Microsoft Gets an Open Source Web Browser

Dec 12, 2018

The company will use Google Chromium web browser as the foundation for its next browser.

The "new" Microsoft under Satya Nadella is now going deeper with Open Source. The company is dropping its own technologies that power its Edge web browser, which replaced Internet Explore. But instead of reinventing the wheel and creating their browser from scratch, Microsoft will use Google’s Open Source Chromium browser as the base of its web browser.

Microsoft will cease to use the EdgeHTML rendering engine for its Chromium-based web browser and will use Google’s Blink rendering engine.

“We will move to a Chromium-compatible web platform for Microsoft Edge on the desktop. Our intent is to align the Microsoft Edge web platform simultaneously (a) with web standards and (b) with other Chromium-based browsers,” said Joe Belfiore, Corporate Vice President of Windows in a blog post.“

Microsoft is also planning to bring its Chromium-based web browser to competing platforms like macOS. “We also expect this work to enable us to bring Microsoft Edge to other platforms like macOS. Improving the web-platform experience for both end users and developers requires that the web platform and the browser be consistently available to as many devices as possible,” said Belfiore.

Will, it also come to Linux? Does this also mean that one day we may see Linux-powered Windows? Time will tell.

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