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> Microsoft would fork it within hours

I haven't trudged through Chromium's commit statistics but has Microsoft been upstreaming many contributions? I'm skeptical that they are ready to take on the full brunt of Chromium maintenance on a whim, it would take a decent while to build up the teams and expertise for it.

FinnKuhn
Before they swapped Edge over to use Chromium they were capable of maintaining their own engine just fine. Probably not overnight, but in the past they have shown that they have the budget to support a browser engine if they want to.
fabrice_d
Why do you think they moved to Chromium then? They switched because they could not support a competitive engine by themselves.
pseudosavant
Because no amount of money was going to solve the problem of people saying they think Microsoft's browser is slower/worse/etc. Switching to Chromium negated that in a way nothing else could.

When Microsoft beat Netscape with IE, it was by building a far better browser. Google is a stronger competitor than Netscape ever was though. Without Google dropping the ball (like Netscape), Microsoft would never exceed Chrome's performance by enough to be the fastest, most compatible (with Chrome), etc.

It is also just classic Microsoft when they are hungry. Like making Word use WordPerfect files and keyboard shortcuts. Only today it is that their browser is mostly Google, Linux is built into Windows 11, SQL Server ships on Linux, and their most popular IDE is open-source built on open tech (Electron) they didn't create.

When they get threatened, nothing is too sacred for Microsoft to kill or adopt.

thewebguyd
We have enough people of working age now that hasn't lived through the Microsoft of old and don't remember what they can/could do.

Microsoft firing on all cylinders, when they want to, is a terrifying force.

zem
I feel like they burnt enough browser goodwill with IE that no one who was on the internet back then wants to touch a microsoft browser regardless of the engine
sarlalian
They are on the record about why they switched to a chromium based browser. It’s been a while, but if I’m remembering correctly, at the time Google was making changes to YouTube to make it actively slower, and use more power on IE. Microsoft realized that while they could compete as a browser, they couldn’t compete and fight google trying to do underhanded things to sabotage their browser.
FinnKuhn
Because they could archive the same product using chromium with less cost. Should that change their investment in that area would probably increase as a consequence.
fabrice_d
No, because using Chromium was the only way the could stay relevant in the browser space. They were just unable to build the same product with their own stack.
pjmlp
Unable is not the right reason, more like management wasn't willing to fund the team as it needed.

Just like management doesn't a F about the state of UWP, WinUI and anything related to it.

bee_rider
They were facing the same problem that everybody is—Google adds features too fast to keep up. If Google went in a bad direction with Chrome, they’d Microsoft would just have to keep up with Mozilla and Apple.
dpranke
Yes, Microsoft actively contributes to Chromium.

Microsoft lands many changes in Chromium first before they show up in Edge (logistically it's easier to do things this way for merging reasons), but they do also upstream changes to Chromium that show up in Edge first.

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