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.

Comments

This is McDonalds breaking down & serving whop

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no you DON'T just get to quietly admit defeat, there has to be public shaming! THEM'S THE RULES!

open sourcery FTW

[Tyger-ZA]

Now if Windows can be turned into an MS branded *nix distro things would be even better

Re:open sourcery FTW

[idontusenumbers]

At least part of Edge is already open source:
https://github.com/Microsoft/C...

Re: open sourcery FTW

[Tough Love]

KHTML is a fork of webkit

Wrong, it's the other way round.

Re:open sourcery FTW

[jellomizer]

I like Linux and Unix systems and they are my preference when I can use them. However with Windows being turned to a *nix OS like OSX we will no longer have much diversity in Operating Systems, they will all be Unix or Unix Like OS's.
20 years ago, We had Windows, *Nix, VMS, MacOS...
A slew of OS's all with their own advantages and disadvantages. Going to one Style OS we are loosing options.

Re:open sourcery FTW

[jellomizer]

The KDE Project was mainly designed for a UI experience for *nix systems.

Re:open sourcery FTW

[gtall]

Relax, MS will only screw it up so it really won't be nix.

Really? That won't help.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Really? That won't help.

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess we still haven't forgiven or forgotten IE6. Any MS web browser should be treated with extreme suspicion.

Re:Really? That won't help.

[jma05]

They are probably not doing this to gain your trust.

It is probably either or both of
1. Rendering engine is not the differentiating feature of browsers anymore (for me it is, plugin ecosystem, security and privacy choices in design).
2. They understand that they cannot win the browser wars and chose not to spend any further money on the most expensive part of browser development.

They did this before. Microsoft only invested money in the browser when they intended to win the browser wars, and they did with IE. After that, they downsized their dev team. The web stagnated for years until Firefox emerged.

Re:Really? That won't help.

[AmiMoJo]

Which browser does AC trust?

Firefox - slyly installs binary plugins without consent, keeps adding new bullshit like Pocket

Chrome - allegedly spies on you

Vivaldi - has the same telemetry as Chrome (unique ID, IP address, some system info), malware protection

Opera - Chinese owned, same spying as Chrome

Safari - bundles more Apple crapware, UI is janky on Windows, Apple spies on you the same as Google does

Edge - Microsoft spyware

Maybe IE6 wasn't so bad...

Re:Really? That won't help.

[BlackOverflow]

It's Palemoon for me!

Re:Really? That won't help.

[AmiMoJo]

Brave has advertising spyware built in. https://brave.com/about-ad-rep...

They gotta make their money somehow.

Time to move fro IE to Edge

[louzer]

I guess now banks and B2B companies will now feel comfortable to use Edge now that Microsoft has stopped supporting it.

Re:Time to move fro IE to Edge

[ArhcAngel]

Heh, If that were actually the reason corporations still use IE. Try hundreds of thousands of corporate apps/intranet web sites dependent on ActiveX. Microsoft abandoned their JAVA competitor but aint no CIO that wants to foot the bill to retool all of those corporate web apps to something else as long as IE 11 still works on Windows 10.

Re: Time to move fro IE to Edge

[cyber-vandal]

Not to mention SharePoint 2013/2016 still needs to run in IE10 mode on IE11.

as the old saying goes

[jessepdx]

Edge downloads Chrome faster than any other browser

Re:as the old saying goes

[AmiMoJo]

PROTIP: Use a package manager like Chocolatey to avoid needing to open Edge at all! Install it from a flash drive and then easily install/update all the software you need without visiting a dozen websites.

Scoop (https://github.com/lukesampson/scoop) is pretty good too. Fewer packages but you can install it directly from PowerShell without even a flash drive or browser.

Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Windows will run on a Linux kernel too

[Eravnrekaree]

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.

Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too

[Arzaboa]

It seemed like they have wanted to get rid of the kernel since at least the days they were sued from inter-coding IE and windows. Will be interesting to see the timeline.

--
The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow -- Bill Gates

Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too

[Gravis Zero]

Fuck that. DirectX should just die. If you want to play "older" DX based games then there is always WINE and the Vulkan implementation of D3D11/D3D10.

Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too

[rwbaskette]

The groundwork for doing this is already there.

SQL Server 2017 for Linux required the creation of a PAL (platform abstraction layer) that allows essential kernel function for SQL Server to run.

It's really interesting stuff.

Add a dash of gdi borrowed from wine and you might have something.

"SQL Server on Linux: How? Introduction":
https://cloudblogs.microsoft.c...

Re: Windows will run on a Linux kernel too

[Anonymous Coward]

At the time of XP it was a joke. At the time of vista it was an amusing idea. At the time of Windows 10 it seems that things look that way. Or, at least, Microsoft is working hard to abandon OS market altogether.

Frankly, IT market would be much better without Microsoft. At this point it is just an obstacle.

Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too

[phantomfive]

No one was claiming that at the time of XP: they were saying Linux would replace Windows, that is, users would switch. This would be Microsoft abandoning their kernel.

A compatibility layer on top of a Linux kernel? The only reason I have trouble seeing it happening is because the compatibility layer would take more effort than just keeping the Windows kernel around.

Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too

[Tyger-ZA]

I would love nothing more than to see DirectX DIAF but the truth is no developer is going to rewrite their existing code because there is no $$$ in it. Therefore, if I can get all my Steam games to work on a Linux kernel via a Microsoft derived Linux kernel/DirectX implementation I'm all for it.

Nobody implied developers should go rewrite their shit to remove DirectX

You could use the Linux version of Steam with Proton to make the Windows games from your Steam account work on Linux

And I just played the Windows version of Starcraft 2 on Linux using Lutris to configure the correct Wine version etc.

Re:Windows will run on a Linux kernel too

[rl117]

Linux has "POSIX.1e DRAFT" ACLs. They are functional, but limited, and based upon an unratified and abandoned draft standard. Other Unix sytems, like Solaris, IllumOS and FreeBSD, implemented NFSv4 ACLs which are both a ratified published standard and are compatible with both POSIX.1e DRAFT and Windows ACLs. (They are a superset of both.) If you're using NFSv4 ACLs they are modifiable and queryable from the command-line with get/setfacl and they are also modifiable and queryable from the Windows security/permissions property pages in the explorer (if exported via Samba or NFSv4). The whole ACL situation is limited by the fact that Linux hasn't implemented NFSv4 ACLs in the VFS. Yet filesystems like ZFS and NFSv4 use them, but they are hidden and inaccessible on Linux. If Linux implemented them, we would have pretty comprehensive and interoperable ACL support between all the major platforms.

Re:I feel bad for Microsoft

[Gravis Zero]

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.

Bad to have a Chromium monoculture

[aberglas]

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.

Re:Bad to have a Chromium monoculture

[markdavis]

>"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."

I agree. It is one of many reasons I use Firefox. And I suggest you do, too. And recommend it your friends and family.. It is a fine browser and deserves support. A mono culture (or near mono culture) in browsers is VERY VERY bad.... we lived through that nightmare once before.

It was not available on Windows 7 and 8

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving

[cyber-vandal]

Luckily Chrome doesn't spy on you

weird

[SuperDre]

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..

Won the war failed the objectives.

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Won the war failed the objectives.

[Rockoon]

Back in the late 1990's Microsoft won the browser war against Netscape

Microsoft didnt win. Netscape lost. It was a do-it-yourself mugging.

Netscape committed suicide.

Re:Won the war failed the objectives.

[DontBeAMoran]

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)

I don't know which parallel Universe you come from, but Safari pre-dates Chrome by more than five years. Also, Google used WebKit, Apple's fork of KHTML, until Chrome version 27. Starting with Chrome 28, it used Blink as its rendering engine which is Google's fork of WebKit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
January 7, 2003, at Macworld San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed its own web browser, called Safari. It was based on Apple's internal fork of the KHTML rendering engine, called WebKit.[9] The company released the first beta version, available only for Mac OS X, later

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The browser was first publicly released on September 2, 2008 for Windows XP and later, with 43 supported languages, officially a beta version,[33] and as a stable public release on December 11, 2008.

Re:Won the war failed the objectives.

[Junta]

While it may have been ill-advised, realistically netscape was screwed by the gigantic disadvantage of having to be downloaded in a time when 57 kbit was the typical internet bandwidth.

So they suffered from two things:
-Microsoft bundling it into the OS meant that *everyone* had a serviceable browser
-Netscape did not manage to overcome this through getting the OEMs to bundle their alternative (Hardware vendors wouldn't do this without getting paid to do so, and MS stood there with always deeper incentives for OEMs to *not* bundle Netscape).

There's no amount of doing the technology part of the browser better that could have saved them.

Re:Won the war failed the objectives.

[Pfhorrest]

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)

A couple important missing bits to note in your history here:

- Firefox is powered by Mozilla which was also the core of Netscape Navigator, so Firefox was basically the revenge of Netscape.

- WebKit was created by Apple (as a fork of the KHTML renderer from KDE) specifically to power Safari (all of the OSX/OpenStep/NeXTSTEP libraries are named something-Kit), and then Google adopted that for Chrome, so Safari isn't really just a side note, Safari is essentially the ancestor of Chrome.

Re:Won the war failed the objectives.

[im_thatoneguy]

You missed a third thing:

Netscape sucked. A lot. Everybody talks about 'standards' but Netscape was as guilty of being non-standards based as IE at the time. In fact a lot of the DHTML stuff that IE pioneered ended up forming the basis of quite a few technologies.

Also I'm just going to point out that CSS Box mode from IE is making a large resurgence because it was always arguably the more sane model.

IE vs Firefox or Opera was a completely different landscape than IE vs Netscape. IE vs Netscape was two incredibly proprietary non-standard browsers competing in the wild west. I switched to IE not because it was bundled but because I was so fed up with Netscape's poor technology.

Once it died and was resurrected as firefox while Microsoft abandoned IE development, Firefox started offering compelling technological advantages to switch but at the time Netscape was bad. That's what I think most people forget. They remember the Firefox vs IE days and just back project their memories of Firefox onto Netscape when that was far from the case.

Re:Won the war failed the objectives.

[fwarren]

The big problem with Active X security is if you ever downloaded a control and checked off "Trust Microsoft".

At that point any website could force a different version of an Microsoft signed active-x control to download.

So if there was a serious exploit was found in version 1.2 of a control, does not matter it is 5 years later and the user has version 1.8. When they visit your site you can force the download of version 1.2 and then execute your exploit.

There was just no way round this. If you had to do business with a trusted site that had active-x controls, if they ever got hacked AND you had ever clicked "Trust Microsoft" there was no way to defend against that.

Re: This is McDonalds breaking down & serving

[cyber-vandal]

I know but the world's most popular browser is Chrome so privacy is not why people are avoiding Edge.