Microsoft also says moving to Chromium will allow them to bring the browser to other platforms – get ready for Edge on the Mac. Now Microsoft will be able to deliver updates as they’re introduced to Chromium, ensuring Edge is as compatible with web standards as any other Chromium-based browser, and likely enabling Chromium extensions down the road.

It also made rolling out Edge a pain for IT departments. Given how reluctant people can be to update their OS, it left users vulnerable to compatibility and security updates. The only way to have the latest version of Edge was to have the latest version of Windows.

Previously, new versions of Edge were only deployed with Windows updates, leading to serious fragmentation. Moving over to Chromium has another benefit: more frequent releases. But now it gets to have a much larger say in Chromium’s development, and in turn, the web as a whole. The company had already made contributions to Chromium, such as improvements for touch-based scrolling (which used to be awful), accessibility, and compatibility with ARM devices on Windows. And as soon as a site doesn’t properly, people switch over to another browser – probably Chrome. Edge works well enough most of the time, sure, but with a fraction of Chromium’s adoption, developers aren’t nearly as inclined to assure their sites work properly with Edge.

If you ask me, it’s a good thing for everyone.Ĭompatibility is the biggest reason behind the change. By incorporating Google’s Chromium into Edge on the desktop, along with other sweeping changes being announced today, the company aims to improve its browser in a way that wasn’t feasible before. After dominating the early web with Internet Explorer and struggling to reach the same prominence with Edge, the company today announced it will be transitioning its browser to a Chromium-based platform in 2019.īut Microsoft doesn’t just see the move as a case of giving in to the competition.

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