If Google
annoys enough people, people can take Webkit and do whatever they want. It
happened to Microsoft, arguably to Mozilla, it can happen to Google.

So long as the players are well behaved, having a single dominant browser is
beneficial. How much time, energy, productivity, and money has been lost on
cross-browser (in)compatibility wrangling?

~~~
vatueil
> _If Google annoys enough people, people can take Webkit and do whatever they
> want._

Not sure if that should have been Blink, or if you're making a subtle point
about how Blink was forked from WebKit (which was in turn forked from KHTML).

Personally, while I can see why some may react to this news with concern about
a monoculture, I find it hard to feel sorry about the end of the last
significant closed source browser engine.

If Microsoft gives up IE and Edge then all the major browsers will have an
open source foundation. With Gecko, WebKit, and Blink there remains a healthy
range of options, too.

And as the history of KHTML/WebKit/Blink demonstrates, derivatives will appear
if there's enough interest. Perhaps someday Microsoft will follow the examples
Apple and Google have set by creating their own fork, if the circumstances
warrant it.

~~~
pjmlp
It also demonstrates that forks are irrelevant and no one cares about them
unless they come from major players with enough money and political power to
push them.

~~~
vatueil
WebKit was forked from KHTML. Chromium used WebKit, until Blink was forked.
All of that was only possible because the browser engines are open source.

As with anything, you always need somebody (or a group of somebodies) to help
something new gain traction. There's no magic pixie dust that will let you
develop a major new platform without commensurate resources. What open source
does do is lower the cost of entry and make it easier to build up to a level
where you can make an impact.

~~~
pjmlp
You forgot to count all the other forks that died.

------
tambourine_man
Interesting theory and thread:

[https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/10697763353362923...](https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1069776335336292352)

“This isn’t about Chrome. This is about ElectronJS. Microsoft thinks EdgeHTML
cannot get to drop-in feature-parity with Chromium to replace it in Electron
apps, whose duplication is becoming a significant performance drain. They want
to single-instance Electron with their own fork”

~~~
interesthrow2
The irony. They had HTA apps (running on IE engine which still work more or
less, I replaced most default Win10 apps like the image viewer and the
"groove" music player with a version of them built with HTA since they were
slow as hell to start up) for 20 years already, they did barely anything with
it, they didn't really invest seriously in a good browser engine (Edge isn't)
and now all they can do is use Google's? typical Microsoft... reminds me the
whole ES4/Jscript.net debacle only to then reinvent the wheel (ineffectively)
with Typescript... those who don't know the story should read about it, how
many years wasted? 10, 15 years?...

What MS is really doing is replacing HTA,WinStore apps, whatever with
Chromium, because their own tech can't compete with Chromium as they didn't
seriously invest in it. I'm actually starting to believe the people who are
claiming that MS is rebuilding Office in JS from scratch...

~~~
maxxxxx
Their desktop strategy is really confusing. I think even to themselves. It
seems since around 2000 or when .NET came out they lost direction, repeatedly
tried something, didn't really finish and dropped it. Mobile strategy wasn't
much better.

~~~
giancarlostoro
They are fragmented and not under a single focus and that is the problem.
While the executives at the top are focused on cloud those in charge of the OS
and other crucial products are making some oddball decisions for whatever
reason. If Microsoft could push all their teams towards a consistent vision it
would be great. Otherwise we will continue to see this giant love-hate of
Microsoft vs the appreciation they deserve for the things they do get right. I
am company neutral so I try to appreciate companies that do some things right.

------
fourthark
Very sad. I'm not a Microsoft fan but I thought this was one of the things
they were doing right.

The performance was really good, compatibility with standards was actually the
best IMHO. Every thing (SVG) I tried that got past Firefox and Chrome worked
on Edge without modification.

And yeah, we need the competition.

It's not like Microsoft is running out of money. Guess they need their most
talented people doing something else.

~~~
qwerty456127
> compatibility with standards was actually the best IMHO

Unfortunately it wasn't. See caniuse.com.

> And yeah, we need the competition.

This is the key point. Indeed. Google becoming the ultimate web monopolist
seems scary. I just hope Mozilla is going to be able to keep competing (but
I'm not sure how long will it stand, a neighbour post says "Firefox desktop
market share now below 9%"). I wish MS could choose the Mozilla engine
instead...

~~~
krylon
> I wish MS could choose the Mozilla engine instead...

At least they could send some money Mozilla's way to ensure there is an
independent competitor around.

------
c-smile
That's just the disaster.

And the end of W3C standard development process. AFAIR it should be 3
_independent_ implementations of the feature in order for Draft to reach
Recommendation status.

So technically all that means that web standards will be written by WebKit
team alone.

Sic transit Gloria mundi, sigh.

~~~
naner
Fair concern. On the other hand nobody uses Edge on Windows 10, do they? In my
limited experience users seem to still use IE or go to Chrome or Firefox.

~~~
ztjio
I use it as much as possible. Its user experience on touch windows devices
(Surface Go in this case) is several orders of magnitude better than Chrome
and Firefox... is not a usable browser, performance-wise in my experience.

Edge is brand new, and foolishly branded to look like IE, this might stop
average users who know about getting Chrome from using it. But it shouldn't.
It's extremely rare that I'm forced to swap over to Chrome. Mostly I use
Chrome to keep my invasive work IT staff from having access to my private
browsing info.

~~~
qwerty456127
The problem with Edge is it still (like IE had been always but at a small
number of moments in history when it actually was the original source of an
innovation) is the worst of the browsers from the standards (or non-standards,
whatever) support perspective. See caniuse.com

------
talawahdotnet
Interesting, but what I really, really want them to do is EOL IE 11 so that
the web can move forward without feeling guilty about the X% of users still on
it. IE 11 has unfortunately become the new IE 6.

As it is right now I believe the IE 11 EOL is tied to the Windows 10
EOL...which is not happening anytime soon. Many frameworks are dropping
support for it anyway so I guess it will end up being defacto desupported.

~~~
chipperyman573
As someone who has (luckily) only had to support Firefox/Edge/Chrome, can you
go into why IE11 is so bad? In the very small amount of testing I've done,
everything seems to render just fine (especially compared to IE6/7/8)

~~~
le-mark
I've been on multi year projects to modernize old IE applications, and one of
the things that IE11 misses is "standard" xpath evaluation. A lot of old
"dhtml" apps were all in on soap/xml. There's some wierd IE only hold over css
in it like cursor hand vs pointer. On the whole it's not too bad really.

The reason why IE11 will live for a long, long time is it's compatability
modes. You can run apps all the way back to IE7 on it. And yes these still
exist.

~~~
chipperyman573
>There's some wierd IE only hold over css in it like cursor hand vs pointer

Wow, that would really frustrate me. One of the first things I do (or check to
make sure it's done by whatever css library I'm using) is add

a { cursor:pointer; }

to my css file. The first time I tested a website in IE11, I would be pulling
my hair out!! Or more likely I would google it, but still, it would be
frustrating.

------
mooman219
This has been in the works for a while! A number of Microsoft employees have
been making contributions to Chromium too. I hope to see Chromium's
performance and battery impact on Windows to improve with this decision which
is great for those using the OS.

It sounds like Microsoft really just wants a platform to route people into
using Bing and service ads on the new tab page, which they're more than
capable of doing on a reskin for Chromium. From a cost standpoint it makes
sense to use the existing tools available.

For developers, it's one less platform to target.

~~~
millstone
This vision is pathetic, unambitious. What if Microsoft is content to reskin
and rehome Chrome, submit their battery life PRs, and cede the web to Google?
What is the web once Google dominates its access?

------
sytelus
Note from Erik Meijer :)

[https://twitter.com/headinthebox/status/1069796773017710592](https://twitter.com/headinthebox/status/1069796773017710592)

~~~
ravedave5
That is really funny. Also, it shows how much Microsoft has changed in the
last few years.

------
Despegar
And then there were three. Even more reason for Apple to never allow anything
but WebKit on iOS. This monoculture isn't good for the web.

edit: Guess the pro-monoculture folks flagged this.

~~~
mossplix
So webkit is not monoculture? Are you forgetting about konqueror?

~~~
zapzupnz
That person meant that if all the main browsers move to Chromium, then it will
dominate and cause a monoculture; the same way that Internet Explorer caused a
monoculture in the 90s and 00s.

Pointing out that there are competitors doesn't change that their presence
doesn't overthrow the monoculture. After all, Gecko was around for a long time
and Firefox did become very popular very quickly after version 2; but
realistically, it took until Apple put WebKit on iOS for any real dents to be
made.

Also, I think Konqueror still uses KHTML by default. I don't know if Konqueror
tracks WebKit, but I think they're rather different these days.

~~~
emilsedgh
Unfortunately there's near 0 development behind KHTML and Konqueror. That's
been the case for many years now.

KHTML was the only community driven browser engine and thank god for it. God
knows what the browse landscape would've been without it.

~~~
zapzupnz
That's a shame. Back when I was a full-time Linuxer, I used Konqueror as my
default browser. The good ol' days of KHTML.

------
cwyers
I don't know, I am typing this post on Edge, and HTML rendering is way down on
my list of complaints about it. Is switching to Chromium going to fix the lack
of a "Paste As Plain Text" option, for instance? (Not the biggest issue, just
the one that's freshest in my mind.) And I hope that whatever they do retains
their focus on not burning battery, which is a big reason I use Edge as much
as I do.

------
no_wizard
I think this is interesting. What is more interesting to me is that this would
have been a very good chance to align themselves with Apple (WebKit) or
Mozilla instead. Effectively Google is far far more of threat than either of
these two companies. In fact I think at this point Apple and Microsoft have so
much more in common than different in terms of goals, they don’t even really
compete head on anymore.

Shocks me they aren’t considering that

~~~
kiriakasis
[https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/10697763353362923...](https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/1069776335336292352)

The focus is electron "This isn’t about Chrome. This is about ElectronJS.
Microsoft thinks EdgeHTML cannot get to drop-in feature-parity with Chromium
to replace it in Electron apps [...]"

------
emeraldd
A big reason Inuse chrome is that it is literally everywhere I need it to be:
Mac, Linux, Windows, IOs, and Android. Edge is only on one of those and the
only time I interact with a Windows machine is when my wife needs help
fixing/recovering from something majorly broken on her computer. I haven't
used a windows machine in a professional setting in ... 8 or 9 years at a
minimum. Purely anecdotal, but my experience leads me to believe that, even
though users on alternative platforms may be smaller in number, they tend to
be the people building things for everyone else to use. Hence, Edge is stuck
in a walled garden of Microsoft's own making and they aren't putting in the
effort to make it work with the stuff that runs everywhere else.

------
sroussey
All this coming from this build bug for ARM64Win?

[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=893460](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=893460)

Is there anything else to dig into to validate?

~~~
petecox
Previously, MS and Google have publically announced they will collaborate on
bringing Chrome to Windows on ARM.

Abandoning EdgeHTML on the basis of that bug report would be drawing a long
bow.

------
lwansbrough
Stupid. Open source Edge and see where that gets us before you blow up the
only chance we have of maintaining an open web standard.

~~~
WalterGR
2008\. “Fuck you, Microsoft, for not bundling Firefox or Chrome.”

2018\. “Fuck you, Microsoft, for bundling Firefox or Chrome.”

Hilarious.

~~~
lwansbrough
Very disingenuous comparison. Shows a lack of comprehension or wilful
ignorance of the issue many have expressed in this thread.

~~~
vtesucks
"fuck you" is not same as stupid. The comment is good actually- edge has
potential, why not open source it since you're not going to do much with it
anyway in terms of making money. this also brings devs to windows eco system
and helps them explore windows internals.

------
morpheuskafka
This definitely makes sense from a business standpoint. MS gets two big things
from Edge/IE: one, people using Bing by default, and two, tight integration
with Windows/Office/MS Cloud services. All of that has nothing to do with
engines, very little to do with even UI design.

------
mastrsushi
Microsoft should give up entirely on Internet browser development. I cannot
see any good reason to throw their money away like this. They are a company
too dependant on legacy software to bother competing with Google and Mozilla.
Cloud services seem to be their brightest modern opportunity, but they really
weren't prepared for the 2010's. Competing with Chrome is just chasing cars.
Of course they've always had the advantage of being the default browser. I
still don't think average users will ever see IE as anymore than a fly on a
Window. Regardless of who's layout engine theyre forking.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
> Microsoft should give up entirely on Internet browser development. I cannot
> see any good reason to throw their money away like this.

If Microsoft release a low power device like Surface Go or future ARM devices
then reviewers and people open up Chrome and it runs jerky and laggy then
they'll blame the device. If Chrome becomes the default browser and gives you
bad battery performance then people blame the device.

MS has to ship a browser for the exact same reasons Apple insists on shipping
a browser. It's the most used application on the OS and the app that's almost
used 100% of the time the device is running therefore it can make a good
device feel like a bad device if its optimized poorly.

Notice all Apples web battery benchmarks use Safari not chrome.

~~~
mastrsushi
Unless there is a major breakthrough in x86 compatibility, Windows isn't
coming to ARM. They tried it with RT and they supported RISC far back as NT 4.
I think 10 is great, but they've come to admit they're pretty much boxed into
the whole Wintel monopoly they once thrived.

You do have some good points. I was thinking how bad it would look on their
part if their OS doesn't even have its own browser. Even Gnome has a browser,
which is pretty much FirefoxGTK.

I can't put my finger on why Microsoft should cease browser development. But
adopting Chromium is definitely a good step in that direction. It's cheaper,
normal people won't notice (or care), and they can keep branding.

------
chiefalchemist
A number of the comments mention monoculture. But where does monculture end
and a solid reliable and honest standard begin? For exampke, at some point the
power grid and gasoline formulations were standardized, yes? TV screen sizes,
tin cans and shipping containers. Is the browser not the shipping container of
our time?

To call W3C a standard and then have different implementations is no standard
at all. That is the nature of guidelines. The fact that said "standard" so
often led to a suboptional UX only poured salt on the wound.

Maybe this really is bad news? But there doea seem to be some upside,
monoculture or not.

~~~
vbezhenar
Standard is an interface with multiple implementations. Shipping container
standard with certain dimensions is good. Shipping container standard “from
evil Google” is bad.

~~~
Spivak
Standard can also be a ubiquitous implementation: OOXML, PDF, CUDA, Linux,
glibc, pulseaudo, ffmpeg, imagemagick, tensorflow, systemd, Windows, MySQL,
React, Java, QT, Electron.

Since standards bodies these days are really documentation effots it seems
silly to say that implementation defined standards aren't. It's practically
where any 'proper' standard comes from these days where the market leader is
essentially the reference implementation.

------
sureaboutthis
Someone needs to note that Chromium is a browser and the rendering engine is
called Blink. You can't build a different browser and rename it based on
Chromium but you can use Blink as your rendering engine. The article says
"...building a new web browser powered by Chromium, a rendering engine...".

~~~
notatoad
You absolutely can build a new browser based on chromium. That's what opera
is. It shares a lot more than just the blink code.

------
TheCoelacanth
Yay, now instead of two crappy Microsoft browsers, I get to support three
crappy Microsoft browsers.

------
atonse
Sad news. Chrome is an energy hog on the Mac compared to safari. It probably
won’t be as tied to the OS APIs as Edge was.

~~~
microcolonel
> _Chrome is an energy hog on the Mac compared to safari._

It seems that with more interest in that, it's likely to improve.

> _It probably won’t be as tied to the OS APIs as Edge was_

What makes you say that? Seems like they could integrate it more or less
exactly the same way.

~~~
atonse
Again with my limited experience on the Mac, chrome whatever safari is doing
to take advantage of OS APIs, it always feels more native.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
If Microsoft really does this and makes the Chromium based browser the default
in Windows, what is the value proposition of installing Chrome? Presumably all
the websites will work exactly as they do in Chrome and it will be no faster
or slower?

~~~
ravenstine
It's value proposition is integration with the Google ecosystem. If one
rejects Google then there isn't much of a reason to use Chrome over another
Chromium-based web browser.

I try to avoid Google as much as possible these days, thus it's funny because
I never thought I'd consider using a Microsoft browser instead of a Google
one. I think this is a potentially good move on Microsoft's part(the EdgeHTML
thing turned out not to be).

------
kainazzzo
Great news! I really tried to like Edge, and used it exclusively for a few
months. It just couldn't do the job.

~~~
chocolatkey
There is one thing it does/did a very nice job with: EPUB viewing. I sure hope
they port that over

------
sn41
I am somewhat sad at this. I use Seamonkey, but when it comes to opening and
annotating pdfs, djvu and epub files, edge does all this on my laptop with
minimal fuss. I felt that Edge is one of the things that Microsoft is doing
right.

------
alpb
I honestly wondered, while I was at Microsoft‚ why this has not happened with
Edge from the beginning. Microsoft knew how problematic mshtml.dll was and how
frequently it led to zero-day vulnerabilities, while Chrome was not having any
high-profile 0-days for many months, maybe years.

Edge was mostly a UI remake of MSIE and it used mostly the same security
model, rendering engine etc. It was never a real value add over MSIE.

------
saghul
I wonder if this also means ChakraCore would be abandoned. I haven't played
with it directly, put it seems to be a very capable JS runtime, which has no
home outside of Edge. Well, there is node-chakracore, but I wonder why
Microsoft would interested in keeping that effort.

Unless... they replace V8 in their Chromium build with Chakra. They already
have a V8 API shim, so I guess that would be within reach.

------
morganvachon
From the article:

> _In addition, Microsoft engineers were recently spotted committing code to
> the Chromium project to help get Google Chrome running on ARM._

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding something, Chromium already runs on ARM
SoCs. Raspbian even ships with it as the default browser.

Also, as to Edge and stability, I don't use Windows 10 for any serious work
anymore in light of the recent update gaffes[1], but Edge has been
consistently stable and fast in my experience. In fact it's one of the better
things about Windows 10; it can correctly render certain websites that
Firefox/Waterfox struggles with, and it's as fast as or faster than Chromium
across the board.

[1] Even running Windows 10 Pro and deferring updates, I had stability issues
with the OS from day one. I had relegated it to just gaming and went back to
macOS and Linux for serious work at home, but lately I've decided to stop
putting so much time into games and focus on learning and music again.
Therefore, I no longer use Windows 10 at all apart from IT duties at my job.

~~~
gsnedders
> Unless I'm completely misunderstanding something, Chromium already runs on
> ARM SoCs.

AIUI, Chromium _didn 't_ run on WinNT/ARM64.

------
Analemma_
I hope everyone complaining about this, and the web monoculture it will
crystallize, uses Edge (or at least Firefox) when they're on Windows.
Otherwise you're part of the problem. Just like on the "Firefox's market share
dips below 9%" thread, everyone wants to gripe about Chrome's dominance but no
one wants to do anything about it.

------
BuckRogers
This is the wrong strategy for adoption. Edge adoption will skyrocket if they
give Win10S / a UWP-only version of Windows away for free. Edge locked and
minimal ad support with no data collection business model. Or, give the user
the choice between the two SaaS support models that they prefer, one of those
combined with being funneled to MS services (Bing etc) should make it
sustainable. This will result in being good for web standards, empowering MS,
Google, Apple and Mozilla independently.

To increase Electron app performance on Windows, it's a good way to go about
it. But I have to wonder if in time Electron will be around when wasm will be
a better universal app platform to build around. Little to no performance
issues to resolve there.

So some good and some bad. But I can't say that I think it makes as much sense
as working hard on pushing wasm and releasing UWP-locked Win10 for any vendor
to install or user to download.

------
gpvos
Could Microsoft at least open-source their Edge code, so others can develop it
further? It's really important for the openness of the web that we don't get a
Chromium/Webkit monoculture.

I'd also like to see if there is any way the Opera source code could be
opensourced.

------
owaislone
Wish they had gone with Mozilla tech instead. Would have created a nice
balanced ecosystem.

------
nikkwong
I can see how this is creating a monoculture on the web which could have some
really negative implications going forward. However, chromium is open source;
so I don't really think this is comparable to the IE days.

Also, as a web dev who is trying to push the limits of what is possible given
current web APIs, being shackled by edge's lack of compatibility is really a
hindrance and makes really cutting-edge stuff impossible. So, it will be nice
to not have to worry about that as much.

It didn't seem like microsoft was ever serious about advancing the development
of the web with edge; they were just always trying to catch up (and doing so
poorly). Microsoft is probably gauging the state of their browser now and
coming to the conclusion that they're too far behind to make a realistic
comeback without totally revamping their approach; lots of
firings/organizational reshuffling, etc.

At least google is serious about the web APIs, even if its' only because it
aligns with their financial interests—at least it _does_ end up being a good
user experience; i think that's what matters.

\--

edit: Also, not trying to belabor the point, but this subject on the whole is
especially important to me. Chrome has allowed me to do crazy-amazing things
with SVGs for my dev agency (1) since, well, they actually follow most of the
SVG spec. I think most browser vendors see the SVG spec as superfluous and
don't follow the spec verbatim, and that stops people like me from doing more
awesome things with it; I'll literally have clients pitch me awesome ideas and
my response is; sorry, we can do that but it just won't work in safari! So it
becomes a no-go for all.

If other vendors really were able to dedicate serious resources towards their
browser implementations then yeah, I would also be unhappy about microsoft's
decision here. Optimally they would shell out more resources to their Edge
division; but since they don't care about web experience the way google does—I
agree that deferring to the experts is the best case scenario for everyone
(i.e. developers like me and then users). At least, until microsoft redefines
their priorities.

[1] www.beaver.digital

~~~
kibwen
_> chromium is open source_

On Chromium being open source, and why that doesn't matter:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18595978](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18595978)

~~~
nikkwong
wouldn't you expect though; if the experience got so bad, that you'd have a
sort of 'hard-fork' like we see happening all the time in the crypto space;
with devs moving to whatever platform is best? That would have just been nigh
impossible with close sourced software; at least there's a potential path
should we ever have to confront that situation with chromium.

Practically, I wouldn't guess that we'd see that, since chromium ends up being
the closest implementation to true web standards; well, since they define the
standards practically, anyways.

~~~
kibwen
"Hard fork" à la blockchains is a very good analogy. It's also a chilling one,
considering that no hard fork of Bitcoin has ever seriously challenged it for
dominance of the cryptocurrency space, and that the web has orders of
magnitude more inertia than the Bitcoin blockchain.

------
OliverJones
FINALLY. They're laying the Redmond Middle School Science Projects (the
Microsoft browsers) to rest.

In the 2+ year timeframe, this will save independent SaaS and software vendors
MASSIVE amounts of time and money. Thank you, Satya Nadella.

Hopefully this will resolve the Web Extension store headaches induced by
having to distribute through the Microsoft Store.

I suppose those of us who sell to large organizations will still have to
support IE11 and Edge for the foreseeable future. Or maybe MS could help us
all out by pushing an update to put Rick Astley on the default home page for
those browsers, as an encouragement to upgrade.

------
EdSharkey
I complained here when the Windows Subsystem for Linux was released that
Microsoft was capitulating to Linux, giving customers a migration path away
from Windows. That Microsoft had lost confidence in the homespun
Win32/Win64/UWP/... API's to court developers. I caught some flak for that,
but I was right.

Here, again, we see Microsoft signalling surrender in a HUGE market. Why
should I be troubled to run Windows 10, again? Where is the technical
distinctiveness in rebranding Chromium? There is no advantage to Microsoft in
doing that. It's less disgraceful to keep building out Edge than to rebrand
Chromium.

I'm not claiming Microsoft has done a great job. Edge was another mixed bag in
a long line of mixed bags on the Web front from Microsoft. But they did
compete for a really long time with no shortage of technical distinctiveness.
Active Desktop, in the right product manager's hands, could have been a really
amazing system. IE6, when it came out, was technically very awesome, doing
HTML5-like functionality 7 years before the other browser vendors.

I'd wager open sourcing Windows is next because they're not doing the brand
any favors; they'll dump it and move on. Microsoft will focus on Azure and
SaaS apps or whatever new market crops up and we'll all be poorer for it.

Windows 7 will be my last Windows unless some amazing direction change happens
in the product. I'm just waiting for support to end. Debian Linux, here I
come!

------
Endy
Chromium, great. With this move, Google gets to take one more step toward
total domination of the Web. I'll be honest, I use WebKit-Edge on my iPad and
it's fine; but I believe that the desktop space needs a new engine. We need
something that isn't Chromium or the Chromium-Gecko that's backing Firefox
since the intro of WebExtensions. There's only one problem - that's a hard
challenge, and just blindly following Google is the easy way out.

------
nwah1
Very much hope Edge is open sourced.

~~~
kainazzzo
It would be nice so then someone could fix the bugs with gitter.im

~~~
ataylor32
Out of curiosity, what bugs does it have?

------
vbezhenar
Sad news for me. I liked Edge. It missed few essential features for me (no
search in history, really?), so after a while I switched to Chrome, but I was
checking it from time to time and I never wanted it to have another engine.
Microsoft seems to lost an ability to fight and make successful projects.
There’s absolutely no reason for me to use their browser now.

------
zapzupnz
Tangentially related to all the stuff about the impending browser monoculture
(everything old is new; Chromium shall be the next IE, etc.), I wonder if
Apple would ever revive Safari on Windows.

There's probably more value in it now than there was before, because all those
iPhone users who don't want to or don't the choice to use a Mac would still
want iCloud bookmark and keychain sync on their machines. Plus, eventually, it
might become another glass of that proverbial ice water in Hell that iTunes
and Safari for Windows were once touted to be.

Yes, I know Windows would still have Firefox and all that, but I don't think
one competitor does competition make. You need many competitors to segment the
market, because this is not a market where segmentation should be considered a
problem; rather, it should be embraced as the way to drive standards forward.
It's worked that way for us since 2007 up until the last couple of years,
it'll work again.

------
technion
The writing was on the wall when Microsoft release Windows Server 2019 - and
announced it won't support Edge. Thinking of every corporate that's going to
be using this new OS for RDS and Citrix farms, not shipping with Edge said
they weren't going for the corporate market. Which happens to have been their
biggest market.

------
meruru
They should just ship Firefox instead. They would get most of the benefits,
wouldn't have to depend on Google tech, and could probably garner a lot of
good will from the FOSS community. At least for me, it would mean much more
than things like open-sourcing VS Code and other such moves do.

------
userbinator
Edge was already in a difficult place from the beginning --- a new browser
engine in a new UI that tried to be yet-another-Chrome-clone. They alienated
both their IE users, which hate the UI changes, and weren't very successful in
pleasing web developers with their new browser engine either. I would much
rather have the classic familiar IE UI with a new browser engine, because the
UI is the only reason I use IE over other browsers (which are increasingly
turning into approximations of Chrome's UI.)

There used to be many browsers. Not so long ago, it was mainly a choice
between Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and IE. Now it'll be more like a choice between
Chrome, Chrome, and Firefox.

------
tannhaeuser
This is very sad, and a huge, terminal fail on the part of WHATWG to steer
HTML, by making it so fscking complicated that it's infeasible to develop new
browsers ever again. But maybe a monoculture was what they were heading for
all the time.

------
thrownaway954
FINALLY!!! The bottom line is that Chromium has won in all areas of the engine
wars and Chrome has won the browser wars. Heck Chrome has even won in the
testing area once it release a headless version. Everyone uses Chrome as a
baseline when checking how their site renders. Like 99% of Windows users, I
used Edge to download Chrome. This is a smart move by Microsoft, having the
browser that is package with Windows, using the most popular rendering engine,
will make people think twice about having to download another browser.

[https://imgur.com/gallery/9TxWoa9](https://imgur.com/gallery/9TxWoa9)

~~~
kapsi
I don't think most people know that rendering engines exist.

------
kerng
For Microsoft this makes perfect sense, they can keep Edge UI and use that to
build there own non Google experience. Maintaining the underlying details and
stuff is just overhead, rather they can entirely focus on new things and
experiences.

------
kgwxd
If they had made it open source, cross-platform (like vs code), with sane
telemetry options (unlike vs code) I would have gave it a go. I don't get why
they though anything else had a chance in the current market.

~~~
WalterGR
What are VS Code’s insane telemetry options?

~~~
asituop
The VS code you download is not Open Source, it has a special Microsoft
license and includes close source Microsoft Telemetry ( which could be
considered as spyware) which you cannot opt-out completely.

See
[https://code.visualstudio.com/license](https://code.visualstudio.com/license)

If you want a clean VS Code with MIT license and no spyware you have to build
it yourself or use VS Codium :
[https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/README.md)

This pretty much the same idea as Chrome vs Chromium

~~~
kgwxd
Build it yourself with build tools from MS... which have telemetry :/

------
WorldMaker
There is something really weird/off about this rumor. It doesn't make sense
for Microsoft to drop EdgeHTML. EdgeHTML is doing really well.

The big thing that jumps out here is the repeated use of the term Chromium
rather than Blink. That might just be a non-technical writer here, but what if
it is not?

EdgeHTML has been working for years to be open source, and maybe even cross-
platform. Could this project actually be the completion of that effort? Maybe
they are using Chromium to host EdgeHTML (and ChakraCore) instead of Blink/V8?
Edge for macOS and Linux, maybe?

~~~
WorldMaker
I'm increasingly convinced that this rumor is about a replacement for
ElectronJS that somehow got filtered through a non-technical reporter
telephone game.

------
MarkMc
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but why did Microsoft create a web browser
in the first place? Did Microsoft make any more money by having control of the
dominant web browser?

They could have just let Netscape win. Later when Google demonstrated the
value of search, Microsoft could have just shipped Firefox with Bing set at
the default search engine. Microsoft wouldn't have had to pay for decades of
browser development, and it wouldn't have been slapped with a huge anti-trust
action by the US Department of Justice.

~~~
thrownaway954
You're a definitely a programmer and not a marketer. When you control the
product, you control the experience.

------
captainmuon
That's quite unfortunate. I like Edge - the rendering engine, not so much the
browser. If Edge would let me sync my bookmarks with Firefox, I would switch
immediately. I found it quite fast, and no other engine works so well with
touch. I also don't recall rendering problems.

What MS should do IMHO is to package Edge as a component (like IE was in the
old days), and let people build shells around it (like the Maxthon browser
was).

I don't think I would use an Edge based on Chromium much, as I liked the UI
itself not so much.

------
t0astbread
It's good that a Windows-only rendering engine where people working on other
operating systems can't test their work is gone but this is problematic for
tech diversity on the web

------
qwerty456127
… and it will always use a severely outdated version of the Blink engine with
nothing but some of vulnerability fixes back-ported occasionally (after
unreasonable pauses of course).

------
zvrba
WTF, what instability? I use it as my main browser and have (almost) no issues
at all, even with ad blocker installed. Maybe 2x a month I need to launch
Chrome for some weird site.

------
mustardo
I hope they continue to struggle for many more years in the browser market. I
and millions of devs lost many years on IE 6/8 crap they shouldn't be forgiven
so easily

------
prossercj
Hm, my first thought is "will this work with carlo?" [0].

I'm excited about that project, but one big downside is that Chrome has to be
installed. It would be great to write desktop applications that render through
a browser, without having to either download Chrome (like carlo) or bundle it
(like electron).

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18355345](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18355345)

------
Solar19
This reminds me that I think there's a real market opportunity for a clean-
sheet _proprietary browser_. Everyone just assumes open source (except for
Safari and Edge until now).

I think it's possible to build a significantly better browser than Chrome or
anything else out there. And I think at least a few million people would pay
more than $100 for it (there are 326 million people in the US alone). This
would be a good time to do it.

~~~
newuser6969
I wouldn't touch a proprietary browser if you paid me $100

------
jeromebaek
(Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft.) This is a good move. Microsoft is further
embracing open source technology. I really _want_ to use Edge, I gave it so
many tries, but every time I keep coming back to Chrome because Edge is just
so damn unreliable. And Chrome is creepy as hell. And Firefox just... is slow
and not smooth. A not-creepy web browser from Microsoft, with the same
reliability and speed of Chrome? Sign me up.

~~~
krylon
My work laptop still runs Windows 7, so I have no experience with Edge; but
Firefox feels a lot faster than Internet Explorer 11, even though it hogs
memory like crazy.

------
gwbas1c
Hell has frozen over!

I occasionally use Edge in my Windows VMs. It's just kind of... Well... I'm
not sure, but I like Chrome better.

The irony is that I religiously used Explorer for years because I believed
that the browser isn't an accessory; the browser provided with the computer
should be good enough. I only switched to Chrome because the multiprocess
model made it easy to kill that one misbehaving tab that was hogging CPU.

------
g051051
It's unfortunate to lose another implementation...and very telling about
Microsoft. They'll spend infinite money (which they effectively have) to try
to take a dominance position, but will give up if they can't be the top of the
heap. How much would it really cost them to keep maintaining Edge, even if
it's not the most popular browser? How was that generating revenue for them,
anyway?

------
est
I for one, welcome our one and only new browser overlord.

------
pluma
I wonder what this means for Chakra Core, their JS engine.

They previously tried to establish Chakra as an alternative to V8 and even
maintained their own fork of Node.js running on it. It doesn't look like those
efforts went anywhere.

If they're already throwing out their rendering engine, it seems odd if they
want to keep Chakra, especially considering how Electron (which runs VSCode
and GitHub's Atom) is already built on V8.

------
Osiris
With so many browsers using Blink/V8, couldn't it be argued that an
independent foundation should be created to take over the project so that no
company (Google) controls the code? Each browser can then implement their fork
/ skin of the rendering engine / V8. It could even allow the foundation to
experiment with larger changes how Mozilla has done with it's rust-based
renderer.

~~~
asituop
You mean everyone uses Blink/V8 and everyone does research as forks and merge
it to master if they have something interesting to commit ? I would see a few
issues :

\- The 1st problem I see is that open source is often meritocracy and so
Google will always be deciding because there will be much more engineer from
Google on the project than from other companies joining the project. And
anyway Google has no interest to try to align with MS/Mozilla interests.

\- The other problem I see is that you need some independence to make
fundamemtal changes. WebRender would never exist if Mozilla tried to fork an
existing engine. They wrote everything from scratch and now they are doing
fundamental changes to Gecko to be able to merge Webrender in it. If they add
to agree with Google, MS, and other companies they would still be arguing and
trying to convince them, and Google would refuse because they think their
solution is better (or more suited to their own personal needs) and Rust would
not even exist

------
dschuetz
How ironic. But, kudos to the responsible decision makers. It's a shame though
that they haven't decided to make a modern and decent engine that works at
least as reliable as FF or Chrome(ium), Edge always felt like a recycled
version of IE. I think the move was done because the Chromium engine also has
a strong extensions base. That's something I found Edge was lacking,
ultimately.

------
yason
I would tend to frown upon shrinking competition but in this case Edge wasn't
really a player. The markets were already shared by the Chromium engine and
Firefox. Chromium has the ancestry back to WebKit and KHTML so, to my
knowledge, Safari also isn't a direct competitor. So, we're looking at a
duopoly which naturally happens when things get complex enough and smaller
players are left behind by the sheer lack of resourcing.

Browsers always were hubs of a number of technologies because loading markup
language documents over network and rendering them onto screen with some
dynamic programming abilities covers a lot of ground. While we sort of agree
on the rendering, scripting, and styling of HTML5 by now this has just
intensified with features like WebGL of WebAssembly which reach out to
completely new domains. So, it's near impossible to compete in the scene
unless you're a big, established player.

A modern browser is a lot more complex than operating systems these days and
probably 10x more complex than old operating systems from the era where it was
still possible for a small group of people to write a competely usable kernel
and desktop in a relatively short time. In effect, the browser has become the
operating system and to think, that's probably the very reason it's much
easier to be a Linux or Apple user these days. As long as you can run Firefox
or Chrome, 90% of your problems are solved. Even Windows is, for most people,
just a platform to run your browser on. Then you use things like Google Docs
or the web-implementation of Office to launch Word or Excel to do your work.
But you don't need Windows to do that, and with a Chromium based browser that
Microsoft must fully support for their web services you can just use any
Chrome/Chromium based implementation.

In this light I'm amazed Microsoft would be giving power to Chrome and Google.
Microsoft was and still is an operator in the operating system and platform
space. How are they going to stay at all relevant if they just officially
reposition Windows as a host for Chromium build? Surely things aren't as black
and white but that's effectively how it is, giving up control. Microsoft can't
reinvent themselves as the new Google because that's an uphill battle. They'd
need to create a new space where they can thrive because operating systems
don't matter that much anymore and the lock-in cash-cow that is
Windows+Outlook+Office is gradually munched away by the web technologies.

------
johnvega
I think this is a great idea.

I use 3 Windows computers and use Chrome Firefox and Edge on all three
computers. My experience is that Edge is less stable than Chrome which
surprised me at first since Edge is owned by the host OS having all the
advantages of access to all the private code.

You can throw all the money and resources in the world, and something like a
browser is too complex to quickly catch up.

------
mark-r
Had to double-check the calendar to make sure it wasn't April 1. I think I'll
wait for a confirmation before I believe it.

------
merb
To be fair, chakra is/was a really really solid JavaScript engine. And it's
probably easier to embed than anything inside Chrome.
([https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore](https://github.com/Microsoft/ChakraCore))
Hope they are still comitted to chakra.

------
asien
This is interesting .

It’s coherent with their recent investments in Electron.

Hence the need for MS to support PWA with excellent feature parity with
chrome.

------
baby
Microsoft please, can we have the tabs on the side by default? There is a lot
of vertical space that is unused and it is a thousand times more practical to
have tabs there on the left or on the right. Try Tree Style Tabs for a week on
Firefox and you will understand why it is the future of browsing the web.

~~~
Osiris
Look at Vivaldi. It's a reimplementation of classic Opera 12 style browser as
a Chromium-based browser. It supports tabs on all four sides by default.

------
me551ah
I recently made the switch to Firefox from chrome. Webrender is a revolution
in web technology since it primarily uses the GPU for rendering resulting in
much faster and smoother websites. I'd urge everyone to give webrender a shot,
it feels noticeably smoother than chrome.

------
ryacko
I think I anticipated this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18379360)

>I wish Microsoft would just accept that no one will use Internet Explorer and
devote resources to breaking MS-DOS compatibility.

------
oscargrouch
We need to remember MS bought Github recently, and with that Electron.
Electron is based on Chrome so..

It makes total sense for them to concentrate the effort in Chromium and Blink,
and just reuse it as their default Windows browser.

I think this is much more about Electron than it is about Edge.

------
totfz
Edge's rendering engine is good. The only real problem Edge has is that
they've built it using the ugly, unresponsive Metro UI. If they build a
browser with the Chromium engine and a Metro UI, they can expect nobody to use
it as well.

------
partiallypro
I hope that while Microsoft does this, once they make the switch, they open
source Edge.

------
intellix
As a front-end developer this is amazing news. Less work and can deliver
faster

------
fiatjaf
Wait, Microsoft, do you think people will use your Chromium-based browser more
than they use Edge? Of course not, people will still be dumb and download
Chrome. Don't throw the towell!

------
fiatjaf
I'm a Linux user and I use Firefox, but recommend Edge to all my Windows
friends that don't care about browsers, it's a great browser, probably better
than Chrome.

------
chris_wot
The only reason Edge isn't successful is because it's not cross platform.
Which, I realize, is kind of the point - but sort of also why as a browser it
is now dying.

------
sys_64738
Microsoft should buy Vivaldi and make that their default browser.

------
tinus_hn
None of my issues with Edge have anything to do with the browser engine.

All of them have to do with stupid Microsoft like decisions, like ‘you can’t
avoid the internal pdf reader’.

------
King-Aaron
Would be nice if they would pull their fingers out and update the rendering
engine in Outlook from the 1995-esque bollocks they insist on using to this
day.

------
buboard
Hopefully they will use it to compete against google , rather than helping
them with their world domination plans. This might be a good thing

------
akmittal
It shows how difficult it is to rewrite a browser. I am glad firefox didn't go
for full rewrite but going for progressive changes.

------
mesaframe
Edge didn't have any issues besides it's UI. It doesn't make sense to me that
for UI MS halted it's development.

------
simfoo
More monoculture :(

I'm just waiting for the day Microsoft announces that they are dropping their
own compiler in favor of Clang/LLVM.

~~~
pjmlp
Well, they have taken the effort of making C++/WinRT work with clang, and are
contributing to the co-routines implementation in clang.

But they have adopted GCC for Azure Sphere though.

------
Thann
how the meeting went: "its really expensive to build a decent browser and a
spyware engine for it... hmmmm"

~~~
WalterGR
How does Edge’s telemetry compare to Chrome’s?

Have there been any problems with Edge similar to Chrome’s suddenly logging
people into the browser?

------
ksec
I would much rather Microsoft works with Apple to bring Safari/Webkit to
Windows, then bending over to Chrome.

------
wnevets
how does this solve the market share problem of edge? The implementation isn't
the problem, its the awful UI.

------
xaldir
That reminds me of the Azure presentation where the Microsoft employee switch
to Chrome after Edge crashed.

------
Mindwipe
I look forward to yet another Microsoft browser that does not work correctly
with SharePoint.

------
Yizahi
A pity really, even though I never used it. One more brick in the future
googlenet wall.

------
saranshk
One less browser for the front-end folks to support in the long run!

------
rmykhajliw
Hallelujah! It's much better than maintaining a dead edge browser users use
only once to download chrome. The biggest question whether people will use a
new branded Microsoft browser or not because many of us remember a decade of
ie6.

~~~
russdpale
This is what I have been saying to my colleagues. Microsoft should not put
their branding anywhere near the new browser even if it is industry
acknowledged as their browser. That _definitely_ includes any and all IE
branding.

------
qualsiasi
Our customer only uses IE11, so this won't affect my work

------
Neil44
Will the homepage be Google... or Bing? There’s the question!

~~~
krylon
Do people still use that? On any browser I use, I change the settings so when
I restart it, it will open whatever tabs I had last opened. I almost never get
to see the browser's homepage.

------
shacharz
Anyone has more details, regarding the roadmap and timeline?

------
2bitencryption
one browser to rule them all, one browser to find them; one browser to rule
them all, and in the darkness bind them...

------
amelius
Next up: Windows 10 kernel replaced by BSD

------
mises
But I thought edge was faster. Every time I open a new installation, it's got
that page with the speedometers showing that "edge is faster".

------
oksawe
Is Chromium different than WebKit now?

~~~
fourthark
Since 2013 or so.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_(browser_engine)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_\(browser_engine\))

------
firemelt
Anyone here use edge for epub reader?

------
russellbeattie
If only they'd swap put the Windows kernel for Linux while they're at it...

------
tuananh
what does this mean for ChakraCore?

------
vtesucks
On the one hand developers have one less engine to worry about. On the other
if it becomes a chromium monoculture then Firefox loses.

~~~
h1d
No, there's now more reason for gecko to survive. Can't have single engine
dominate the web.

~~~
Osiris
But if that engine is open source, isn't that a good thing? There's a single
standard but anyone can contribute patches for increased performance, new
features, etc?

~~~
kibwen
All commits to the Chrome codebase are gated through Google, an ad company
whose driving motivation is in delivering value to shareholders, not to
improving the web. Once the web becomes a Google monoculture, I won't be
holding my breath to see any features land on the web that could threaten
Google's bottom line.

~~~
Osiris
I know what Google is.

Aren't changes to many open source projects gated, like the Linux kernel?

On a serious note, doesn't the license allow forks? Couldn't a large company
just fork it and make changes without Google's approval?

Once it becomes "de facto", couldn't one argue to setup a foundation outside
of Google's control as is done in many other open source projects?

I get that people hate Google but why bash on the project being open source;
is it not open "enough"?

~~~
kibwen
_> Aren't changes to many open source projects gated, like the Linux kernel?_

All projects gate commits somehow. It's not about the gating, it's about who
is allowed to make the big decisions and how much buy-in they need to seek
from other stakeholders before they're allowed to proceed. It's also about
incentives; if Linus were, say, a Verizon employee and if the Linux Foundation
were a Verizon subsidiary, people would feel much differently about the
governance of the kernel. Likewise if the kernel were permissively licensed
rather than GPL'd.

 _> On a serious note, doesn't the license allow forks? Couldn't a large
company just fork it and make changes without Google's approval?_

The thrust of the point here is that forking the codebase is no good if you
can't convince people to install the browser and for websites to support the
browser. It's a social problem.

 _> is it not open "enough"? _

It's not. Open source gives users the freedom to fork. When forking isn't
enough to preserve user freedom, the next step is open governance, which
involves delegating decision-making power to users (with many interesting
structural varieties to choose from). Amusingly, I gave a speech on this topic
at All Things Open just a month ago.

------
vtesucks
What happens to chakra?

------
baybal2
Tell me this is a late April fools joke

------
nnq
1\. Embrace 2. ... 3. ... :)

------
akayoshi1
Edge is only useful to download Google Chrome and Firefox.

------
zouhair
Just buy Ubuntu and turn "windows" to a full on Linux Distro already.

------
thrower123
Broken shit should die. And Edge was definitely broke. Safari is next, with 5%
market. Chrome is the clear winner in the end.

~~~
alwillis
Certainly WebKit on iOS, macOS, and watchOS is much more than 5% of active web
users.

There are over 2 billion iOS devices and every browser on iOS—Firefox, Chrome,
Brave—uses WebKit.

~~~
kkarakk
not by choice

~~~
mr_toad
Even if iOS users had a real choice I suspect a lot of them wouldn’t bother
changing the default browser.

