RIP Microsoft Edge, You won't be missed.

As the above meme shows, whenever Microsoft touches a browser, people run. And for good reason too. Microsoft browsers are slow, clunky and well, slow.  So, on Thursday, Microsoft announced that it would be switching to the open source browser engine Chromium, for Microsoft Edge, giving up on both its EdgeHTML Renderer as well as the Chakra JavaScript Engine. The world's browser of choice is Chrome, but an astounding 2%of internet users (read: idiots) use Microsoft Edge as their daily driver. Chrome is based off of Chromium, and many features are actually implemented first in Chromium, and then are rolled over to Chrome. Hundreds of companies contribute to Chromium, and Microsoft will be joining that group. 

Google has welcomed Microsoft with open arms, stating “Chrome has been a champion of the open web since inception and we welcome Microsoft to the community of Chromium contributors, we look forward to working with Microsoft and the web standards community to advance the open web, support user choice and deliver great browsing experiences.”  The reason Microsoft had to give up on Edge engines is the huge fragmentation between Web Browsers, as well as Microsoft's own engine requires minor changes to web pages, to display them. This means that thousands, if not millions of websites don't support Edge. Many web developers don't use Edge at all, and frankly don't care about the insignificant people who use it. In short they don't consider it worth their while to support Edge as well. 

On the other hand Mozilla stated  “This just increases the importance of Mozilla’s role as the only independent choice. We are not going to concede that Google’s implementation of the web is the only option consumers should have. That’s why we built Firefox in the first place and why we will always fight for a truly open web."  Mozilla sounds pissed, because it is the only real competition left to Chromium and by extension to Chrome, in the browser wars v2, now that Edge has defected to the Chromium Alliance. Apple is happy to let Safari sit around on macOS and iOS, and that's the way its gonna stay. Unless another great browser comes along, looks like Firefox is on it's own now. 

Author's Note: I am going to include some Edge memes for your perusal below.