It appears Edge is just not cutting it for Microsoft anymore. To be sure, the reincarnation of Internet Explorer has gotten a lot better over the years, especially since Microsoft regularly pushes out cool features and updates for it.
However, it's just not pulling in the amount of users the company expects it to.
Google Chrome is currently the top dog of browsers. Opera is hanging in there, still. Mozilla is slowly carving a comeback with its Firefox Quantum browser. Safari is still the default for most Apple users. So how can Microsoft compete?
Well, with an entirely new web browser, of course. That's right — the company is restarting its browser plans from scratch. Windows Central reports that Microsoft is developing a new browser built on Chromium, the open source base responsible for Google Chrome and other lesser-known browsers such as Brave and Amazon Silk.
Microsoft Making A New Web Browser
The rumored browser is said to be codenamed Anaheim internally, and this news comes right after 9to5Google recently reported a number of code commits to the Chromium project by Microsoft developers. At the time, the news centered around the possibility of Windows 10 on an ARM-compatible version of Chrome, but this recent news would represent an even more radical move.
Far more radical, however, is the notion that this browser-in-the-making would replace Edge entirely, which the report suggests. It'll become the default web browser on Windows 10 once released, and it's unclear what happens to Edge, then. It's also unclear whether Anaheim will just use the Edge brand or switch to a new brand entirely. It's also yet to be determined whether Anaheim's interface will be different from that of Edge.
Windows 10 191H
Only one thing is for sure, however: EdgeHTML is dead. Microsoft is finally adopting a different rendering engine for the default web browser on Windows 10. Plus, since Anaheim will be based on Chromium, expect it to perform similarly to Chrome.
Windows Central speculates that Anaheim will make an appearance during the Windows 10 19H1 development cycle, which means it might arrive sooner rather than later since Insiders in the Fast Ring are already testing 19H1. In any case, Anaheim will likely be a big deal in Microsoft's broader roadmap for Windows 10, and it might finally help Microsoft capture a bigger share of the web browser market.
Thoughts on a Chromium-based web browser from Microsoft? As always, feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
