What were the main reason(s) Microsoft chose Chromium over Firefox?

[HotCakeX]

I just saw a post on my Twitter from EdgeDev and they said they contributed so much to the project. with hashtag #Opensource

Open source is good but Chromium is not the only open source engine, There is Firefox, fully open source and it uses Gecko layout engine. it's been around way longer than Chromium, in fact it is one of the first engines that was ever created.

So I'm both curious and really interested to know the logic and reason that why Microsoft chose Chromium instead of Firefox.

hopefully we will see some official responses here too in addition to others :)

[#2]

I agree with most parts, but I highly doubt Microsoft will ever abandon the NT kernel in favor of Linux, if anything is going to happen within a decade its probably the rise of DAAS (desktop as a service), think of it as a desktop alternative to cloud gaming.

As much as I like Linux, it just wasn't built for gaming or desktop in mind, NT kernel focused on desktop and even had parts of GUI included in it.
Same reason why development (Especially for a language like C++) has always been much harder under windows.

I prefer to use the 'best of both worlds', the GUI and browser within windows combined with WSL2, the only feature WSL currently lacks is direct access to hardware (USB or GPU for example), direct GPU support is important because many AI development frameworks use GPU acceleration.

As far as Edge's portability is concerned, since its no longer using the UWP API, we can expect Linux support; although many features may be missing because of the tight integration between window's core foundations and the browser, and Linux's lack of proper hardware acceleration (It's been getting much better lately)

[#3]

I hope they never abandon Windows' NT kernel. Windows has so much advantages over Linux.
There is nothing even wrong with Windows. it's not like Gecko vs Chromium. even if it was like that. Windows would be the Chromium and Linux would be the Gecko.

[#4]

That will most likely happen in the next decade.
even console making companies like Sony and Microsoft said that PS5 and Xbox X are the last generation of console to host physical hardware. the next generation will definitely be cloud based, so users only would need to have some kind of browser or desktop to play their games.

[#5]

Well there certainly are things that windows lacks, like I said many development tools were built with Linux in mind, just like how Windows has first-class support for gaming/entertainment or professional/enterprise software.

Abandoning NT in favor of Linux is impossible. Considering Windows's goals and target audience. Besides porting all those legacy/UWP apps to Linux requires you to either implement the Win32/UWP API as an alternative to POSIX in Linux, or simply rely on projects like Wine to run windows apps which adds some overhead and doesn't work flawlessly; what's the point of that?

And there will be many legal issues involved.

Best choice in my opinion is using the strengths of both sides, WSL2 is an excellent example of this. Low overhead/resource usage, easily accessible and its basically sufficient for basic development needs. more complicated things require direct access to the hardware which is not available at this moment, sadly.

[#6]

I hope to see more improvements to the WSL2 in the future Windows insider builds

[#7]

@Thraetaona 

Spoiler

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@Thraetaona wrote:

@HotCakeX 

1.  

Well, nothing is preventing them from porting the same extension to other browsers, too.

But that comes at the cost of maintenance.

Even if firefox's share droppdd to 1% compared to 99%, would it still make sense porting to it, considering that it still is the worlds second popular browser?

Well, That's impossible, but i was just saying that if chrome's usage is going to grow, then less and less developers will care about Firefox's support. how can you expect someone who doesn't care weather their site is accessible by anything other than Chrome to port their extensions to other browsers?

Firefox's usage is indeed higher within the Linux ecosystem, but be aware that some extensions might specifically target a certain OS; same reason we don't use shell (like KDE) integration extensions in chrome/firefox under windows.

Linux usage is only a tiny portion of desktop share, let alone the influence of mobile markets on this.

1.  

ublock origin is not the only extension making use of that API

Regarding trusting ublock, you might be interested in this: http://tuxdiary.com/2015/06/14/ublock-origin/

Well, why would anyone who values privacy at that rate, choose google chrome in the first place? there are many alternatives.

"Decent yes but far from perfect."

Well, it should use something like 140k at max, given that most of those rules are outdated and no longer in existence, it could be trimmed down to a much smaller amount.

I don't think that's going to happen though. I mean right now 8% is a lot and if some extension developers don't make Firefox version of their extensions then it's their own loss..

[#8]

Strange, my reply has been posted thrice after 3 days...

Yeah, I said its impossible too.
Well that link shows what happened to an extension that's 'wise to trust'.  And ublock was not the only extension making use of that API, I'm just saying that security was a priority there.

[#9]

Yes you're right