Microsoft developer blames Google for the switch to Chromium engine in the next version of Windows 10

[GoodBytes]

Reported back 2 weeks ago, Microsoft Edge team announced that they'll drop EdgeHTML engine in favor of using Chromium engine, the same engine used in Chrome.

You can read more about it here:

 

A, now, ex-Edge developer shares a bit of light for the decision in Switching from EdgeHTML to Chromium engine, and may explain why other web browsers all switches to, or picked Chromium as well, leaving Firefox the only large player out there with its own engine before Google has total domination on the web standard.

 

The reason is that Google uses it's monopoly on services like YouTube that it has, to contentiously update their websites and web browser with changes so that Chrome performs fine on them, and break or slows down other web browsers engines, like Edge, Opera (before they switch to Chromium engine) and Firefox.

 

For example, as he mentions: Google updated YouTube to break the Edge video acceleration system which delivered (claimed by Microsoft) to the user the best battery life while watching videos on the web, while ensure that Chrome is not affected by this. Then, as soon that was done, Google announces how their web browser performs better during video playback, while in reality no optimization work was ever done on the web browser in that regard, to ensure that user to switch or try Edge.

 

Known as JoshuaJB on Hacker News, the employee who previously worked on EdgeHTML reports:

Quote

For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least ‘special’ access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else’s?”

 

This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn’t keep up. For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome’s dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life. What makes it so sad, is that their claimed dominance was not due to ingenious optimization work by Chrome, but due to a failure of YouTube. On the whole, they only made the web slower.
 

Now while I’m not sure I’m convinced that YouTube was changed intentionally to slow Edge, many of my co-workers are quite convinced – and they’re the ones who looked into it personally. To add to this all, when we asked, YouTube turned down our request to remove the hidden empty div and did not elaborate further.

And this is only one case.

 

 

Source: https://www.onmsft.com/news/ex-edge-developer-blames-google-tricks-in-part-for-move-to-chromium

 

I find it interesting on how Google is applying similar strategies that Microsoft took back in the very old days to get market domination and stay on top. And now Microsoft being affected by the same game that they played before on them. In Google case, they take advantage of the current trust from its consumers, positive/"open to all" image, to do the exact contrary under people noses. We have seem a Firefox developer also complain about action that Google has taken to ensure that Firefox performs poorly on YouTube.

 

[Syntaxvgm]

4 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

 

The reason is that Google uses it's monopoly on services like YouTube that it has, to contentiously update their websites with their web browser with changes so that Chrome performs fine, and break or slows down other web browsers.

 

we'll use google's thing because they're doing a shady thing to try to monopolize the browser market, so instead of just using gecko and preventing google from monopolizing the market further, we'll just complain while helping them do just that should be good enough our hands are clean! 

[Silentprototipe]

Wanna hit the spell checker there bud?

 

But seriously thats sad  

[givingtnt]

tbh, regardless of how the change was done. moving away from IE and Edge is very much a good thing.

there's so many little things that they both can't do that Firefox & Chrome can because they won't update themselves and follow up on tech peing pushed by FF and Google 
(For example, CSS Grids, witch is basically unsuported completly on Edge & Explorer, even though they both started the tech. but never updated it like FF and Google)

so like, having one less drag as a web dev is veeeryyy good.
(though there's still safari.. but that's apple and I doubt they'd budge that easely..)


And they claim that google has a monopoly.. but like. their browser support is terrible.
They're basically being lazy and shouting at Google, trying to blame them.

[duncannah]

Eh, Edge's engine was crap anyways, I don't care how shady things went that led to its death. Took too long to implement web standards, which is something quite annoying for us web devs, and why tools like Babel exist that adopt standard code to work with these kinds of browsers.

[Radium_Angel]

10 minutes ago, givingtnt said:

And they claim that google has a monopoly.. but like. their browser support is terrible.
They're basically being lazy and shouting at Google, trying to blame them.

Yup, but then again, when did MS ever put out anything that you voluntarily used?

I can't think of anything short of Win95.

We use Google (or in my case, Centbrowser) because it's better.

Build a better browser, and I'll give it a swing.

Ive been there since the beginning of the browser wars, I have no loyalty to Google, my only goal is to use the best browser available.

For a while, that was Opera. The FF, until FF went full retard. Then Chrome, and Chrome went full stupid on the UI, I tried Pale Moon (heh, talk about a desert of choice) and found Centbroswer, which works great, faster even (IME) than Google with less overhead.

[GoodBytes]

4 minutes ago, duncannah said:

Eh, Edge's engine was crap anyways, I don't care how shady things went that led to its death.

Sure, but it can also explain why they went with Chromium engine, and not Firefox one.

[Guest]

What about Safari?

[duncannah]

14 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Sure, but it can also explain why they went with Chromium engine, and not Firefox one.

Firefox has its own problems, and Chrome has the biggest marketshare.

[CTR640]

Chrome and Chromium can simply fuck off. In my experience Firefox is a much better web browser.

 

And shouldn't EU or US do something about Google's monopolyposition or are they Google's bitches and got bent too much over?

[samcool55]

1 minute ago, duncannah said:

Firefox has its own problems, and Chrome has the biggest marketshare.

Yeah but MS is going "hurr durr google is too big and they abuse their dominant position" but instead of helping the other competitor of google (firefox) they basically gave up and are helping their biggest enemy right now.

[duncannah]

Quote

they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail

How come their "state-of-the-art" video acceleration broke over something as small as this? It was doomed from the start.

6 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Yeah but MS is going "hurr durr google is too big and they abuse their dominant position" but instead of helping the other competitor of google (firefox) they basically gave up and are helping their biggest enemy right now.

I don't think Mozilla (privacy advocate) would be too fond of cooperating with Microsoft (total opposite)

[sazrocks]

Do I think this is bad for the openness and decentralized nature of the web? Yes.

 

Do I feel sorry for microsoft? Heck no.

[GoodBytes]

3 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

Yeah but MS is going "hurr durr google is too big and they abuse their dominant position" but instead of helping the other competitor of google (firefox) they basically gave up and are helping their biggest enemy right now.

Actually, Google and Microsoft butt heads really hard since 2010 when Microsoft tried to enter the consumer phone market. Google started doing everything ti can block its services to run on Microsoft phones.

[dtaflorida]

I feel like Microsoft have been beaten at their own game. Kinda worried how well future compatibility with Sharepoint will be. Our IT group will probably prevent the update that rolls Edge forward to Chromium I guess. 

[GoodBytes]

4 minutes ago, duncannah said:

How come "state-of-the-art" video acceleration can fail over something as small as this? They were doomed to fail.

Because, it prevents the web browser from knowing if the video has exclusive mode, to kick-start it the video acceleration process.

It doesn't break the video acceleration, it breaks the detection system.

 

[GoodBytes]

2 minutes ago, dtaflorida said:

I feel like Microsoft have been beaten at their own game. Kinda worried how well future compatibility with Sharepoint will be. Our IT group will probably prevent the update that rolls Edge forward to Chromium I guess. 

Well... not to worry.

Chromium and its engine is open source. Microsoft can ensure that its website aren't broken and run properly. At worse, make a branch of Chromium, and do their own stuff. But the worst that will happen is that Sharepoint will be updated so that it performs better with Chromium. And remember that Firefox runs fine Sharepoint.

[duncannah]

5 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Because, it prevents the web browser from knowing if the video has exclusive mode, to kick-start it the video acceleration process.

 It doesn't break the video acceleration, it breaks the detection system.

 

Looks like a Microsoft specific thing according to a search. No wonder it broke easily. Would've helped if they made the browser update by itself instead of depending on OS updates (which more and more people are skeptical of because of the recent file deletion bug and such)

[Bananasplit_00]

Microsoft getting outplayed at their own EEE game... Interesting

[Mira Yurizaki]

I'm mixed about this. On one hand it is a crappy way to "force" people to your way of doing things. But on the other, having a single way of doing things makes it easier for development and usage.

[GoodBytes]

6 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I'm mixed about this. On one hand it is a crappy way to "force" people to your way of doing things. But on the other, having a single way of doing things makes it easier for development and usage.

I think we will see a return of:

"This website works best with Chrome and a resolution of 1920x1080. Please adjust your screen resolution to 1920x1080 and use Chrome web browser."

at the bottom of every page, or just lock you out. Yay good old days!

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

Just now, GoodBytes said:

I think we will see a return of:

"This website works best with Chrome and a resolution of 1920x1080. Please adjust your screen resolution to 1920x1080 and use Chrome web browser."

at the bottom of every page, or just lock you out. Yay good old days!

 

I recall a website that did it for a browser I didn't use. I was perplexed and vowed never to use that site.

 

I think it got forgotten in time.

[GoodBytes]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I recall a website that did it for a browser I didn't use. I was perplexed and vowed never to use that site.

 

I think it got forgotten in time.

Hehe. But the said thing is, if Google.com and YouTube will be locked out if you don't use Chrome... many will do whatever it takes to surf these webpages.

[Mira Yurizaki]

18 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

Hehe. But the said thing is, if Google.com and YouTube will be locked out if you don't use Chrome... many will do whatever it takes to surf these webpages.

And yet nobody seems to mind. I recall when an article reported Microsoft got into hot water for telling people to use Edge or something when using Bing with an alternate browser, I called out in the comments section that Google does the same thing on the search engine page. The author of the article actually didn't think it was a thing until I showed them a screenshot from Firefox on Google's homepage with Google not-so-subtly telling me I should use Chrome for the bestest experience.

 

So apparently Google gets a free pass because their browser "just works" with Google websites, which happen to be some of the most visited ones on the internet. Go figure.

[duncannah]

15 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

I think we will see a return of:

"This website works best with Chrome and a resolution of 1920x1080. Please adjust your screen resolution to 1920x1080 and use Chrome web browser."

at the bottom of every page, or just lock you out. Yay good old days!

 

Websites forcing Chrome are quite rare (I used Firefox for a year), and when there's one, it's usually because they require some features that aren't available to other browsers (with no alternative) and that are vital to the functioning of the site, although I was guilty of doing this during my early days when compatibility was a lot worse