Microsoft Edge "surrenders" to Google Chrome

In a recent announcement Microsoft have "capitulated" and will use the Chrome browser engine in future releases of MS Edge, with more frequent updates. MS will continue to offer additional features and enhancements in Edge over those found in Google Chrome.

According to reports, Google Chrome and Chrome based browsers now have about 80% of the browser market. By comparison, the number 2 browser, Firefox, has about 9% of the market.

Google have been adding features into their services, such as YouTube, that require Chrome browsers to work or work faster. One such "feature" added an empty "tag" to YouTube videos that, allegedly, did nothing in Chrome but required extra processing in other browsers such as Edge that had the effect of increasing the time needed for a video to load. Other "alleged tricks" included adding additional JavaScripts that slowed data processing on non-Chrome browsers. No-one is directly accusing Google of sabotage but it may be that Google now has such a dominating share of the market that they simply do not care about the compatibility of their services with other browser engines.

Despite the "big gorilla" analogy, Google have forced improvements in protocols used by the Web. For example, by developing their own HTTP protocol Google has forced the industry body that governs web protocols to twice upgrade HTTP to incorporate the newer and better Google protocols.

I'm one of the 9% using Firefox. Chrome is good and all, but even with 16 gb of RAM, it still gobbles up all my resources, and I suspect Edge will soon be the same way.

Matt

pware said:

In a recent announcement Microsoft have "capitulated" and will use the Chrome browser engine in future releases of MS Edge, with more frequent updates. MS will continue to offer additional features and enhancements in Edge over those found in Google Chrome.

According to reports, Google Chrome and Chrome based browsers now have about 80% of the browser market. By comparison, the number 2 browser, Firefox, has about 9% of the market.

Google have been adding features into their services, such as YouTube, that require Chrome browsers to work or work faster. One such "feature" added an empty "tag" to YouTube videos that, allegedly, did nothing in Chrome but required extra processing in other browsers such as Edge that had the effect of increasing the time needed for a video to load. Other "alleged tricks" included adding additional JavaScripts that slowed data processing on non-Chrome browsers. No-one is directly accusing Google of sabotage but it may be that Google now has such a dominating share of the market that they simply do not care about the compatibility of their services with other browser engines.

Despite the "big gorilla" analogy, Google have forced improvements in protocols used by the Web. For example, by developing their own HTTP protocol Google has forced the industry body that governs web protocols to twice upgrade HTTP to incorporate the newer and better Google protocols.

Click to expand...

Yes saw this on Ten Forums a few days ago, Edge is a dysfunctional mess IMO, heaven knows what sort of monster Microsoft will create with Chrome.

Don't think much of Chrome as a browser or Googles we know best web manipulation with probable ulterior motives. If Chrome is so "good" why the need for it to be bundled with dozens of utilities and programs and force fed to us? Still awaiting a response to my complaint to Google on that. (Not really expecting one)

Always used Mozilla Browsers from Netscape upwards, loyal Firefox and Thunderbird user ;o)

Google can only claim to have 80% of the browser market because it's installed on every flipping Android mobile device there is by default and gets installed by people not paying attention when downloading software it's been bundled with.

Not seen any issues with Youtube on Firefox here, think they have circumnavigated Google's current tricks.

IE is going unsupported someday ... Opera is my preferred browser and is fantastic

My GF's bank and other important websites only like Firefox

Chrome incessantly offers its advertisements to download Chrome constantly, as a complete pesterment.
But when you download Chrome, and now that you have downloaded Chrome, Chrome still incessantly offers its advertisements to download Chrome constantly, as a complete pesterment, even though you already have Chrome (and I never use Chrome)

cascaderailroad said:

IE is going unsupported someday

Click to expand...

That day has already arrived. There will be no new versions of IE after IE11 and while it will still be supported until the end of life for Win 10, that support will involve security and bug fixes only with no new features added. Back in 2015 MS announced that IE will be replaced by Edge.

I use Opera. I tried Edge and found the interface frustrating and then it ate all my freshly acquired bookmarks, among other issues such as not completely clearing history, and that really finished it for me. It's not like I go anywhere bad; it's just I like to clear the garbage after browsing a lot. I do a browser clean up at least once a week as part of my machine maintenance.

Firefox, like the original Netscape Navigator, was my favorite browser for quite sometime, but the latest iterations have been getting slower and slower, and really awful even compared to Edge. My brother told me about Opera and that works fine. It is based on the Chromium engine, however, but seems to handle everything I've loaded up except for one thing which required me to reluctantly load edge for and that was for my router because it's a bit older, and I don't go in there often anyway now that my nephews are no longer living with me and I don't need to block connections or manage network access.

Google Chrome its self was never a favorite even when it first came out. When I was working I had to support multiple browsers and the one that gave me the most trouble on the corporate network was Chrome and that soured me from it right from the beginning. Then later on they had an issue with their hardware acceleration causing hardware, especially laptops to overheat and crash, and the fact too that Google tracks everything we do online made me more reluctant to use their browser as well.

So nope no Chrome for me. I'll stick with Opera.

No one browser works with all sites. My main browser is Opera but use Chrome when I hit the occasional site that doesn't work right with it. (Trainz works fine on Opera.)

I use Chrome extensively at a couple of non-profits I volunteer with.

I like Firefox's features but why have three when two will do?

:B~)

I've been a Chrome user for as long as I can remember (not far these days :hehe. But there are some programs (I refuse to say App) that will kick off Edge anyway despite Chrome being the default. There are also some websites I've used that seem to be incompatible with Chrome and only want Edge.

Chrome does appear to be a resource hog. There are Chrome related things running when Chrome itself isn't running. Probably much the same crud that wants to "phone home" all the time to try and sell you stuff or look for updates for a program that hasn't been updated for a year or more.

Some day we might get a bare bones O/S that does what O/S's are supposed to do and just manage hardware. Then we could just add a user interface of choice.

pcas1986 said:

Some day we might get a bare bones O/S that does what O/S's are supposed to do and just manage hardware. Then we could just add a user interface of choice.

Click to expand...

Isn't that what Linux is supposed to be about? A core kernel and use whatever distro (Red Hat, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc) that you want and even select your own fav GUI.

pware said:

Isn't that what Linux is supposed to be about? A core kernel and use whatever distro (Red Hat, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc) that you want and even select your own fav GUI.

Click to expand...

Lurking behind all those distros is a Unix clone with commands so obscure that they are incomprehensible to normal people. I tried for many years to come to grips with Linux, mostly Ubuntu, but gave up because it was just too hard.

There are several browsers that are using Chromium (the engine that powers Google Chrome) and Opera (from version 15) is one of them. There are differences between Google Chrome and Chromium.

clam1952 said:

...Always used Mozilla Browsers from Netscape upwards, loyal Firefox and Thunderbird user ;o)

Google can only claim to have 80% of the browser market because it's installed on every flipping Android mobile device there is by default and gets installed by people not paying attention when downloading software it's been bundled with.

Not seen any issues with Youtube on Firefox here, think they have circumnavigated Google's current tricks.

Click to expand...

Likewise, I've always used Firefox and never had any problems!

Rob.

pcas1986 said:

Lurking behind all those distros is a Unix clone with commands so obscure that they are incomprehensible to normal people. I tried for many years to come to grips with Linux, mostly Ubuntu, but gave up because it was just too hard.

Click to expand...

I remember just enough to be dangerous from my Solaris support days.

I did grep some text the other day. I used the Ubuntu Linux add-on for Microsoft. It worked well, but I had to look up the grep command since the last time I grep'd anything was maybe 20 years ago. Grep was the only way I could extract some data I had piped to a text file from another process. It helped me gather the data I needed to then feed into a spreadsheet in CSV format.

I agree that the commands can be a bit obtuse.

But anyway back to topic. The amount of garbage now included in a Linux distro rivals what comes with Windows in some cases. The real Ubuntu release, that I run in a VM, has a bunch of stuff in there that's totally useless. The problem is I didn't know what I didn't need and didn't want to hunt and peck around for stuff only to find out something was missing so I installed the full package. I'm sure if I did a barebones install it would have been different, but the full install is about the same size as Windows 10 and with just as much garbage.

https://duckduckgo.com/

Does not place cookies onto your system. Does not snoop around and definitely not politicised.

I have been running DuckDuckGo on Win 10 and Android tablets and mobile phones for quite some time, and have not experienced any problems at all. Running on a VPN as well, I have not had any trojan or virus attacks, or any noticeable increase in directed marketing.
Well worth a look.

DuckDuckGo is good, but it is a Search Engine and not a browser, like Edge or Chrome.
As a Windows Insider who has been working with Edge since its inception, I'm fairly happy with its performance, attractive UI and adherence to web-standards.
It is in fact my default browser on most of my networked machines and also on my Android smartphones. So I'll miss it.
As a web designer and ISP, I need to run most browsers on my production machine, so that I can test the performance and appearance of my web apps, SSL and HTML pages before publication.
If they work without issues in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Edge, that's good enough for me. Anything else is a bonus.

I mostly use Chrome

Being Amish ... we paint over our Chrome with flat black paint

None of that English devils legtricity' in our home ... My PC is powered by a 5 gal propane tank ... lasts 4 years on one tank

About a year ago Firefox discovered the speed advantage it has lost was simply due to loading everything into memory. Calls to routines speed up and Firefox put out propaganda about their speedup. Last time I counted 15 sub-routines (old term) were in memory awaiting use. I will give Opera a try. It has been a few years since I looked at it. Does it have protections vis-a-vis collection of browsing data? Because MONEY is involved you are raw meat whose data can be a profit item. I do not believe any of the browser providers when it comes to security. Your security depends upon their morality and their need for cash. What would you do - your cost of maintaining a program is going into the red - would you sell some of that data you have allegedly collected for "product improvement"?

I've been using Brave for over a year now and I'm spoiled. Brave blocks all ads, pages load faster. Give it a try.