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Comment by babuskov | Hacker News Reader

If anyone told me a decade ago that a day will come when I will feel sorry for Microsoft browser technology going away...

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Well, I think it's actually two different things: I don't feel bad at all seeing IE/Edge coming to an end. It was a closed, non free, single-platform browser, who gave a lot of people a lot of headaches during the last 20 years. On the other hand, I'm worried by the fact that Google browser market share continues to grow.

Honest question, what has Edge/IE actually contributed to the web in the past decade? I understand that having one less engine is not preferable, but realistically, it always felt like they were dragging behind struggling to keep up, while Apple, Google and Mozilla kept forging ahead.

By using Blink, maybe they can spend more time actually contributing to the spec and having an independent voice elsewhere?

They were the main driver behind Pointer Events, and also were the first adopter (after Mozilla, who pioneered it) of asm.js, which got the ball rolling to the point where we're getting WebAssembly now.

Grid layout is the big one, but there are plenty of smaller examples.

> Honest question, what has Edge/IE actually contributed to the web in the past decade?

Ajax

It's also a good reminder that monopolies in the tech industry are fleeting. The concerns that people have today over Facebook becoming a monopoly will seem a bit silly in 20 years after they miss a disruptive change and lose out to a new competitor.

It's also good to remind yourself that this is not a law, and that you could easily have worried about Google's dominance in search a decade ago and still be right today.

It is a weird flip isn't it? It feels more like a 'pick your battles' thing though. Microsoft has been assailed on the browser front for a long time. An alternative would have been to open source it (like the Chromium code base) so that "anyone" could build browsers based on their code base.

The Edge code base is probably so tightly coupled to the Windows API that it could never practically be ported to another platform.

I don't disagree. However, if I understand what Satya Nadella is trying to do with Microsoft, I would expect to see growth in open source Windows targeted software.

For me, I think a reasonable definition of a healthy development platform is one where developers are investing their time and sharing their expertise to develop tools and applications specifically for that platform. Having a windows focused code base for web browsing and all of the components that entails could be an encouraging reef from which open source eco-systems could spring.

10 years ago it was forseeable that MS would lose the browser wars.

BTW, this is not the first time MS has considered Chromium. Back before the fork of Edge, they considered using Webkit.

By 2008 it was fairly obvious that MS wasn't serious contender in the browser market anymore. This was two years after IE7 release which itself was pretty lackluster, and IE8 was still nowhere to be seen. Firefox popularity was pretty much at its peak, and Chrome was just released immediately starting to eat up the world.

Maybe Webkit would have fewer bugs by now if Microsoft had chosen it for Edge a few years ago.

It's too bad Microsoft didn't get broken up in the 90s. We'd probably have more browser options.

It's too bad Google isn't being broken up now.

This is why I'm already on board for Bernie Sanders 2020. I don't think any other contender out there is going to stand up to these giant companies, which is what our economy desperately needs.

”This is why I’m already on board for Barack Obama 2008.”

But the tech industry is a key contributor for any democratic contender, so I don’t expect much progress here. Might still be the right choice though, but I don’t think this is the issue where you should turn your hopes on the democrats.

Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat.

> Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat.

Bernie Sanders is occasionally a Democrat; particularly, he was when running for President in 2016 and almost certainly will be if he runs for President in 2020; as a Senator he is “merely” an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, doesn't have the Democratic Party support candidates against him, and is the Democratic caucus’s ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee.

I think the important part is that he doesn't have personal connections either directly with the industry lobbyists, or with prominent Dem leadership figures who do. So he can afford to ignore the lobbying.

> I think the important part is that he doesn't have personal connections either directly with the industry lobbyists, or with prominent Dem leadership figures who do.

No, he didn't get to be the ranking member of the Banking Committee without personal connections with just about every Dem leadership figure that matters, especially in the Senate.

Now, he might have the moral fortitude to stand up for his public values despite such connections, but denying that they exist is ludicrous.

This is demonstrably false. He's in the pocket of industry just like any other politician.

That really needs some sarcasm quotes around it. Technically true. Practically, no.

Didn't they essentially do that to themselves? The various ventures of "Google" are now several companies that just happen to be majority-owned by one company (Alphabet.) If the SEC didn't like that arrangement, all they would have to do is get Alphabet to divest its ownership.

I'm not sure that vision is all upside. Microsoft de facto provided some industry standardization.

I am always reminded of when fire departments couldn't help other cities because their equipment wasn't compatible. This was so disastrous that we introduced standardization for sizes of hoses, connectors, etc.

I am not aware of anyone protesting such standardization the way we routinely think it's a terrible thing in other industries while taking it for granted that all our stuff is supposed naturally play well with all our other stuff.

MS is infamous for ignoring and/or breaking standards. Using your market powers to lock users in to your own proprietary (modified copies of open) standars are NOT beneficial to anyone but MS.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree.

My understanding is MS basically brought the world the personal computer. You and I probably couldn't have this argument had they never set out to get filthy rich and yadda. The world would likely be a very different place and I personally think that alternate timeline wouldn't be all upside. I don't think it would be some eutopia that we stupidly missed out on by failing to tell Bill Gates "kill it before it grows."

Unless you are saying that “EEE” and being destructive is a necessary condition to being successfull I don’t see how that comment is relevant to the issue with standards I addressed.

More browsers with bugs to work around. What a nightmare.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

"Do. Or do not. There is no try." ;)

as a frontender I'm not sad. A lot of bugs coming in from Edge. And Edge has a pretty shit debugger too. So no tears for me. Waiting for Safari to die. Firefox and Chrome are good.

Why would Safari [i.e. Webkit] die? Looking at desktop + mobile market shares, if anyone would be "the next to die", it'd be Firefox.

Safari is a huge pain in the ass to test on because you have to own apple hardware to do it. Firefox and chrome can be installed on anything and microsoft gave you a VM to test IE and Edge in.

I didn't say "why should it die", I said "why would it die." Unless you mean that you find it likely that some appreciable fraction of developers will stop owning Apple hardware at some point.

I said I wish it would die. Really slow in keeping up with the standards.

Ouch. True. So weird for me to feel that way.

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