Microsoft Is Going Ahead And Rebuilding Edge Browser Atop Chromium

[Vistaus]

Mozilla: The last man standing

[L_A_G]

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.

Vista, being the OS that probably 90% of desktops and laptops shipped on from early 2007 to mid 2009, most definitely didn't have a "miniscule" market share. It may not have been a breakout success like 7, but it came pre-installed on more those types of machines than have ever come pre-installed with Linux.

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.

I'd recommend that you get out more and actually get a job because corporate desktops most definitely have access to the open internet with pretty few restrictions. Not only that, people on average spend a couple of hours goofing off at work every day, most of that time going towards browsing the web.

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.

If you think you can't lose a dominant market share, then man do you not know much about the history of industry...

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

They may not have been particularly successful in getting into mobile devices, the only embedded market they've really tried to get into are larger semi-desktops and have actually been pretty successful in getting into cash registers (you see ones running Windows CE all the time) but they've been pretty successful in servers since the modern webserver came into existence in the 90s. They may not dominate it like they dominate the desktop market, but they do have a pretty substantial roughly 30% cut of the web server market.

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.

Microsoft has never had anything resembling a dominant market share in servers nor have they really even tried to get into embedded systems at large. However having their own browser was always a prestige project so when it comes to any real market control things are as they've been for the last couple of decades.

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.

I never said that they had gotten anything resembling a monopoly in virtual machine hosting, so you're going a bit hurp-a-derp again, just that they've been able to increase their market by getting even Linux users dependent on their service.

Like it or not, but hosting Linux guests on Azure only helps them gain more control over the server market and helps them make more money.

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.

You're still repeating something over and over again as if it was somehow in dispute. Yes, we get it, you hate microsoft and want to vent your hatred of the company.

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.

Progressive? I said they're more pragmatic than the old guard they replaced. Is your reading comprehension that bad or is it that you don't know what that word means?

Because I get the felling somebody needs to go read a dictionary...

[om26er]

They said they would support other platforms such as macOS. I wonder if there will be a Snap release for GNU/Linux such as they've done with some of their other apps like Skype and Spotify.

Before the Snap to actually exist, the browser itself would need to be built for Linux based environments, which I believe will be "third" on their list of platforms (macOS being the second) to support.

[gbcox]

I understand very well the point, Microsoft's browser will be based on an open source engine instead of being a proprietary engine, for me it's a half-win. I understand your speech that this decreases the choice, but it was still a choice between a proprietary software and an open source, no one will miss it. It would be different if this happened with Firefox, because at Chromium the only alternative is Firefox, nothing has changed.

You're still not quite understanding the point and the implications - especially for something as important as the direction of web technologies. Mozilla spells it out here:

[molecule-eye]

I find this pathetic from a giant like MS. They don't have the resources or interest to continue developing their own browser engine even though they helped pioneer the web browser? As if there aren't enough chromium/blink based browsers out their already!

[torsionbar28]

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.

Some people self-identify using pronouns, some people self-identify using nouns. Personally, I'm an astro-sexual, my sexual preferences are intergalactic. I'm sorry, but there's simply no room for your kind of hate and intolerance here in 2018. You have phobias that don't even exist yet you KKK Hitler Nazi.

[tildearrow]

Mozilla: The last man standing

Ironically, Mozilla's name is engraved on the hands of every browser today (see User-Agent).

[Charlie68]

You're still not quite understanding the point and the implications - especially for something as important as the direction of web technologies. Mozilla spells it out here:

Mah! I remember that we started from a situation where IE Windows browser pre-installed held 90% of the market, in those times people believed that IE was the web, today Chrome holds 60% of the market, it is not pre-installed on any desktop platform, as a result it is a choice of the user to install it. The rest is Firefox, which thanks to huge management errors has lost many users, but still has a good share of users. The rest are small irrelevant browsers. I understand very well the danger you refer to, but I prefer the current situation to that of a few years ago. In the end, today, users choose and if Firefox will work well there will be no problems with monopolies and no one can rule out that tomorrow a new browser will be born with a whole new engine, the future is always unpredictable.

[TemplarGR]

I find this pathetic from a giant like MS. They don't have the resources or interest to continue developing their own browser engine even though they helped pioneer the web browser? As if there aren't enough chromium/blink based browsers out their already!

Why would they do that? Edge is already a respectable browser and its marketshare is abysmal. Pouring money on a lost cause is not a sensible thing to do for any company. It is the same reason AMD graphics don't really compete at the very high end anymore. In the end, even when AMD has the better cards, the 600$+ segment still buys Nvidia no matter what. So why invest R&D into competing there?

[Kano]

MS is moving in the right direction. My only use for Edge was the integration of VR videos directly into the browser using WMR. IE11 will be still used for Java and very old websites. After supporting Linux binaries the last step would be bundling an X server into the system. Future projects could be port Active Directory completely to Linux, RSAT support for Linux Powershell and of course MS Office for Linux. It could all happen over time. The Windows as a service idea is somewhat becoming pretty time/work intensive for companies. It would be more than enough to have got a new main build every 1-2 years - but fully tested of course. Some features are a bit less known (like WindowsToGo) but with the "right" USB 3 controller you could take your Windows games/apps to a friend with an external drive - with Linux this was possible much longer and the USB 3 controllers do not really matter that much but MS certainly looks at Open Source for ideas and integrates them. Even curl was added - but I prefer wget. ssh is possible too, but to connect to older Linux systems Putty is still needed due to limited cipher support. Waiting for the next news...