The historic decision to adopt Google’s Chromium project to create the new Microsoft Edge browser is providing benefits for both parties. If Microsoft saves years of development using a powerful, reliable and open source database to relaunch its navigation solution, Chrome developers are also feeding back to the work of the guys at Redmond.
We see it in the configuration tool of the new test version of Chrome (version 76.0.3793.0), which has been published on the Canary channel and will be moved to future stable versions of the Google browser.
The tool has been completely redesigned and keeps a clear “inspiration” from that used in Microsoft Edge, with a dedicated fixed sidebar that facilitates navigation. It contains the main functions, including direct access to the user menu, appearance, search engine and also the “About” tab where the manual browser update is performed.
The truth is that it looks much cleaner and more intuitive. Yes, like Microsoft Edge. Chrome has excelled in performance and compatibility with standards, but with minimalism per flag has never excelled in the design section.
Although many have labeled the new Edge as “a copy of Chrome”, the development on the same basis allows any interesting element to move from one to another. Microsoft has great ambitions with the new Edge that you can try in beta and it is sure that it has a good amount of personnel working on it.
In addition to design elements, all improvements made by Microsoft on Chromium will be published under a free license and can be used in the same Chrome and in others that use this engine as Opera or Vivaldi. It is clear that the use of Chromium will benefit Edge and Chrome users. It is a very established open source project that offers great performance in the processing of pages, has a huge number of extensions, frequent updates and improvement of community code especially that of its main maintainer, Google.
The benefits reach developers as well as Microsoft’s enterprise customers, who will be able to count on a browser compatible with the standards that work with all their modern web-based applications. The problem here you already know what it is. Can alternatives such as Firefox survive in this scenario? Mozilla already noted that “Microsoft’s Edge Chromium is terrible for the Web. ” because it gives Google more ability to decide on its own on the Web.
“From a perspective of social, civic and individual empowerment, giving control of the fundamental infrastructure online to one company is terrible,” they said from Mozilla. We will see.
