14 DAY TRIAL // The Chromium-based Microsoft Edge browser is now available for download in Dev and Canary builds, and because it run on the same engine as Google Chrome, it comes with a series of features developed by Google itself.
But despite embracing Chromium, Microsoft doesn’t want to let all Chrome services and features run as part of its browser, so the company blocked more than 50 of them in the browser.
A full list of features that Microsoft replaced or turned off is available in the slide included in the article, but worth highlighting is Google Play support, push notifications, the spellcheck (by the way, Microsoft Edge doesn’t currently offer spellchecking), Android app password hint, Google DNS, Google Cloud Storage, and several services related to Chrome OS.
Cross-platform support
Microsoft says its collaboration with Google worked neatly, and as part of its original plan to improve Chromium, it added no less than 275 commits to the project since joining it in December.
“We still have a lot to learn as we increase our use of and contributions to Chromium, but we have received great support from Chromium engineers in helping us get involved in this project, and we’re pleased to have landed some modest but meaningful contributions already. Our plan is to continue working in Chromium rather than creating a parallel project, to avoid any risk of fragmenting the community,” the Microsoft Edge team explained.
The new Chromium-based Microsoft Edge will support Windows 10 and previous Windows versions like Windows 7, as well as macOS. A Linux version hasn’t been confirmed just yet, but given that Chromium itself is a cross-platform project, such a release isn’t necessarily out of the table.
For now, however, the preview version of Edge only runs on Windows 10, but Microsoft says the platform support would be further expanded in the coming months.