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Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge

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Re: Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge

#51

Post by lowercased »

skrebbel wrote: post #14

I'm still sad they didn't partner with Firefox instead. It would suit the strategy of The New Microsoft very well to ensure competition in the browser market, and making an Firefox-based Edge plus a Firefox-based Electron clone would've been an amazing way to do that. They've shown competence in embracing, extending, and contributing back to OSS (eg they were instrumental in Nodejs getting to its amazing cross platfo…

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

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

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

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

Re: Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge

#53

Post by harel »

hurrrrrrrr wrote: post #52
harel wrote: post #2

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

Apparently it's mostly a "when". https://twitter.com/kylealden/status/1115307632124780545

"our build system runs on Linux"

I wonder if that was a "thing" a few years ago, or Linux being used as a build step in windows development a new thing at Microsoft.

Re: Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge

#54

Post by Fnoord »

lowercased wrote: post #51
skrebbel wrote: post #14

I'm still sad they didn't partner with Firefox instead. It would suit the strategy of The New Microsoft very well to ensure competition in the browser market, and making an Firefox-based Edge plus a Firefox-based Electron clone would've been an amazing way to do that. They've shown competence in embracing, extending, and contributing back to OSS (eg they were instrumental in Nodejs getting to its amazing cross platfo…

I had a chat with an MS guy who had some insight on this issue. There was some internal discussion about it, but there were 2 issues re: firefox which led them against it (and they're somewhat related). Firstly, I'm paraphrasing here, but FF isn't as much a business as it is a religion (re: privacy). You can read a lot in to that, but I understood the gist of what they were getting at. Secondly, somewhat relatedly, b…

You could argue Google is a religion for some people. Google Chrome is the popular browser. And doesn't #2 apply on Google Chrome as well?

> However you look at it, MS has not had a good run in promoting their own browser tech against competitors [...]

Recently, yes. Because they screwed up their MSIE market dominance with embrace & extend. With which market dominance they put the WWW in a dark age of incompatibility. From which Mozilla and Firefox (and Konqueror, Safari, and Google Chrome) eventually flourished.

Re: Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge

#55

Post by realusername »

lowercased wrote: post #51
skrebbel wrote: post #14

I'm still sad they didn't partner with Firefox instead. It would suit the strategy of The New Microsoft very well to ensure competition in the browser market, and making an Firefox-based Edge plus a Firefox-based Electron clone would've been an amazing way to do that. They've shown competence in embracing, extending, and contributing back to OSS (eg they were instrumental in Nodejs getting to its amazing cross platfo…

I had a chat with an MS guy who had some insight on this issue. There was some internal discussion about it, but there were 2 issues re: firefox which led them against it (and they're somewhat related). Firstly, I'm paraphrasing here, but FF isn't as much a business as it is a religion (re: privacy). You can read a lot in to that, but I understood the gist of what they were getting at. Secondly, somewhat relatedly, b…

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

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

Re: Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge

#57

Post by magicalhippo »

skrebbel wrote: post #14

I'm still sad they didn't partner with Firefox instead. It would suit the strategy of The New Microsoft very well to ensure competition in the browser market, and making an Firefox-based Edge plus a Firefox-based Electron clone would've been an amazing way to do that. They've shown competence in embracing, extending, and contributing back to OSS (eg they were instrumental in Nodejs getting to its amazing cross platfo…

How easy is it to embed the Firefox core though? I know several projects embedding Chromium, such as Steam for example. Haven't seen anyone doing the same with the Firefox core.

Re: Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge

#58

Post by bshacklett »

svenfaw wrote: post #50
ygra wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

Undead, perhaps?

Re: Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge

#59

Post by giancarlostoro »

vbezhenar wrote: post #48
giancarlostoro wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when they say they removed these they mean source code wise not just some compiler flag? Thus making it a proper fork that will deviate over time, not some simple Chromium renamed project. So we may or may not see them pull in Chromium changesets depending on needs. My biggest hope is that no matter how much Microsoft changes (Chakra instead of V8 would be very interesting to see) that it will remain fully and pro…

Webkit based on KHTML, component of KDE.

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

Re: Google features that Microsoft turned off in Chromium Edge

#60

Post by bwat48 »

_ZeD_ wrote: post #42
ygra wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chromium has been designed to be embedded in other applications. Gecko, as far as I've heard, is a clusterfuck to get working in anything but Firefox.

khtml was designed to be embedded. I don't know about webkit/chromium stuff

I'm not a programmer myself, but it's my understanding that chromium is pretty well suited to being embedded.

Just look at how successful chromium has been in this space, stuff like Chromium Embedded framework, Electron, the myriad of chromium based web browsers etc...

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