Microsoft is reportedly working on a new web browser for Windows 10 that will be built over Google’s Chromium platform. Once that happens, Windows 10 users will no longer be able to use Microsoft’s Edge browser.
According to reports this week, Microsoft is about to give up on its in-house browser which has found competition from Google’s Chrome and Mozilla Firefox hard to rival.
The Redmond-based software giant has taken this decision to improve its revenue streams on the web platform, something that has been hard to come by with Edge, especially with limited users and businesses opting for it.
The report suggests that Microsoft could make announcement sometime this week, talking about its upcoming newly designed browser. Edge has clearly failed to match up to Microsoft’s expectations, finding it hard to launch for mobile devices.
That itself is a big miss for the Windows giant, giving Chrome the impetus to lead the market by a huge margin. Most applications and programs are now being designed for Chrome, and probably Microsoft believes that it is better to adopt that has worked for everyone.
This decision is also a big change in mindset for Microsoft, which has repeatedly tried to downplay Chrome and its excessive use of memory, resulting in low battery life for devices.
Then you have to question the rendering engine used by Microsoft for Edge, that pales in front of how Chrome evolved and smartly became the go-to browser for PC as well as Mac users across the globe.
By deciding to adopt Chromium for its browser, which is a Google product, Microsoft will have to be careful about the policies in place, and hope that user privacy doesn’t come back to haunt the company, similar to what Google has been going through recently.
What will the new browser be called? Internally, Microsoft has been calling it Anaheim and we’ll be hearing more about this product in the coming months. This is a clear sign that Microsoft feels that joining hands with its rivals is its best bet to survive the internet boom.
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