[akmittal]

>Microsoft basing Edge on Chromium was a really stupid move on their part for this reason,

It is not true at all. After a long time Microsoft's browser share in increasing. They probably are quite happy about it,.

[kristopolous]

Also things like teams and skype at least on linux appear to just be electron webapps. Microsoft's safest long-term cash cow I think is still in these corporate contracts that combine all their tools in a confusing giant stew for every employee at those 1,000+ headcount companies.

Having more instrumentation over the platform they're doing it on is probably reasonable and realistically blink is already on every platform with over 1% usage share so that's a much easier road than supporting Trident, EdgeHTML or Chakra - the engine is not their core product - it's the stuff built on top of it.

I've used edge on linux - other than the weird thrill of seeing software that says "Copyright Microsoft" running on linux it's just a typical functional webbrowser -- that's exactly what they need.

[wooben]

I've been gradually switching to Edge and I'm sure Microsoft is happy with people like me who are too scatterbrained to change the default search engine (of course now I've spent more time writing this comment than I would have making the switch)

[endemic]

Plus Google can't intentionally cripple Edge without shooting themselves in the foot.

[spinningslate]

this. Firefox isn't a competitive threat for Microsoft; Chrome was. So Microsoft did what they're extremely good at: commoditising competitive threat where they were losing on market share. They've done it with Linux too. Whether you love them or hate them, you have to recognise the effectiveness of both strategy and execution.

[randomsearch]

You’re both right I think: short term needed users so adopt chrome... long term Firefox essential so MS would step in as a supporter (and potentially adopt it too should google become a problem).