I have a lot of doubts on... any Edge features actually surviving into this Chrome reskin. They've decided not to implement eBook support, which yes, meant they couldn't sell eBooks anymore, but also effectively removed native EPUB support from Windows entirely, which was a pretty nice feature to have.
That's disappointing... Previewing EPUB files is the only reason I ever use Edge. I would imagine a lot of other people do the same -- it was nice having native EPUB viewing support in Windows 10.
Yeah, one of the reasons I've long preferred PDF's for eBooks was the pretty much default support anywhere. EPUB was winning me over with Edge support. I'm irritated it's being removed.
Edge's EPUB and PDF tools were available as a separate app call "Reader" in Windows 8 (mostly just for choice of workflow it seemed, but also maybe because it wasn't certain that Edge was going to "own" them), which was discontinued in Windows 10 when Edge took full ownership. I very much hope that if the Edge team can't/doesn't re-embed the PDF and EPUB views into Chromium-based Edge, at the very least they could give us a new version of "Reader", because it is so handy to have an inbox EPUB and PDF application in Windows.
I remember it supporting EPUBs, but memory may be faulty here. In my defense, Reader survived longer than I think most people realized because it stopped being a default installed app pretty quickly (I think 8.1 did that, IIRC), and it still ran in Windows 10 for quite some time (if you had previously installed it) before it was shutdown for good. It may have been during that weird period on Windows 10 before it was entirely shutdown.
That said, the core point still remains that hopefully even if Edge doesn't continue to support EPUBs they might spin it out into an app.
If they had any intention of doing that, they wouldn't have decided to refund everyone's eBooks they ever purchased since they started selling them. That's a move that only makes sense if they are completely removing the functionality.
Not necessarily? Groove shutdown all of its online services in March but Microsoft is planning to leave it as the inbox offline player for the time being (even if it is just a sad shell of what it once was and dedicates a bunch of real estate to remind you that everybody else moved on to Spotify). The Ebook Store used an online service for DRM, plus all the various Store services themselves. It's certainly plausible they might shutdown all the online services and still provide an "offline only" non-DRM reading app.
Rebuilding Edge's Reading View is on the Focus Areas list for Edge-Chromium, so depending on how the EPUB system was built maybe that's just included in the Reading View rebuild. Certainly, if people provide it as feedback that it is something that people want, I expect they will consider what they can do. It even sounds like it may be the sort of thing that this Microsoft could also make an open source Chromium extension and let Chrome users have access to it as well.
The reason Microsoft's online music service shut down, was because it had recurring licensing costs that weren't sustainable based on the amount of business it did. The eBook model is much closer to how apps are sold, it cost them near nothing, and as it is integrated with the Windows Store platform which remains for selling apps. They have no need to shut down their eBook service, if not for the fact that they are eliminating the only way to read their eBooks.
Bear in mind, even when they shut down music, they didn't buy back everyone's music, because people could play their MP3s still with the desktop player or even alternative music players, whereas Microsoft's EPUBs use at the least their own licensing system, since they changed the file format to MSEPUB and have a separate license file for each. The only player is Edge, and Edge as it has been is going away.
While we don't know the extent of Microsoft's eBook sales to begin with, a full refund since the launch of service is generally the sort of thing you don't do unless there's no other option. If they had intention to continue eBook support, they'd surely have chosen to fast track EPUB support in Edgium instead.
(For what it matters, in March Groove also shutdown their OneDrive support because something about the OneDrive API was changing. Presumably no recurring license costs involved there, just old fashioned tech debt when using cloud services.)
DRM is literally all about licensing costs. Even if they were licensing the DRM tech from themselves, that was a licensing cost on the books, and it is entirely possible that that overhead was enough to close the licensing servers. That's before you get into whatever details of whatever contracts they were using to license the books from the various publishers.
Continuing to support DRM-free EPUB in someway or another is entirely orthogonal to continuing to run DRM license servers. It's very clear they no longer intend to run the license servers. It remains to be seen if they have interest in DRM-free EPUB viewing.
Also, Edge isn't going away soon and Edge doesn't seem to be related to the store shutdown, it seems to be license/cost-related. The previews for Chromium-based Edge are out now, but the switchover isn't expected for months or years from now. I'd be hugely surprised if the switchover deadline is any closer than Windows 20H1. There's no need to fast track EPUB support in Chromium-based Edge because Chromium-based Edge doesn't itself appear to be on a fast track for Windows.
It is quite smooth! But it is … just Chromium with a different name and some Windows 10 style reskinning. Its like Microsoft requires a browser for their platform, so they took something, reskinned it and now are calling it their browser.
I'm actually currently using Edge as my daily driver right now, but I will switch to Firefox once it will be replaced by "Windows 10-style Chromium". For web diversity.
The user agent is currently: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.48 Safari/537.36 Edg/74.1.96.24" - yes "Edg". That is not a typo.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 57.5 ms ] threadThe reading list is not implemented in this build, but I hope they add it back...
That said, the core point still remains that hopefully even if Edge doesn't continue to support EPUBs they might spin it out into an app.
Rebuilding Edge's Reading View is on the Focus Areas list for Edge-Chromium, so depending on how the EPUB system was built maybe that's just included in the Reading View rebuild. Certainly, if people provide it as feedback that it is something that people want, I expect they will consider what they can do. It even sounds like it may be the sort of thing that this Microsoft could also make an open source Chromium extension and let Chrome users have access to it as well.
Bear in mind, even when they shut down music, they didn't buy back everyone's music, because people could play their MP3s still with the desktop player or even alternative music players, whereas Microsoft's EPUBs use at the least their own licensing system, since they changed the file format to MSEPUB and have a separate license file for each. The only player is Edge, and Edge as it has been is going away.
While we don't know the extent of Microsoft's eBook sales to begin with, a full refund since the launch of service is generally the sort of thing you don't do unless there's no other option. If they had intention to continue eBook support, they'd surely have chosen to fast track EPUB support in Edgium instead.
DRM is literally all about licensing costs. Even if they were licensing the DRM tech from themselves, that was a licensing cost on the books, and it is entirely possible that that overhead was enough to close the licensing servers. That's before you get into whatever details of whatever contracts they were using to license the books from the various publishers.
Continuing to support DRM-free EPUB in someway or another is entirely orthogonal to continuing to run DRM license servers. It's very clear they no longer intend to run the license servers. It remains to be seen if they have interest in DRM-free EPUB viewing.
Also, Edge isn't going away soon and Edge doesn't seem to be related to the store shutdown, it seems to be license/cost-related. The previews for Chromium-based Edge are out now, but the switchover isn't expected for months or years from now. I'd be hugely surprised if the switchover deadline is any closer than Windows 20H1. There's no need to fast track EPUB support in Chromium-based Edge because Chromium-based Edge doesn't itself appear to be on a fast track for Windows.
I'm actually currently using Edge as my daily driver right now, but I will switch to Firefox once it will be replaced by "Windows 10-style Chromium". For web diversity.
The user agent is currently: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/74.0.3729.48 Safari/537.36 Edg/74.1.96.24" - yes "Edg". That is not a typo.