[sverige]

Seriously, why is MS doing this? Internet Explorer died years ago, Edge never took off, and Google isn't about to give up their market share for spyware without a fight. It's like MS thinks this is Browser Wars 3.0. Heaven help me if it turns out that MS seems to be doing something comparatively good.

[alkonaut]

They need a browser they control but they only need to control look/feel, interaction with windows settings etc. They don’t want to spend a fortune maintaining a js runtime and renderer.

So assuming an OS does need to ship with a browser, skinning a chromium one seems very sensible.

[s_y_n_t_a_x]

I think you answered your own question. Edge never took off, why continue investing money into it?

This offloads a lot of work to the open-source Chromium project, allowing Microsoft to just skin it and add whatever else they need.

[dragonwriter]

> This offloads a lot of work to the open-source Chromium project, allowing Microsoft to just skin it and add whatever else they need.

Plus, it means any work MS does at implementing web features they view as strategic in their browser will naturally easily port back to Chrome, eliminating technical barriers for them becoming common user-agent features (there might still be political/strategic reasons for Chrome not accepting them, of course.)

[Shorel]

Curiously, had they made Edge compatible with Windows 7 it would have had a much bigger chance of it actually being used.

The greedy strategy of wanting to have both Windows 10 and browser market share is what doomed Edge.