For years, Microsoft and Google have been fighting to try to gain the trust of the largest number of users and to dominate the market for web browsers. Chrome has obviously won, which has made Microsoft rethink its fight. The company broke with everything of the past, put aside its own engine and decided to start using Chromium, Google’s OpenSource engine, to develop a new browser: Edge. And since then, Microsoft has become one of the most important developers for the improvement of Google Chrome, how is it possible?
The new Edge is a web browser that has broken with all of the above. Instead of continuing to work on his own engine, he has started using Chromium as a base. And making this decision implies that all changes made to the engine must be open, so that any other developer can see them and, if necessary, implement them.
It’s true that Google Chrome is the most widely used web browser, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Google’s browser still has many aspects to improve. For this reason, Microsoft has been working directly on the main source code of Chrome , that is, on Chromium.
Edge contributions to Google Chrome
Since November 2019 , Microsoft has made about 2,000 changes to Chromium to help Google improve the browser and make certain improvements to be applied to its Edge browser. Microsoft has improved many of the aspects of Chromium throughout the 161 contributions it has made, although the most relevant and necessary thing that is finally part of the Google engine is:
- Accessibility improvements.
- Higher performance over the life of the batteries.
- HTML control over forms.
- Improvements in the reproduction of multimedia content.
- Higher performance when rendering Canvas.
- Better rendering of Windows fonts.
- Layers.
- Scroll optimization and smoothing.
- Virtual keyboard.
- WebXR.
- HTML, JSON and CSS modules.
- StorageAccess, new privacy API.
- Quality and safety improvements for business use.
Of course, the main winner from all these changes is Chrome, as Google’s browser keeps getting better without the company having to do anything. But the main objective of this is that Edge is at the height as far as engine is concerned. And, from there, look for other functions and features that can differentiate it from the others and give it a unique added value, such as its complete PDF viewer.
Edge, the browser that wants to conquer it all
After many years of failure, the truth is that Microsoft has scored a victory. Of course, it is still light years away from being able to surpass Google Chrome , the most used web browser that, month after month, continues to be unstoppable. However, right now Microsoft has a decent browser, a browser to stand up to. And also do it with his own weapon.
Microsoft is working very hard on Edge. In addition to the contributions it makes directly to Chromium, the company implements all kinds of changes and enhancements to the browser. Some of these changes are for performance, some for privacy, and some for usability. And, little by little, Edge is attracting the attention of more and more users.
We remember that Edge Chromium is available for Windows 7, 8.1, Windows 10, macOS and even Linux. And we can also download it on Android and iOS.