Microsoft should give up entirely on Internet browser development. I cannot see any good reason to throw their money away like this. They are a company too dependant on legacy software to bother competing with Google and Mozilla. Cloud services seem to be their brightest modern opportunity, but they really weren't prepared for the 2010's. Competing with Chrome is just chasing cars. Of course they've always had the advantage of being the default browser. I still don't think average users will ever see IE as anymore than a fly on a Window. Regardless of who's layout engine theyre forking.
> Microsoft should give up entirely on Internet browser development. I cannot see any good reason to throw their money away like this.
If Microsoft release a low power device like Surface Go or future ARM devices then reviewers and people open up Chrome and it runs jerky and laggy then they'll blame the device. If Chrome becomes the default browser and gives you bad battery performance then people blame the device.
MS has to ship a browser for the exact same reasons Apple insists on shipping a browser. It's the most used application on the OS and the app that's almost used 100% of the time the device is running therefore it can make a good device feel like a bad device if its optimized poorly.
Notice all Apples web battery benchmarks use Safari not chrome.
Unless there is a major breakthrough in x86 compatibility, Windows isn't coming to ARM. They tried it with RT and they supported RISC far back as NT 4. I think 10 is great, but they've come to admit they're pretty much boxed into the whole Wintel monopoly they once thrived.
You do have some good points. I was thinking how bad it would look on their part if their OS doesn't even have its own browser. Even Gnome has a browser, which is pretty much FirefoxGTK.
I can't put my finger on why Microsoft should cease browser development. But adopting Chromium is definitely a good step in that direction. It's cheaper, normal people won't notice (or care), and they can keep branding.
generally i agree they are spending a lot of money on development but they are also ensuring the future for their Web Tools when they have their own browser.
Honestly speaking its good to have competition and apart from Firefox and Safari (partially due to being Apple sepcific), Edge was the only Browser (with an own engine) that could compete with Chrome.
