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Ask HN: Is Microsoft trying to make a better version of chrome than chrome?

4 points by runninganyways ↗ HN
Wait, did Microsoft win the browser wars?

MS: Okay, gooogle, you win, we aren't good at making browsers like you are. Can you take on all the responsibility of making this browser work while we focus solely on what our customers want?

So they can basically blame Google for everything while spending all their time building on top of chrome.

4 comments

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bryanrasmussen
The original browser wars were predicated on the internet being the new center of profit, and the company that controlled it via the browser being the main company of the next century. Nobody thinks that you need to control a browser to make profit anymore, Google uses it's browser more as a bulwark against real profit threatening things like extra security and privacy in other browsers.

For these reasons Microsoft did not win the browser war, because there is no war if there isn't anything financially important to fight over.

on edit: changed a was to were.

MarcellusDrum
I think I have to disagree.

Google is definitely using Chrome for more than just a security measure. Google is getting aggressive in competing with Firefox, what they are doing is either borderline or literally illegal, like making their services intentionally slower or have a worse UI on Firefox.

They are doing it now to Firefox, so imagine what they will do if they have 100% marketshare in the browser industry. A competitor to YouTube is rising? Make their videos stream a bit slower. Or refuse to support new standard technologies, and support some deprecated ones that their websites still uses, forcing everyone to use Google's standard, and then slowly depricate those standards after secretly removing them from your services.

Phrasing it this way makes it obvious that this is illegal, but I'm sure they will find a way to subtlety do it so that a case can't be made against them, while still screwing their competitors.

runninganyways
No, then everyone will use extensions that support their favorite features and the browser wars will start all over again
vithalreddy
Microsoft is doing, what they do best. Find things most users using or want to use, that's what they have done with WSL.Then do that with MS branding. Now trying to attract Chrome's userbase.

PS: That's what most of these companies do.