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posted by martyb on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the new-shiny! dept.

Microsoft is building a Chromium-powered web browser that will replace Edge on Windows 10

Microsoft's Edge web browser has seen little success since its debut on Windows 10 back in 2015. Built from the ground up with a new rendering engine known as EdgeHTML, Microsoft Edge was designed to be fast, lightweight, and secure, but launched with a plethora of issues which resulted in users rejecting it early on. Edge has since struggled to gain any traction, thanks to its continued instability and lack of mindshare, from users and web developers.

Because of this, I'm told that Microsoft is throwing in the towel with EdgeHTML and is instead building a new web browser powered by Chromium, a rendering engine first popularized by Google's Chrome browser. Codenamed Anaheim, this new web browser for Windows 10 will replace Edge as the default browser on the platform. It's unknown at this time if Anaheim will use the Edge brand or a new brand, or if the user interface between Edge and Anaheim is different. One thing is for sure, however; EdgeHTML in Windows 10's default browser is dead.

Report: Windows Lite is Microsoft's long-awaited answer to Chrome OS

The success of Google's Chromebook hardware and Chrome OS software wasn't an inevitability, but the ease of use they afford ended up allowing Google to carve out a niche in a very crowded PC marketplace. Ever since Chrome OS entered the scene, we've been waiting for Microsoft to come out with its own pared down version of Windows, but its half-hearted attempts (Windows 10 S, Windows RT) have all fallen flat.

Those failures haven't stopped Microsoft though, as Petri on Monday reported that the company is working on "a new version of Windows that may not actually be Windows." Based on the documentation he has seen, Petri's Brad Sams believes that Windows Lite — the new OS — is Microsoft's answer to Chrome OS.

According to Sams, Windows Lite will only run Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, while removing all other functionality. He says that this is the first "truly lightweight version of Windows" – one which won't run in enterprise or small business environments, and may not even be available for purchase on its own. Just like Chrome OS, Windows Lite will have to be pre-installed by an OEM.

Microsoft ChromeOS: It's Linux-Free!


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday December 04 2018, @12:39PM (4 children)

    by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @12:39PM (#769515)

    It seems to me that Microsoft's biggest problem these past ten years is the same problem that Google has. If a product isn't wildly popular in a short time, both companies kill it. Google Reader, Google Wave, Google Buzz, Google Plus, Google Site Search. Microsoft kept killing and restarting its attempt at a mobile OS, and it gave up again. The launched Silverlight with a big investment and then dumped it. They launched Windows RT for ARM and then dumped that too. And now they're dropping Edge?

    I think consumers and even tech enthusiasts give Google more of a free pass because their product quality tends to be much higher. But for both companies, I think their haste to kill unprofitable projects is absurdly short-sighted. In the case of Microsoft:

    1. Mobile computing is the future of consumer computing. My wife uses a corporate managed Android tablet for her work in a medical setting, and her personal computing device at home is a Chromebook. My brother in law runs his contracting business out of his Samsung phone and a bluetooth printer. Windows RT and Windows Phone 10 were not good enough when Microsoft killed them, and I'm sure they lost many billions on them. They should have kept investing in them to make them better, even if it took another ten years before consumers cared, because they're going to lose most of their market.

    2. Web standards mean nothing when one browser has 90% of the market. Internet Explorer taught us that. If Microsoft wants to maintain a useful stay in web standards, they should keep investing in their own engine for Edge. If they want more attention and adoption, make Edge open source. Or fork Firefox. Or kick Edge to the curb and build a new browser engine. They have the money. It hurts everyone except Google when Google effectively owns web standards, so anything Microsoft does to fight that helps us all.

    3. Microsoft dominates corporate desktops because Microsoft dominated past corporate desktops and classrooms and PC gaming. Employees demanded Windows because that's what they knew. The PC gaming market is still huge and not likely to shrink, but my kids' school has Chromebooks and iPads and Windows is disappearing. And like I said, employers like my wife's employer are gradually switching to iPads and Chromebooks and Android devices. Microsoft is going to see its core market erode because they didn't invest enough in education, in Chrome OS competitors, in tablet competitors (that didn't suck).

    To be clear, I hate Microsoft. But I hate Google too, and competition is good. I'm worried that in fifteen years Google will be twice as big as it is today and Microsoft will be too small to affect the market.

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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:15PM (#769543)

    To be clear, I hate IBM. But I hate Microsoft too, and competition is good. I'm worried that in fifteen years Microsoft will be twice as big as it is today and IBM will be too small to affect the market.

    Retrofixed that for you.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:36PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:36PM (#769598) Journal

    I don't care so much about the size or wealth of Google, mostly only about their power and control over choice.

    Open source is a good inoculation against the abuse of Microsoft in the 90's. But it is not an absolute guarantee.

    (some) People are starting to recognize the dangers of trading all their information for massive convenience.

    cynical me sez: the solution is to create true competitors who all, also want our personal information.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:39PM

      by bobthecimmerian (6834) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:39PM (#769718)

      "I don't care so much about the size or wealth of Google, mostly only about their power and control over choice."

      Good point. You expressed that with more nuance than I did.

      I think open source is weaker now than it was then. You can find a bazillion tools of all sorts to operate at middle levels in your code. But bare hardware drivers and devices you can install free software on are getting less common as a percent of the market. It does no good to me to run nginx or Kubernetes on top of a device when Google/Microsoft/Amazon/Apple controls the layer beneath and I can't.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @06:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @06:44PM (#769696)

    It used to be the rule of thumb that new Microsoft products were unusable before SP3, maybe SP2 if you're an optimistic (masochist). So if they're killing anything before it gets to SP2 of course its not 'popular' no one has even tried it yet!