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Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS

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

takyon writes:

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, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:15AM (7 children)

    by Bot (3902) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:15AM (#769453) Journal

    My AI has found some documents detailing this new microsoft strategy, I found them very interesting. Here:

    Hello there,

    There is a pertinent story about a man who was working on an oil platform in the North Sea. He woke up one night from a loud explosion, which suddenly set his entire oil platform on fire. In mere moments, he was surrounded by flames. Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform's edge. When he looked down over the edge, all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.

    As the fire approached him, the man had mere seconds to react. He could stand on the platform, and inevitably be consumed by the burning flames. Or, he could plunge 30 meters in to the freezing waters. The man was standing upon a "burning platform," and he needed to make a choice.

    He decided to jump. It was unexpected. In ordinary circumstances, the man would never consider plunging into icy waters. But these were not ordinary times - his platform was on fire. The man survived the fall and the waters. After he was rescued, he noted that a "burning platform" caused a radical change in his behaviour.

    We too, are standing on a "burning platform," and we must decide how we are going to change our behaviour.

    Over the past few months, I've shared with you what I've heard from our shareholders, operators, developers, suppliers and from you. Today, I'm going to share what I've learned and what I have come to believe.

    I have learned that we are standing on a burning platform.

    And, we have more than one explosion - we have multiple points of scorching heat that are fuelling a blazing fire around us.

    For example, there is intense heat coming from our competitors, more rapidly than we ever expected. Apple disrupted the market by redefining the smartphone and attracting developers to a closed, but very powerful ecosystem.
    (...)
    We have some brilliant sources of innovation inside Microsoft, but we are not bringing it to market fast enough. We thought Win10 would be a platform for winning high-end workstations. However, at this rate, by the end of 2019, we might have only a bunch of win10 products in the market.

    The battle of devices has now become a war of ecosystems, where ecosystems include not only the hardware and software of the device, but developers, applications, ecommerce, advertising, search, social applications, location-based services, unified communications and many other things. Our competitors aren't taking our market share with devices; they are taking our market share with an entire ecosystem. This means we're going to have to decide how we either build, catalyse or join an ecosystem.

    This is one of the decisions we need to make. In the meantime, we've lost market share, we've lost mind share and we've lost time.

    How did we get to this point? Why did we fall behind when the world around us evolved?

    This is what I have been trying to understand. I believe at least some of it has been due to our attitude inside Microsoft. We poured gasoline on our own burning platform. I believe we have lacked accountability and leadership to align and direct the company through these disruptive times. We had a series of misses. We haven't been delivering innovation fast enough. We're not collaborating internally.

    Our platform is burning.

    We are working on a path forward -- a path to rebuild our market leadership. When we share the new strategy on February 11, it will be a huge effort to transform our company. But, I believe that together, we can face the challenges ahead of us. Together, we can choose to define our future.

    The burning platform, upon which the man found himself, caused the man to shift his behaviour, and take a bold and brave step into an uncertain future. He was able to tell his story. Now, we have a great opportunity to do the same.

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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by richtopia on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:36AM (6 children)

    by richtopia (3160) on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:36AM (#769457) Homepage Journal

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 04 2018, @07:50AM (#769461)

      Will one big company buy another big company soon?

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:29AM (4 children)

      by canopic jug (3949) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 04 2018, @08:29AM (#769466) Journal

      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.

      --
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      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:02PM (3 children)

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 04 2018, @03:02PM (#769571) Journal

        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.

        --
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        • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:34AM

          by coolgopher (1157) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:34AM (#769874)

          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)

          by Bot (3902) on Wednesday December 05 2018, @12:19PM (#770034) Journal

          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.

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          • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:13PM

            by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday December 05 2018, @03:13PM (#770102) Journal

            You are right. But I can still hope. :-)

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