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Microsoft is Building a Chromium-powered Web Browser That Will Replace Edge on Windows 10: Report (windowscentral.com)
Microsoft is throwing in the towel with Edge and is building a new web browser for Windows 10, this time powered by Chromium, news blog Windows Central reported Monday. From the report: Microsoft's Edge web browser has seen little success since its debut on Windows 10 back in 2015. Built from the ground up with a new rendering engine known as EdgeHTML, Microsoft Edge was designed to be fast, lightweight, and secure, but launched with a plethora of issues which resulted in users rejecting it early on. Edge has since struggled to gain any traction, thanks to its continued instability and lack of mindshare, from users and web developers.
Because of this, I'm told that Microsoft is throwing in the towel with EdgeHTML and is instead building a new web browser powered by Chromium, a rendering engine first popularized by Google's Chrome browser. Codenamed Anaheim, this new web browser for Windows 10 will replace Edge as the default browser on the platform. It's unknown at this time if Anaheim will use the Edge brand or a new brand, or if the user interface between Edge and Anaheim is different. One thing is for sure, however; EdgeHTML in Windows 10's default browser is dead.
Because of this, I'm told that Microsoft is throwing in the towel with EdgeHTML and is instead building a new web browser powered by Chromium, a rendering engine first popularized by Google's Chrome browser. Codenamed Anaheim, this new web browser for Windows 10 will replace Edge as the default browser on the platform. It's unknown at this time if Anaheim will use the Edge brand or a new brand, or if the user interface between Edge and Anaheim is different. One thing is for sure, however; EdgeHTML in Windows 10's default browser is dead.
Oh no you DON'T just get to quietly admit defeat, there has to be public shaming! THEM'S THE RULES!
Now if Windows can be turned into an MS branded *nix distro things would be even better
Spoiler: The rendering engine is not the reason I don't trust your web browser, nor will switching to Chromium get me to actually use it.
I guess now banks and B2B companies will now feel comfortable to use Edge now that Microsoft has stopped supporting it.
Heroes die once, cowards live longer.
Edge downloads Chrome faster than any other browser
It's probably more about someone finally realizing that, there's a high quality rendering engine available for free for them to use.
Microsoft will still have their own branded browser... But nobody is making money off of the rendering engine, and it's the hardest part of the browser to build/optimize.
Might as well leave the non-money making part to others while MS engineers focus on browser shell, money making services etc.
Next thing they will be replacing the Windows kernel with the Linux kernel with a Win32 compatibility layer for running Windows apps on Linux, and a driver compatibility layer for existing Windows drivers. I'm not kidding. Mark my words. It will happen. Will also include even moving the Windows GUI over to Microsoft's own Wayland server. The UI look and feel will be maintaining but the underlying architecture replaced with wayland with a compatability layer for Win32 apps.
Microsoft is a cloud company, the Windows kernel really is just an added expense that it wants to shed so will move Windows over to a Linux kernel, seamlessly, due to the compatibility layer, windows apps and drivers will run fine. They can thus share development costs with other users of Linux.
This is exactly whats happening with Edge as well. Overall, its a pretty good thing, actually.
Microsoft could really change some minds and win some hearts. They've done a lot of good things, and Satya Nadella has done a lot to win me over. I wanted to love Edge, and I've tried over and over, but never succeeded. If Microsoft is really willing to change their course, this could be a huge step in winning me, and people like me back.
Unfortunately I can't forget the past. Twenty years of pain and suffering from their decisions has made me reluctant to trust them. I can't help but remember all the things they've done to abuse their customers. I was a Linux at home guy for decades thanks to Microsoft failing to provide a system I could really make do what I wanted or needed. I've been on Windows 10 at home for nearly a year now and thanks to WSL and Chrome, I almost don't miss it. Give me bash and Chrome and they're getting close. An abused dog takes a long time to learn to trust. We've all been the abused dog by Microsoft, we want to love and hope, we want to believe. This time, we hope it will be different, but we don't trust easily.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
I feel bad for Microsoft. They have been trying very hard to support all the standards.
Don't because those assholes only implement standard when they have no other choice. Microsoft has a long history of trying to undermine standards with purposely shitty support.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Windows subsystem for Linux is the thin edge of the wedge... gradually build more stuff to run on WSL, and then a few years from now, everything flips, and instead of running linux apps in a windows host, the base os will be linux, and the windows apps will be running in wine... and it will still cost >100$ to buy the *license* bute they can fire almost all their OS folks, and their cost will be nil. If they play their cards right, just us nerds will notice.
If there ends up being only one main source for all vendors then HTML will be defined by whatever the code does rather than by any standards process. And then it will be very difficult to move on if Chromium goes bad. Which means that there will be no incentive to make Chromium good.
whether open source or not. It is going to be interesting to see how we address open source monopolies.
Microsoft used to bridge between OS versions, e.g. IE6 and .NET were available for Win 9x, IE7 and IE8 were available for XP.
No such work was to run Edge on previous versions, so a billion people were not able to run Edge and had to run other browsers for years. Millions people using Windows 10 for the first time in 2017, 2018 or 2019 thus have little reason to run Edge.
I think this is a reason for Windows 8 (RT) store and apps failures as well, back then people may have had been curious about tablet-like ipad-like applications on their desktop (this was still relatively new in 2012, smartphones not universal yet, blackberry still around). They didn't backport it to Windows 7 so they left out hundreds millions users.
I'm dumbfounded by this news still. A very bad news it means Google Chrome dictating the web. Does the oligarchy divide the cake (entire globalized world) between themselves? Microsoft keeps the desktop OS and legacy Office, Google gets the web, Amazon gets retail, Facebook is the ultimate real identity verifier and anonymity killer, Atlantic Council pilots the censorship, European Union writes the laws, Finance e.g. Goldman Sachs and central banks blackmail the governments.
Several such compatiblilty layers already exist. Without Microsoft's help, or patents and copyrights. Microsoft could buy Codeweavers (Crossover) for less than Microsoft spends on toilet paper.
Projects like Wine have to develop a shim for each part without even seeing the code they are working with, much less being able to change anything. Microsoft would have the luxury of being able to adapt their systems to make compatibility easier. That makes the task easier than what Crossover and others are already doing.
Wine, Crossover, etc have to analyze each new update from Microsoft and try to catch up. Each update makes their job harder. If Microsoft owned the compatibility layer, each update would make the job *easier*. For example, whenever they dump their old browser they'd make the new one be Linux-friendly without any extra layer. Perhaps by starting with Chromium.
It won't help much, there are many Chromium forks and none of them is mainstream.
Luckily Chrome doesn't spy on you
I've got more instabilities with Chrome than actually with Edge. Both have their plusses. Biggest problem with chrome was that it was doing exactly what people bitcht at with IE6, but a lot of webdevs didn't mind this time, as it was their prefered browser.. a lot of times they don't even check their sites with Edge, which is even more HTML5 compliant than Chrome.. Ahwel, I don't care (like a lot of people), as long as I can browse..
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because I'm tired of it eating up all my RAM. I'm pretty tired of these browsers forcing me to upgrade hardware to handle the performance and data footprint that they sell as "fast" and "feature rich". What is it worth if my perfectly stable old machine can't handle it?
Back in the late 1990's Microsoft won the browser war against Netscape. However they had failed to reach the objective of such war.
Microsoft never really liked the World Wide Web. With Windows 95 it came with rather limited IE browser (in essence a tool to download Netscape) but at the time they really didn't care much, because they were pushing MSN service to compete against AOL. These services at the time were less an ISP but a large multi-node BBS with graphics. That was the direction they wanted to go. The internet and WWW was just for academic and those looser who had those Unix based servers.
However the Web Grew in popularity, and Netscape was getting big, and showing a future of an OS independent system, where the browser was king. This future was a threat to Microsoft, however it seemed inevitable. So Microsoft started the browser war by beefing up IE to compete with Netscape (Which was a bold move at the time, as most applications that come with the OS were just small tools that just barely get the job done, eg. notepad, wordpad, calc, paint ). Now Microsoft is on its EEE strategy. Embrace the Web, Extend it with its own custom html commands and http protocol changes, then being able to kill it, because what everyone is using is so far from the normal web, there isn't any point to it anymore.
With Windows 98 and the embedded full feature browser. It fully Embraced the web, and basically killed Netscape. Then they were in the process of Extending, with some ideas that are still common such as CSS, and others that are just a bad idea such as Active X, and Sliverlight. However Microsoft got stuck on IE 6 for way too long, and the Active X became a security nightmare. Microsoft extensions made people to not trust Microsoft, as their systems were getting hacked, often working around firewalls and all the other best practices at the time, because a trusted sight may had a less then trustful advertiser which would run applications on your PC.
This security problem brought in a new lightweight browser called Firefox. Which supported the standards much better then IE, was faster and didn't use the stuff that allowed people to break into the computer. Then Firefox grew where it started to be too big, that is where Google Chrome came in (at around the same time Safari came in for Apple also based on WebKit)
Now the growth of the WebKit based browsers, now meant for browsing the Web, it really doesn't matter if you are using Linux, Windows, MacOS or even some of the lesser known OS's such as the BSD's. And Netscapes vision of nearly all your applications being web based is nearly true today. Now Microsoft is having to fight to keep its market share, and having to deal with mobile devices with Apple and Google based OS's. Microsoft is still going strong, but they had to change their business model a lot.
So they had won the browser war but failed the objective. Now with them trying to put effort into a rendering engine is just wasting resources. Going to a WebKit chromium browser will probably just let them focus more on what they really want to focus on and less on trying to get a better HTML5 support score.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I know but the world's most popular browser is Chrome so privacy is not why people are avoiding Edge.
I avoid it because it's just a way to try to make me use Bing/Cortana.
No sig today...
This was the thing I never understood about Firefox. I have been using SeaMonkey for a very long time now. When Firefox came out they removed a whole bunch of stuff, but from day 1 it was a larger download, took more RAM and started slower.
Now it still is larger, takes up more RAM, starts slower, has more bloat and is removing old standards.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
"Microsoft is a cloud company, ..."
Cloudy thinking?
Microsoft seems to me to be extremely badly managed. Some of the many, many stories:
Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC." (Aug. 4, 2015)
Microsoft's Intolerable Windows 10 Aggression (May 27, 2016)
Microsoft is infesting Windows 10 with annoying ads (March 17, 2017)
Microsoft, stop sabotaging Windows 10. (March 21, 2017)
There is no way to justify Microsoft managers operating the company like that. If Microsoft had paid $100,000,000 for negative advertising, it wouldn't have gotten such extremely bad results, in my opinion.
Somebody could make one, but few would want to pay for it at first, and once you got traction, the major players would just add 'corporate mode' and eat your lunch after stealing your best ideas in whatever way was least likely to lose them a case in patent court.