[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.)