Google changes sites to break rival browsers: ex-Edge intern

Kuttz

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Back in early December Microsoft officially confirmed that it will be ditching the EdgeHTML rendering engine used by its Edge desktop browser. In its blog post Microsoft concentrated on the positive aspects of its decision; it will collaborate with open source developers and help improve the code for everyone, Edge would be updated more often, and Edge would come to more platforms.

Behind the scenes, and the positive spin outlined above, the decision by Microsoft was a little more forced by outside, possibly malignant, forces - according to a former Edge team intern writing on Hacker News, via NeoWin.

Joshua Bakita suggests that Microsoft simply "couldn't keep up" with changes Google made to its sites that "broke other browsers". He cites an example with YouTube and how Microsoft could once boast that it was leagues ahead in power efficiency. Apparently Google made a change to YouTube code with "a hidden empty div over YouTube videos," that caused Edge optimisations to stumble. With Edge's twice a year updates as part of Windows this 'feature' was only fixed in the Win 10 October update.

When Microsoft implements the Chromium-based Edge, the browser will be separated from the OS, and be updated independently and more frequently. Users should no longer suffer from sub-optimisations from Google's web app coders. Hopefully this doesn't mean Google will spend more time making YouTube, Maps, Docs etc suboptimal for Firefox users.

I've reproduced the full post from Hacker News by Bakita below, for reference.

"For example, they may start integrating technologies for which they have exclusive, or at least 'special' access. Can you imagine if all of a sudden Google apps start performing better than anyone else's?"

This is already happening. I very recently worked on the Edge team, and one of the reasons we decided to end EdgeHTML was because Google kept making changes to its sites that broke other browsers, and we couldn't keep up. For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life. What makes it so sad, is that their claimed dominance was not due to ingenious optimization work by Chrome, but due to a failure of YouTube. On the whole, they only made the web slower.

Now while I'm not sure I'm convinced that YouTube was changed intentionally to slow Edge, many of my co-workers are quite convinced - and they're the ones who looked into it personally. To add to this all, when we asked, YouTube turned down our request to remove the hidden empty div and did not elaborate further.

And this is only one case.
 

DeepWeb

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I think we all had a similar sentiment. Some things simply were not working right in Edge but then there were others like Google Maps that works much better in Edge than in Chrome. I want to feel sorry but Microsoft did the same thing with Internet Explorer in the past. Remember all the ridiculous plugins, ActiveX, those pesky corporate and government websites that only work in IE. The Microsoft Update Catalog is finally working in Chrome.

I feel like Microsoft killed the one thing that was good about Edge which was its engine. They just had to make the UI more intuitive and approve extensions at a faster rate. Microsoft gave up because they didn't want to commit to a long-term strategy just when Edge was finally getting more useful. Also YouTube is a TERRIBLE site no matter what browser and it has a long history of showing its ridiculous design changes and video formats down people's throats when no one ever asked for them (Webp, VP9) and there is still a lot of hardware that is unable to accelerate those formats.
 

plat

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Remember what Edge was initially called? Spartan browser? :sleep: I personally like little tiny trinkets and bling to tastefully dress up Firefox, but no! Not Edge. It is Spartan and therefore boring. More extension selection is very welcome but otherwise, I found Edge to run fast and cleanly. It just never caught on, I guess. I wonder: Microsoft should change the browser name again and cut all ties to the past?
 

SHvFl

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Yeah, what an intern is saying that probably didn't continue working there must be accurate. No chance he didn't get the full picture. I bet they have meetings when they explain all decision in details to anyone in the building atm. Even the cleaning lady is there from what I hear.
 

KonradPL

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In my opinion ms Edge is a very good browser. Clean inerface, pretty fast and good security features implicated.
But come out strategy was terrible... nearly no support for extensions and no android version in the same time. Now it`s a bit better but... game over Edge engine.
I don`t like google chrome and think any monopol is good for users. I support the firefox browser, never had any serious issue with that.
 
D

Deleted member 178

So what?

To get profits, a company must stay on top of the others, that is business basics.

Chrome is Google, YouTube is Google, so if people want best experience on youtube they know which browser to use.

I remember old sucky MS on winXP/7 forcing use of IE for updating the system.

Same game, different pieces.
 
L

Local Host

Old news, and is the reason I think Microsoft moving to Chromium is a bad idea, the problem with Edge was lack of updates they never made the promised change to Microsoft Store (which Edge clearly needed).
So what?

To get profits, a company must stay on top of the others, that is business basics.

Chrome is Google, YouTube is Google, so if people want best experience on youtube they know which browser to use.

I remember old sucky MS on winXP/7 forcing use of IE for updating the system.

Same game, different pieces.
That was never a thing on Windows since XP SP3 incorporated Windows Update, you could remove IE from the system with no worries.
 
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KonradPL

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May 1, 2018
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In my opinion Edge is/was the best browser for youtube.
Edge lacks:

- independent updates
- extensions support
- android version (in the past)

Google is doing people brainwashing so that they think that what is from them is always the best to service their services
 
D

Deleted member 178

Old news, and is the reason I think Microsoft moving to Chromium is a bad idea, the problem with Edge was lack of updates they never made the promised change to Microsoft Store (which Edge clearly needed).

That was never a thing on Windows since XP SP3 incorporated Windows Update, you could remove IE from the system with no worries.
Try again when clean installing and need some specific kb to fix WU eternal-looping.
 

LDogg

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May 4, 2018
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Wouldn't surprise me though tbh. Two major companies would act like this.

~LDogg
 
L

Local Host

Try again when clean installing and need some specific kb to fix WU eternal-looping.
I have multiple times, since it's a problem on old W7 builds (as it needs a bulk of updates, even the WU itself needs to be updated).

Always worked without IE for me.
 

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