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Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

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Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#251

Post by satyenr »

gdwatson wrote: post #242
satyenr wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think they intend to let Google control anything — least of all the future of the web. They have been burned too badly by them for that. They are more likely to do what Google did — they used WebKit in the early years of Chrome and then forked it to create Blink once it had gained enough traction. Microsoft is likely to do the same at some point — assuming their browser gains traction. And I, for one, hope it…

"... and Firefox is just not cutting it." What are your objections to modern Firefox? Most of the criticism I've heard is that it's become too much like Chrome. I'm quite happy with it personally.

To be honest, my experience with FF has not be been great in the recent years — although I do acknowledge that it has improved recently. I can’t point my finger at one thing — it was combination of little things that bothered me enough to make me switch to Safari and later Chrome.

That said, my comment was directed towards that FF’s market share is plunging rapidly and unless things change drastically, it might become another Opera — a niche browser at best. We need something that can counter Chrome and by extension, Google — something that developers have to support in addition to Chrome. FF has been playing that role nicely so far, but for how long? FF is not cutting it in terms of adoption — in terms of challenging the might of Chrome.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#253

Post by insulanus »

Osiris wrote: post #196
jccalhoun wrote: post #23

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.

It's interesting, I don't see this argument made against other open source projects that are dominant, such as the Linux kernel. I rarely see people saying that there need to be competing kernel projects with completely separate code bases but all trying to conform to the same ABI, etc. (Yes, I know there are other kernels out there, but my point is that people don't complain that Linux is so dominant like they do ab…

It comes down to who's in charge, and what their motivations are.

Google's motivations include learning everything about you, and how to serve you more ads.

Linus' motivations include writing solid code and flipping people the bird.

It's not just about the current situation, either.

When Linus finally goes to the bitbucket in the sky, there are so many companies, organizations and private individuals with an incentive to keep Linux operating and free from backdoors, we can somewhat rest easy at night.

But with Chromium/Chrome - there are only a handful of organizations in the world that can keep up with the rate of patches coming out of Google. Google de-facto controls the direction of Chromium.

I'm not saying that's worse than the alternative. Maintaining something like that is a hell of a lot of work. Unfortunately, things have become so complex and monolithic that there are only a handful of viable browsers.

At least two of them have source available, so we can start over if we absolutely have to.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#254

Post by ryacko »

pcwalton wrote: post #218
aphextron wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Yeah, this is just depressing and honestly a little baffling. Seems contrary to Microsoft's interests - why let Google control this aspect of the Web? Chromium != Google. Chromium is the FOSS project that Chrome is based off of.

An overwhelming majority of the committers to Chromium, as well as the leadership, are in the Google reporting structure.

Chromium is just a fork of WebKit, a fork of KHTML. Unless Microsoft is really planning on downsizing their web browser division, they’ll fork it instead of maintaining a rebranded patch set.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#256

Post by ngokevin »

baroffoos wrote: post #171
Klonoar wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mmmm isn't this effectively Gecko/Blink/WebKit now?

Soon to be Servo

There’s not much work on a pure Servo browser beyond experiment. They’ve just various uplifted Servo bits like webrenderer and stylo into Gecko.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#257

Post by colordrops »

TanakaTarou wrote: post #183

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 engin…

I can't quite put my finger on it but something feels wrong about blaming the general populace for Edge's failure as a browser. Microsoft is one of the wealthiest companies on Earth. They've had every opportunity to use every marketing channel and dump resources into the team to make Edge an obvious winner. But they didn't.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#258

Post by bayindirh »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #216
jhare wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we devs get the blame for avoiding their crap browser all that has burned us over and over? Repeatedly. For years. Hours and hours of frustration on this front. Encouraging the best-working alternative is the creation of monoculture? C'mon

Edge isn’t IE. That you don’t know that is indicative of the problem.

Edge is an evolution of Internet Explorer. They removed some of the quirks they have added over the years, modernized the engine, but it's Internet Explorer to its core. It's just rebranded.

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#259

Post by taneq »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #216
jhare wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do we devs get the blame for avoiding their crap browser all that has burned us over and over? Repeatedly. For years. Hours and hours of frustration on this front. Encouraging the best-working alternative is the creation of monoculture? C'mon

Edge isn’t IE. That you don’t know that is indicative of the problem.

The problem is that devs got so sick of IE6 not being standards compliant (despite the fact that it was released before the standards were finalised and it was so good that people kept using it for years) that they refused to even contemplate any MS web browser ever again?

Re: Microsoft is building a Chromium browser to replace Edge on Windows 10

#260

Post by gamblor956 »

colordrops wrote: post #257
TanakaTarou wrote: post #183

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 engin…

I can't quite put my finger on it but something feels wrong about blaming the general populace for Edge's failure as a browser. Microsoft is one of the wealthiest companies on Earth. They've had every opportunity to use every marketing channel and dump resources into the team to make Edge an obvious winner. But they didn't.

They want to avoid a second round of antitrust investigations. The first round was spurred in large part by the marketing push behind IE.
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