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!
Related Stories
Microsoft Engineer Causes Online Wrath After Saying Firefox Should Use Chromium
Mozilla should give up on its own browsing engine and switch Firefox to Chromium, a Microsoft engineer said in a series of tweets, as what the company does right now is "building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5 percent."
The message posted by Microsoft Product Manager Kenneth Auchenberg has triggered an almost instant reaction from the user community, with most of the replies pointing out that building alternative products that can compete against Chromium is vital for the health of the browsing ecosystem.
"It's time for @mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5%?" he tweeted.
"I couldn't disagree with you more. It precisely *because* Chromium has such a large marketshare that is vital for Mozilla (or anyone else) to battle for diversity. I'm shocked that you think they're not contributing. "Building a parallel universe"? That *is* the contribution," web developer Jeremy Keith responded.
[...] Auchenberg's message has obviously received more acid replies, including this one criticizing Microsoft's recent browser changes. "Just because your employer gave up on its own people and technology doesn't mean that others should follow," Asa Dotzler tweeted.
Also at ZDNet.
Previously: Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Related: Is Google Using an "Embrace, Extend..." Strategy?
Google Denies Altering YouTube Code to Break Microsoft Edge
Microsoft is creating Windows Lite for dual-screen and Chromebook-like devices
Microsoft is preparing a new lightweight version of Windows for dual-screen devices and Chromebook competitors. Sources familiar with Microsoft's plans tell The Verge that the software maker is stripping back its Windows user interface with dual screens in mind. This new hardware could launch as early as later this year, depending on chip and PC maker readiness.
"Windows Lite," as it's codenamed internally, is a more stripped-down version of Windows that is initially being prioritized for dual-screen devices. Intel has been pushing OEMs to create this new hardware category, and machines could appear much like Microsoft's Courier concept, dual-screen laptops, or even foldable displays in the future. Either way, Microsoft wants Windows to be ready for PC makers to take advantage of it.
Previously: Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Related: Intel Reportedly "Petitioned Microsoft Heavily" to Use x86 Instead of ARM Chips in Surface Go
Qualcomm Announces Snapdragon 8cx, an ARM Chip Intended for Laptops
Google isn't the company that we should have handed the Web over to
Back in 2009, Google introduced SPDY, a proprietary replacement for HTTP that addressed what Google saw as certain performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1. Google wasn't exactly wrong in its assessments, but SPDY was something of a unilateral act, with Google responsible for the design and functionality. SPDY was adopted by other browsers and Web servers over the next few years, and Google's protocol became widespread.
[...] The same story is repeating with HTTP/3. In 2012, Google announced a new experimental protocol, QUIC, intended again to address performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. Google deployed QUIC, and Chrome would use QUIC when communicating with Google properties. Again, QUIC became the basis for IETF's HTTP development, and HTTP/3 uses a derivative of QUIC that's modified from and incompatible with Google's initial work.
It's not just HTTP that Google has repeatedly worked to replace. Google AMP ("Accelerated Mobile Pages") is a cut-down HTML combined with Google-supplied JavaScript designed to make mobile Web content load faster. This year, Google said that it would try to build AMP with Web standards and introduced a new governance model that gave the project much wider industry oversight.
A person claiming to be a former Microsoft Edge developer has written about a tactic Google supposedly used to harm the competing browser's performance:
A person claiming to be a former Edge developer has today described one such action. For no obvious reason, Google changed YouTube to add a hidden, empty HTML element that overlaid each video. This element disabled Edge's fastest, most efficient hardware accelerated video decoding. It hurt Edge's battery-life performance and took it below Chrome's. The change didn't improve Chrome's performance and didn't appear to serve any real purpose; it just hurt Edge, allowing Google to claim that Chrome's battery life was actually superior to Edge's. Microsoft asked Google if the company could remove the element, to no avail.
The latest version of Edge addresses the YouTube issue and reinstated Edge's performance. But when the company talks of having to do extra work to ensure EdgeHTML is compatible with the Web, this is the kind of thing that Microsoft has been forced to do.
See also: Ex Edge developer blames Google tricks in part for move to Chromium
Related: HTTP/2 on its Way In, SPDY on its Way Out
Google Touts QUIC Protocol
Google Attempting to Standardize Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP Can Go To Hell
The Next Version of HTTP Won't be Using TCP
HTTP/3 Explained: A Work in Progress
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Firefox Browser Use Drops As Mozilla's Worst Microsoft Edge Fears Come True
Back in April, we reported that the Edge browser is quickly gaining market share now that Microsoft has transitioned from the EdgeHTML engine to the more widely used Chromium engine (which also underpins Google's Chrome browser). At the time, Edge slipped into the second-place slot for desktop web browsers, with a 7.59 percent share of the market. This dropped Mozilla's Firefox – which has long been the second-place browser behind Chrome – into third place.
Now, at the start of August, we're getting some fresh numbers in for the desktop browser market, and things aren't looking good for Mozilla. Microsoft increased its share of the browser market from 8.07 percent in June to 8.46 percent in July. Likewise, Firefox fell from 7.58 percent to 7.27 percent according to NetMarketShare.
[...] As for Mozilla, the company wasn't too happy when Microsoft first announced that it was going to use Chromium for Edge way back in December 2018. Mozilla's Chris Beard at the time accused Microsoft of "giving up" by abandoning EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium. "Microsoft's decision gives Google more ability to single-handedly decide what possibilities are available to each one of us," said Beard at the time. "We compete with Google because the health of the internet and online life depend on competition and choice."
[...] Microsoft developer Kenneth Auchenberg fought back the following January, writing, "Thought: It's time for Mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5 percent."
Is the browser monoculture inevitable or will Firefox hang in there?
Previously:
Mozilla Teases Chromium-Based Firefox, Then Pulls Back
Firefox Tops Microsoft Browser Market Share for First Time
Netmarketshare Claims Mozilla Firefox Usage Drops Below Ten Percent
Microsoft Intercepting Firefox, Chrome Installation on Windows 10 Insider Build
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Microsoft Employee Sparks Outrage by Suggesting Firefox Switch Browser Engine to Chromium
Mozilla Was "Outfoxed" by Google
Microsoft Edge Shares Privacy-Busting Telemetry, Research Alleges
Mozilla "Got Outfoxed" by Google – Former VP Accuses Google for Sabotaging Firefox
Former Mozilla VP, Johnathan Nightingale, has called out on Google for what could only be termed as anti-competitive practices. In a Twitter thread on a somewhat unrelated subject, Nightingale said that during his 8 years at Mozilla, Google was the company's biggest partner. "Our revenue share deal on search drove 90% of Mozilla's income," he tweeted.
However, that doesn't mean Google wasn't involved in some underhand practices. "When I started at Mozilla in 2007 there was no Google Chrome and most folks we spoke with inside were Firefox fans," Nightingale wrote. "When chrome launched things got complicated, but not in the way you might expect. They had a competing product now, but they didn't cut ties, break our search deal – nothing like that. In fact, the story we kept hearing was, 'We're on the same side. We want the same things.'"
"I think our friends inside google genuinely believed that. At the individual level, their engineers cared about most of the same things we did. Their product and design folks made many decisions very similarly and we learned from watching each other. But Google as a whole is very different than individual googlers," Nightingale added.
Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms. gmail & gdocs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as "incompatible."
All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say "hey what gives?"
And every time, they'd say, "oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks."
Previously: After 10 Years with Google, Firefox Switches to Yahoo
Netmarketshare Claims Mozilla Firefox Usage Drops Below Ten Percent
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Is Google Using an "Embrace, Extend..." Strategy?
Google Denies Altering YouTube Code to Break Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Employee Sparks Outrage by Suggesting Firefox Switch Browser Engine to Chromium
Related: Firefox 29 is a Flop; UI Design Trends Only Getting Worse
Mozilla Teases Chromium-Based Firefox, Then Pulls Back
Can the New Firefox Quantum Regain its Web Browser Market Share?
Firefox 64 Will Remove Support for RSS and Atom Feeds
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla's CEO is not enthusiastic about Microsoft's switch to Chromium:
When Microsoft announced that its Edge browser would be revamped using Chromium, the internet's response was generally quite positive. Edge is far from the worst browser on the planet, but it's certainly not what we'd call a fan favorite. As such, even the slightest indication that it could be changed significantly would have been welcome news for many.
However, it would seem that "many" doesn't include one individual in particular: Mozilla CEO Chris Beard. In a blog post published today, titled "Goodbye, EdgeHTML," Beard expressed his frustrations with Microsoft's decision.
"By adopting Chromium, Microsoft hands over control of even more of online life to Google," Beard writes in the post. "This may sound melodramatic, but it's not. The "browser engines" — Chromium from Google and Gecko Quantum from Mozilla — are "inside baseball" pieces of software that actually determine a great deal of what each of us can do online."
Microsoft's switch to Chromium could be a big boon for Google's own implementation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:15AM (19 children)
So we've got a bunch of Linux-based services, a Chromium-based browser, and SaS (Software as Sabotage, your OS breaks every time MS pushes out new bling, advertising, and spyware updates). Why would anyone go with their stuff any more? The bits that aren't from borrowed from someone else who does it far better are crap SaS stuff, apart from vendors bonded to the MS servicing stack what's the point of having Microsoft any more?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:19AM
OEM pre-installed LOCKOUT of "other" OSes (read "Linux whom Microsoft FEAR").
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:01AM
The same reason why people have stuck with microsoft for over 30 years now...
They are sheep and follow the herd. They do not know any better and stick with what is pre-installed on the machine.
Now, you can mention that their is more software available for windows, and that is true, but almost everything has something equivalent running on Linux or Mac now (even games.) So what if there are only 100 web browsers on linux when there are 1,000 on windows... when 95% of them suck or are no better than the 1 or 2 that you would actually use.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2, Disagree) by PiMuNu on Tuesday December 04 2018, @11:42AM (15 children)
MS Office has captured the corporate market. LibreOffice is way too unstable to suit anyone except a few niche users.
Games. SteamOS is a flop with not much market share. Games on linux (and iOS) are still a fail. There are no serious games on Android either, although they seem to be doing well with the candycrush/flash games level stuff.
(Score: 4, Informative) by driverless on Tuesday December 04 2018, @11:54AM (5 children)
Ah, good point. Mind you no matter how much LibreOffice may suck, it at least continues to partially work rather than go catatonic every time Microsoft's MFA [theregister.co.uk] shits itself [zdnet.com].
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:18PM (3 children)
I never used Office362 so can't comment. My work PC has regular MS office installed, which doesn't seem to be crippled, (except that the GUI is still terrible since MS updated it 5 years ago).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @06:31PM (2 children)
Is this riffing on them, as in, 3 days a year I can't get it to work?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:31PM
Grandparent simply factored in the time lost in updates.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday December 05 2018, @05:51PM
Look at el reg article in GGGP
(Score: 2, Informative) by zzarko on Wednesday December 05 2018, @05:16AM
As a every day heavy user of LibreOffice at work and at home, for many years (since 1.0 version), I can say that early versions were crash prone, but I didn't get a single crash for more than 2-3 years now, so I do not understand this "unstable" argument that often pops up (very often by people who do not use the software, they just know it) . On several occasions I have found bugs, reported them and they were fixed in next version.
C64 BASIC: 1 a=rnd(-52028):fori=1to8:a=rnd(1):next:fori=1to5:?chr$(rnd(1)*26+65);:next
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:43PM (1 child)
I've never has a stability problem with libreoffice, so I would like to know what you are doing to break it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:16PM
I second that question.
In normal daily use over the past eight years, over a number of versions, running on both Linux and Windows boxes, I've had no stability issues (and recently I've tested opening up some of the larger files I've generated on the copy installed on my test Haiku box and messing around with them there, it worked without issues as well).
Largest document?, A WIP currently sitting at 500 pages replete with graphics and images, If I feel masochistic (screen size) I can even work on it 'on the go' using the Eee PC 1005 Netbook I've got kicking around to run Kali.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:12PM
there is nothing unstable about libreoffice. i guess by "unstable" you mean "they want me to download new binaries for my slaveOS all the time because those bastards keep updating it"?
(Score: 1) by NateMich on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:28PM (2 children)
I'm sure that's still largely true (especially outside of the tech industry itself), but honestly I haven't encountered anything but Google Docs in the past few years.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday December 04 2018, @06:13PM (1 child)
I know of no-one who uses Google Docs. I work with scientists in the government sector. Maybe it's a US thing?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:21PM
Maybe US-centric, but it's also a matter of size. I don't think many Fortune 500 companies are using Google Docs (mine sure isn't...the site is banned entirely on our network). But I know a few small businesses and local organizations that use it for absolutely everything. If the people working there tend to be younger, and those younger people actually have some authority over the tech they use (usually because nobody else understands it) then they'll tend towards Google Docs. If they've got thousands of PCs and a fully-staffed IT department and fifty years of history, they'll be using MS Office.
(Score: 3, Touché) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:16PM
The only compatibility issue I've ever seen with LibreOffice that would not ALSO replicate on Microsoft Office itself is when users can't find the goddamn icon because it doesn't say "Microsoft Office". I've had numerous people pay hundreds of dollars to fix that one particular issue, but haven't seen any others in at least a decade...
(Score: 1) by Goghit on Wednesday December 05 2018, @05:29PM (1 child)
LibreOffice unstable? Seems rock solid on Linux and Windows 7. Windows 10 is locking up on me I haven't had a chance to notice instability in any of the programs it's trying to run.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Wednesday December 05 2018, @05:47PM
I use Impress all the time and it crashes *all the time*. Multiple crashes per day. It is virtually unusable, except I can't drive windows in any reasonable way. FWIW I am using 5.3.6.1 under Scientific Linux 7/KDE and 5.0.3.2 under linux mint.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @12:59PM
You could say that GNU/Linux is the operating system people choose without needing millions of dollars in persuasion.
But you have to say Micro$oft is doing such nasty deeds one after another in rapid succession that they really are the GNU/Linux marketing campaign.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:15AM (7 children)
My AI has found some documents detailing this new microsoft strategy, I found them very interesting. Here:
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Informative) by richtopia on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:36AM (6 children)
If you do not recognize this memo, it was written by Elop during Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia:
https://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-elops-burning-platform-memo-2013-9?op=1 [businessinsider.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:50AM
Will one big company buy another big company soon?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:29AM (4 children)
If you do not recognize this memo, it was written by Elop during Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia:
Elop's memo happened when Nokia was doing very well, so in effect, he killed Nokia [seekingalpha.com] starting with that memo. The board was also culpable. The board had signed a contract with Elop granting him a $25 million bonus on the condition that he sell Nokia to M$ [blogs.com]. A lot of lies were spread to cover that.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:02PM (3 children)
I can only hope this is the beginning of the end of the beginning of the end for Microsoft.
That is, I hope we've moved past the beginning of the end, and are now near the end of the end for Microsoft.
Good riddance.
Put it out of our misery now.
Stop asking "How stupid can you be?" Some people apparently take it as a challenge.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:34AM
Actually, I very much hope it is not, even though I suspect the days of Windows are now numbered. If you look around, what do you think will replace Windows on the desktop? I won't be Linux, it's too fragmented and still considered "difficult". OS X has been languishing just as Windows, resigned to the "legacy" development bucket. Realistically it's going to be a Google OS, perhaps fucks-ya (Fuchsia). And I want that even less than Windows. At least Microsoft is somewhat incompetent in collecting, aggregating and capitalising on your private info. Google is nowhere near as incompetent in that area.
Oh, and Microsoft will be surviving in the Cloud space for quite some time. Their offerings there are actually pretty decent, as far as Cloud goes.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:19PM (1 child)
As much as I'd like the demise of M$ (cue trolls decrying the practice of putting the dollar sign on the acronym of a literal vampire corp.), I must point out that IBM is still around and GASP innovating with their AI stuff. But, there's hope, maybe Google wants to expand their evil segment and buys them out. At least the M$ logo won't give me PTSD.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:13PM
You are right. But I can still hope. :-)
Stop asking "How stupid can you be?" Some people apparently take it as a challenge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:18AM (4 children)
That's right, no systemd here!
Oh, no! We'll get Windowsd!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:05PM (3 children)
I have this recurring nightmare that systemd was conceived somewhere deep in the bowels of Microsoft.
Microsoft Loves Linux
Sharks Love Fish
Foxes Love Chickens
And who needs systemd to worm its way into our systems, when we have Intel's "management" engine.
Stop asking "How stupid can you be?" Some people apparently take it as a challenge.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:23PM (1 child)
You are probably right. It smells like PowerShell through and through:weak, verbose, flappy, and corporate as fuck. I have to wonder how deep the rot goes; remember Miguel de Icaza, the Mono guy? I am sure that guy was an MS plant.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:22PM
Well, I had managed to forget about both him and Mono...
(Score: 2) by TheFool on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:20PM
If you aren't familiar with how Windows manages "services" (that is, "anything not the kernel" - drivers, all the stuff driving win32/the GUI/usermode/etc), well... I don't think systemd came from Microsoft, but it was certainly inspired by it. The core structure and features of a unit file pretty much mirror what you'd put in a Windows service key in the registry, although there's all kinds of boondoggles glued to the side.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Tech triyo on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:09AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:08PM
There must be a way Microsoft can create a 'systemd' for Chromium.
Stop asking "How stupid can you be?" Some people apparently take it as a challenge.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:23AM (8 children)
Web standards have become so ridiculously complex that it is nearly impossible to write a new rendering engine. We have what we have. As Google now pushed for ever more extensions, they are turning the web into a Chromium monoculture. This includes adding more and more complexity to the web standards - and even to the foundational protocols (quic, amp, http/3, etc.).
If MS gives up on Edge, this will be one more alternative down the drain.
A monoculture cannot be a good thing.
The - completely unrealistic - solution would be to take machete to web standards. Cut them back to a size that makes new implementations possible. Unfortunately, this won't happen...
CSS/2 was good enough, now get offa my lawn.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:46AM (4 children)
Indeed. MS sucks. Google sucks. It's better that they compete, rather than combining like Super Gundam into one giant hyper-mega-launcher of suckiness.
As for Windows Lite, I'm gonna guess their plan is something like this:
1) throw out compatibility with vast field of existing Win software
2) keep the DRM, spyware, adware, bloat
3) ????
4) PROFIT!
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:57AM (1 child)
It will probably be something like that. I guess they noticed that to many "normal" (or evil pirate) users downloaded the LTSB (or LTSC since they had to change the name to confuse some people). They have to keep the important things like running the apps and have all the UI bling-bling set to max. That said I wouldn't mind a Lite version of Windows. One without all the things in (2) -- the DRM, the spyware, the adware, the bloat, all the millions of services and I guess to some extent they could also probably stop being backwards compatible with win95 and such cause if I needed that I will probably not be running Win10 anyway or have whatever that specific software is stuck in a WM or some such.
Question might be Lite for whom and or what? Is it Home Lite, Pro Lite, Enterprise Lite, Education Lite, Pro Eduction Lite or LTSC Lite (that would be great btw) or is "Lite" just what they want to scale shit down to again so it can run IoT or Mobile devices? So many versions or editions of Windows these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @05:43PM
Mueller Lite for the DOJ.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday December 04 2018, @11:57AM (1 child)
ChromeOS sells pretty well. If throwing out compatibility with existing Windows software doesn't matter to Chrome OS buyers, then it won't matter to Windows Lite buyers either. Three problems will kill this product, though:
1. Windows Lite still has "Windows" in the name, so some people will purchase the product expecting it to run regular Windows products.
2. Even if it's every bit as good as ChromeOS, why should users care? Microsoft: "We're here! We have a good product in this market now!" End users: "What makes your product better than the existing options?" Microsoft: "Nothing, really, but we're just as good!" End users: "Remind me, how well did that approach work for you with Windows Phone 10?"
3. It's pretty unlikely to be every bit as good as ChromeOS. Microsoft still has a quality problem.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:35PM
I have zero inside information here, but seriously think this might be it. If you compare the hands-on-keyboard performance of a $200 PC vs a $200 Chromebook there is a painfully obvious difference. Big Windows suffers on tiny hardware. I hope they can fix it.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:17AM
I completely agree. Everyone remembers how IE6 defined web behaviour, and the only real saving grace was IE6 was a rubbish product.
Google is good at writing Blink and web standards, but that doesn't mean they should have free reign. Mozilla and Microsoft may not be your favourite organizations, but at least they provide alternatives to what is increasingly becoming the only option. I also trust them slightly more than Google: Google's business model is 100% about selling information.
Unfortunately, I don't have an answer for my above complaints. People prefer Blink browsers because they work and work well, so there is little motivation to switch away to an alternative.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:56AM
So what is needed is some disruptive simplicity?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:18PM
True.
But a Microsoft Browser is not a good thing either.
Never forget: Microsoft's abuses of the 90's. Linux is a cancer. Killing Netscape and a decade of IE6.
Microsoft was all about monoculture long before Google existed.
But it's cross platform he protested! It runs on Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows ME, Windows 2000, and Windows XP!
Stop asking "How stupid can you be?" Some people apparently take it as a challenge.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Hartree on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:35AM
"It's Just This Little Chromium Switch Here"
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:49AM (2 children)
They are looking to replace Edge already? It's only like three years old or something? Wasn't it supposed to be the end of all the other competitors? I don't know really, I used it a bit at work since it came with Win10 on the company laptop and I we are not allowed to install third party things. That said IE lasted quiet a long time even well past it's due so perhaps it will hang around to confuse users and mess with webstandards for years to come.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @11:08AM (1 child)
Well, in some way it was: Now they are no longer competitors, as Microsoft no longer competes with them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:32PM
It's not that Microsoft has changed. The game has changed around them. Everyone else got tired of playing the old game where Microsoft had a crushing monopoly and monoculture. Open source happened, because it was the only way other developers could do anything successful without being either (1) crushed by Microsoft to build/steal their own, or (2) acquired by Microsoft in a very bad deal.
Despite killing Netscape; despite trying to 'microsoftize' the internet via IE6, FrontPage and IIS, despite trying to kill Linux; it came. It came anyway. Somehow open source came to all the whos down in whoville! Now the grinch loves Linux and open source.
Stop asking "How stupid can you be?" Some people apparently take it as a challenge.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stretch611 on Tuesday December 04 2018, @10:14AM (4 children)
And why does Microsoft think that a new browser would change any of the above?
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -- Albert Einstein
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @11:16AM (1 child)
A great excuse not to exercise! Doing the same thing (say, running) again and again and expecting different results (like winning a foot race instead of losing it) clearly is insanity, right? ;-)
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:28PM
REPETITA JUVANT
-- a possibly smarter guy than Einstein
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:20PM
It will succeed because the marketing people will design even better icons and t-shirts this time! The management will reorganize the product teams into a different structure. This time with enough managers to ensure that it succeeds!
Stop asking "How stupid can you be?" Some people apparently take it as a challenge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 05 2018, @05:46AM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday December 04 2018, @12:39PM (4 children)
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.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:15PM
Retrofixed that for you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:36PM (1 child)
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.
Stop asking "How stupid can you be?" Some people apparently take it as a challenge.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bobthecimmerian on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:39PM
"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
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!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @02:13PM (1 child)
Definition of "mindshare" :- consumer awareness of a product or brand (as opposed to "market share").
Edge has hardly suffered from "lack of mindshare", now, has it - quite the opposite. Anybody who has used Windows 10 (which is frankly quite a lot of people) has had to suffer Microsoft's persistent and obnoxious attempts to force them to use it.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 05 2018, @04:45PM
They couldn't even get the mindshare of their existing user base...
Why do people still use IE? Either because it's the default and they don't know any better, or because it's required for some particular website (usually just internal corporate resources these days.) My girlfriend got a new job a couple months back, and it was a work from home deal so they had a checklist where she had to confirm her PC was suitable. Number one of their list was Internet Explorer, and it specifically noted that Edge didn't count. Three years after the launch and people still aren't moving from the old product to the new one. Pretty sure my girlfriend still doesn't really know what Edge is, although she has it...but if she needs a Microsoft browser, she's gonna use IE; otherwise she's gonna use Chrome. (And when I'm on her computer, I use Firefox, because fuck Google.)
I also, unfortunately, still have to use IE on a daily basis for work. We don't even have Edge. We just got Windows 7 about a year ago...everyone always says corporate IT is Microsoft's main business these days, but Edge didn't even stick around long enough for corporate IT departments to start deploying the damn thing!
(Score: 4, Informative) by mobydisk on Tuesday December 04 2018, @04:46PM (1 child)
Microsoft doesn't even ship Edge on their LTSB (Long Term Support Branch) operating systems [itprotoday.com] such as Windows Server and Windows IoT platforms. They have refused to support their own product since it was launched. After multiple conversations with our Microsoft Vendor we have walked away confused as they told us to use IE11 in our embedded product. ¿¿¿
(Score: 4, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday December 04 2018, @09:17PM
Initially it would have helped quite a bit too if they had simply also made it available for Windows freaking 7!
(Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday December 05 2018, @02:24PM (1 child)
So now Windows users will be using a Chromium based browser from Microsoft to download a real Chromium based browser from NOT-Microsoft.
Stop asking "How stupid can you be?" Some people apparently take it as a challenge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 07 2018, @12:12PM
That's the yin and yang of 2018 American tech giant oligopoly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_and_Yang.svg [wikipedia.org]