Microsoft Is Going Ahead And Rebuilding Edge Browser Atop Chromium

[mulenmar]

Ahem, the term is 'Ze'. You racist KKK Nazi bigot islamophobe.

Uh no, that's a pronoun, not a noun. Oh well -- if you're going to make transphobia-based "jokes" that make you look like an idiot, it reflects badly more on you than anyone else.

[squash]

I'm looking forward to this. Mozilla, it's time to start focusing your time and resources back on the browser and less on all those unrelated side projects. Constantly changing the layout of menus isn't innovating.

[L_A_G]

Lol, it's not "pragmatism", they just don't have much choice left.

They can't keep chest-thumping like back in the day.

They absolutely have the ability to continue forging their own path with their own proprietary implementations. If maintaining their market dominance in the desktop market despite Windows 8 and 10 being what they ended up as didn't prove that they have the desktop market by the proverbial testicles, then I don't know what does.

The reality is that their current management is very focused on the company's bottom line and clearly makes pragmatic decisions based on it. Under this reasoning, if they can shave off a couple of million in expenses by moving all of the expensive-to-develop-and-maintain components in Edge and Visual Studio to ones that are developed and maintained for free by third parties, then they'll do that the same way they'll host Linux instances on Azure if there's a demand for them. There's simply no reason to give their competitors an edge by allowing them to host everything while themselves sticking to only a part of the market.

As for if this is wise in the long run, I seriously doubt that, but at that point the current management has long since left to company and sold off their stock options.

[starshipeleven]

They absolutely have the ability to continue forging their own path with their own proprietary implementations.

No they don't.

If maintaining their market dominance in the desktop market despite Windows 8 and 10 being what they ended up as didn't prove that they have the desktop market by the proverbial testicles, then I don't know what does.

Yeah, market dominance with XP taking ages to actually die off, and Windows 7 (released like 10 years ago and somewhat near to the end of the support) still holding more than 50% marketshare. If we look at Win8 or Win10 numbers it's a fucking joke.

It only proves that people won't upgrade their hardware they bought unless they really need to.

And let me tell you, it will be efen funnier when most of those 50% Win7 users will remain on Win7 after 2020 and it goes out of support.

The reality is that their current management is very focused on the company's bottom line and clearly makes pragmatic decisions based on it.

As was the older guard. It's just that now what makes the most sense is to rebadge Chrome to have at least some kind of decent and working browser instead of trying to push their own implementation that is still sucking after a massive rewrite.

host Linux instances on Azure if there's a demand for them. There's simply no reason to give their competitors an edge by allowing them to host everything while themselves sticking to only a part of the market.

Which is the same thing I'm saying. They are not changed, the market they are in did. They wouldn't be able to get away with that now, so they don't. Back then they did got away fine with most of their shit, so why not doing it and earn billions?

As for if this is wise in the long run, I seriously doubt that,

Nah it's OK, none really needed IE or Edge anyway, MS only needs a MS-branded browser for PR reasons now that they can't force their shit on the Internet (i.e. ActiveX for example) anymore.

[L_A_G]

No they don't.

Just claiming something doesn't make it true or even an argument. When you claim something like that, you need to base it on something.

Yeah, market dominance with XP taking ages to actually die off, and Windows 7 (released like 10 years ago and somewhat near to the end of the support) still holding more than 50% marketshare. If we look at Win8 or Win10 numbers it's a fucking joke.

The most recent figures I've seen hold 7 at about 41%, 10 at 36% and 8 at about 5% with the longer period trend showing that when people move on from older versions, they move on to Windows 10.

And let me tell you, it will be efen funnier when most of those 50% Win7 users will remain on Win7 after 2020 and it goes out of support.

Considering how XP saw a pretty sharp drop after it went out of support I seriously doubt this. Particularly when compatibility was a very big part of the reason why so many people stuck with XP and there's way fewer compatibility issues between 7 and 10 than there were between XP and 7 or Vista. Microsoft hasn't re-architected major parts of Windows like they did between XP and Vista meaning that in probably 90% of cases 10 will be a drop-in replacement.

Thus just about all of the hold-outs will obviously be technically illiterate people who don't know how to upgrade their OS and just use what the machine came installed with. This is also the reason why Android has always been such a fragemented mess.

As was the older guard. It's just that now what makes the most sense is to rebadge Chrome to have at least some kind of decent and working browser instead of trying to push their own implementation that is still sucking after a massive rewrite.

Not sure what your point is there considering my point was that having your own proprietary implementation is basically just a money pit in this day and age.

Which is the same thing I'm saying. They are not changed, the market they are in did. They wouldn't be able to get away with that now, so they don't. Back then they did got away fine with most of their shit, so why not doing it and earn billions?

If you think Linux having a significant marketshare on servers is a new thing, then you're completely clueless. The only thing that's actually changed is that rather than hosting those virtual machines companies' own servers, companies are now outsourcing the hosting of their virtual machines to "cloud" providers like Microsoft and Amazon. Before this Microsoft only got paid for the software, now they're getting paid for the whole deal, including instances of OSs and software not their own.

In other words: When companies would previously host their own Linux VMs Microsoft didn't get any money from it, now when they're acting as a hosting provider they're also getting paid to host products not their own. It basically is just Microsoft taking over work previously handled by companies' own IT departments.

Nah it's OK, none really needed IE or Edge anyway, MS only needs a MS-branded browser for PR reasons now that they can't force their shit on the Internet (i.e. ActiveX for example) anymore.

Considering how Microsoft didn't try to add anything even remotely like ActiveX into Edge you're way off the mark there with that ActiveX remark. They probably did create Edge for reasons similar as to why Apple created Safari and for similar reasons they're now going to base it on open source code.

[starshipeleven]

Just claiming something doesn't make it true or even an argument. When you claim something like that, you need to base it on something.

I did so with the rest of my post.

Considering how XP saw a pretty sharp drop after it went out of support I seriously doubt this. Particularly when compatibility was a very big part of the reason why so many people stuck with XP and there's way fewer compatibility issues between 7 and 10 than there were between XP and 7 or Vista. Microsoft hasn't re-architected major parts of Windows like they did between XP and Vista meaning that in probably 90% of cases 10 will be a drop-in replacement.

That's the same reason why most won't switch until the hardware dies.

Thus just about all of the hold-outs will obviously be technically illiterate people who don't know how to upgrade their OS and just use what the machine came installed with. This is also the reason why Android has always been such a fragemented mess.

That's most of the userbase.

Not sure what your point is there considering my point was that having your own proprietary implementation is basically just a money pit in this day and age.

My point is that current MS leaders aren't "more pragmatic" than older gen, it's just the situations that make the old approach unfeasible.

If you think Linux having a significant marketshare on servers is a new thing, then you're completely clueless.

I don't. Where did I claim it?

Considering how Microsoft didn't try to add anything even remotely like ActiveX into Edge you're way off the mark there with that ActiveX remark.

The age when MS tried to impose stuff on the Internet was over well before Edge (MS has been in the w3c for the HTML5 thing together with Google and others since mid-IE11 era. They were just way too slow to actually give up their pride.

My point "none really needed IE or Edge anyway, MS only needs a MS-branded browser for PR reasons now that they can't force their shit on the Internet (i.e. ActiveX for example) anymore." still stands.

[L_A_G]

That's the same reason why most won't switch until the hardware dies.

When compatibility is mostly a non-issue from Vista onwards I really doubt people will stick to versions of it past the end of extended support for any other reason than ineptitude. Windows Vista had extended support run out last year and it's pretty much dropped off the face of the earth at this point. Thus I doubt it's successor will be any different when it's extended support runs out.

That's most of the userbase.

Home users maybe, but corporate users don't tend to leave gaping security holes like that in their systems. Not only that, home users also upgrade their machines more often so those pre-2012 machines are probably going to be mostly gone by next year and Microsoft has been pushing Windows 10 almost like a service pack, meaning that a lot of people who normally wouldn't be upgrading their machines will have done so.

My point is that current MS leaders aren't "more pragmatic" than older gen, it's just the situations that make the old approach unfeasible.

My point was that the continued dominance of Microsoft despite blunders shows that the old approach still most definitely still works.

I don't. Where did I claim it?

When you went around talking about how the market had somehow changed to no longer be in Microsoft's favor... In reality nothing has really changed on the front of what OSs people are running. All that's actually changed is where companies' server VMs are run and Microsoft has simply gotten in on this "cloud provider" market.

As a result Microsoft has more control of the market, not less, as they've also become a major player in the virtual server hosting business. This is a big part of the reason why they're posting profits better than what they've seen in a long while.

The age when MS tried to impose stuff on the Internet was over well before Edge (MS has been in the w3c for the HTML5 thing together with Google and others since mid-IE11 era. They were just way too slow to actually give up their pride.

My point "none really needed IE or Edge anyway, MS only needs a MS-branded browser for PR reasons now that they can't force their shit on the Internet (i.e. ActiveX for example) anymore." still stands.

Ok... Now you're just arguing for the sake of arguing rather than actually presenting some kind of meaningful difference of opinion.

[skeevy420]

It's strange how a Linux forum can be so negative towards FOSS behemoths like Chromium, when Linux itself is a FOSS behemoth. The largest of them all.

We're not negative towards FOSS behemoths; we're negative towards Google. They've done too much shady crap since they dropped the "Don't Be Evil" motto & became Alphabet.

[starshipeleven]

When compatibility is mostly a non-issue from Vista onwards I really doubt people will stick to versions of it past the end of extended support for any other reason than ineptitude. Windows Vista had extended support run out last year and it's pretty much dropped off the face of the earth at this point. Thus I doubt it's successor will be any different when it's extended support runs out.

Vista had near non-existant userbase even before, and it was also installed on hardware that was still subject to obsolescence as performance was still increasing.

Home users maybe, but corporate users don't tend to leave gaping security holes like that in their systems.

Most corporate users don't show up in these "marketshare" numbers as they don't have internet access or it is extremely limited inside their corporate network.

My point was that the continued dominance of Microsoft despite blunders shows that the old approach still most definitely still works.

And I said that it is wrong because once you have monopoly you can pretty much do all you want and still come out on top.

Where they failed is when they tried to set a foot outside of their stronghold, server, mobile, embedded.

When you went around talking about how the market had somehow changed to no longer be in Microsoft's favor...

Because it did. They are not anymore in a position where they can dictate Internet standards (IE share is dangerously low), not on server, nor on embedded.

Guess where they are most "progressive"? Where they can't just push the same crap.

As a result Microsoft has more control of the market, not less, as they've also become a major player in the virtual server hosting business. This is a big part of the reason why they're posting profits better than what they've seen in a long while.

Still not anywhere near monopoly, which is why they are conforming to the rules set by others and allow any VM to run on Azure.

Ok... Now you're just arguing for the sake of arguing rather than actually presenting some kind of meaningful difference of opinion.

I'm just repeating the same point I keep repeating. MS has no real reason to truly have their own browser anymore, they only need to carry on their brand for PR purposes.

This isn't a fruit of more "progressive" leadership, unlike what you post, but because the market has changed and now they can't just push their thing anymore.

[re:fi.64]

changes requiring a signoff by Google employees.

Literally every OSS project requires approval from its main contributors, and even CPython uses a CLA.