Microsoft confirms that Edge will switch to Chromium

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Microsoft today confirmed that the Microsoft Edge web browser will “go to a Chromium-compatible web platform” on the desktop.

Rumors came out last week that Microsoft was ready to develop and maintain its own rendering engine and that the company would move Edge to a Chromium-based core or on that basis a new browser to make.

Today’s article about the Windows Experience blog confirms the rumor. Microsoft Edge will not die, but will be transferred from its own platform to Chromium to become a Chromium-based browser.

Google Chrome is the dominating Chromium-based browser, but there are others such as Vivaldi or Opera.

Interesting from the perspective of a Windows user is that the new Edge will no longer be exclusively Windows 10. Microsoft plans to make Microsoft Edge, the new version based on Chromium, available for all supported versions of Windows. It is also possible that Microsoft Edge will be launched for Mac OS X or other platforms in the future.

Edge will be updated more often; that probably means that Microsoft will no longer include Microsoft Edge updates with updates for the Windows operating system.

Microsoft Edge will develop according to Microsoft.

[..] we will allow the browser code to evolve more broadly so that our distribution model provides an updated Microsoft Edge experience + platform for all supported versions of Windows, while maintaining the advantages of the narrow integration of the browser with Windows.

Microsoft plans to contribute to the Chromium project to further improve the platform. Edge users benefit from improved compatibility when using the web browser.

Microsoft invites developers to join Microsoft Edge Insider to test preview builds of the new Edge as they become available.

Go to the Microsoft Edge Insider website and sign up for information about upcoming builds. Microsoft expects to have a first preview build at the start of 2019; this suggests that Microsoft had already started migrating Edge for some time to the new code base.

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