14 DAY TRIAL // A former Microsoft intern revealed recently that Google breaks down other browsers on purpose, pointing to one example when the search giant made changes to YouTube that eventually caused Microsoft Edge to be substantially slower.
Google, on the other hand, says this isn’t the case, as the performance of browsers could only be affected by bugs that the company handles seriously and fixes as fast as possible.
“YouTube does not add code designed to defeat optimizations in other browsers, and works quickly to fix bugs when they’re discovered,” a YouTube spokesperson was quoted as saying by The Verge. “We regularly engage with other browser vendors through standards bodies, the Web Platform Tests project, the open-source Chromium project and more to improve browser interoperability.”
New Edge version coming next year
Former Microsoft intern Joshua Bakita claimed that moving Microsoft Edge to the Chromium engine was Microsoft’s solution to preventing similar problems in the future, explaining that the YouTube team has previously refused to provide more details on code changes.
“While I’m not sure I’m convinced that YouTube was changed intentionally to slow Edge, many of my co-workers are quite convinced. To add to this all, when we asked, YouTube turned down our request to remove the hidden empty div and did not elaborate further,” he said.
Microsoft is currently in the process of building a new browser that would be based on the Chromium engine, the same that powers Google’s very own Chrome app.
Microsoft Edge, however, won’t go away, but only migrate from EdgeHTML to Chromium, and Microsoft says that a preview version of the new browser will be ready in early 2019.
There’s no ETA as to when the final build could be ready, but Microsoft hopes that by moving to Chromium, the browser could be easier to maintain, while also benefitting from other features, like support for the large collection of Chrome extensions.