Microsoft Launches Chromium Edge for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and macOS

Microsoft today launched its new Edge browser based on Google's Chromium open source project. You can download Chromium Edge now for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, and macOS directly from microsoft.com/edge in more than 90 languages. From a report: Business features aside, there's also support for Chrome-based extensions, 4K streaming, Dolby audio, inking in PDF, and privacy tools. For the last one, it's worth noting that tracking prevention is on by default and offers three levels of control, like Firefox's tracking protection. Chrome extension support is probably the most important feature for most users. By default, extensions that have been ported over to Edge can be downloaded from the Microsoft Store. Chromium Edge also has an option to "Allow extensions from other stores" to get Chrome extensions from the Chrome Web Store. There are still a few features missing from Chromium Edge, most notably history sync and extension sync. Microsoft is working on these and some other inking functionality that it still wants to port from legacy Edge, as Microsoft is calling it. Microsoft also claims that Chromium Edge is "twice as fast as legacy Edge." Curiously, the team isn't making any claims against other browsers -- at least not yet.

I surprised Edge runs on Windows 7

[mykepredko]

I had to run out for a bit and when I came in, both my Windows 7 machines had big blue screens (poor choice that) saying that Windows 7 was no longer supported and I should move to Windows 10.

So, the Edge announcement is surprising as I would consider providing it for Windows 7 to be "support".

Back to doing development on Ubuntu - maybe this will be the year of the Linux desktop.

Re:

[Luckyo]

7 is still supported for several years for organisations that are paying for extended support.

Announced quite a while ago

[twocows]

MS actually announced Win7 support for new Edge right around the time they announced new Edge itself. They also announced it'd be on January 14th at that time, and they had already announced January 14th would be EOL for Win7 before then. So this has been a long time coming.

Microsoft and Google are slowly coming to the same realization with respect to updates: having a bunch of small, modular components that can be updated remotely without major changes to the operating system is a lot more convenient and can be used to at least offer marginal protection to users who can't or won't upgrade. This was the impetus behind APEX on Android 10 and it's what Microsoft's been kinda-sorta trying to do with the Windows Store on Win10 (and Win10X will use this format exclusively from what I understand).

New Edge being Chromium-based means it can be kept up to date by itself without having to update underlying OS components, unlike Internet Explorer or old Edge. This is likely why it's being released to Win7: it offers some modicum of additional ongoing protection for a minimal additional maintenance cost to Microsoft. Better still, they barely even have to do anything themselves, since the Chromium dev team does the bulk of the work here (and most of the work was done long ago).

Re:

[s4080326]

If I may suggest a simpler alternative, Since google is still supporting Windows 7 Microsoft is stuck having to or giving up their existing base to google. Just imagine a situation where Google Docs and Chrome become the only supported option for Win 7.

Re:

[toddestan]

Microsoft didn't support the old Edge on Windows 7 (or Windows 8), which meant that Microsoft gave up their existing base some time ago as IE11 is just too out of date for many popular websites today.

To finally launch a modern browser on Windows 7 a few days after ending support for Windows 7 is just....bizarre.

Re:

[thegarbz]

So, the Edge announcement is surprising as I would consider providing it for Windows 7 to be "support".

Just because you compile a Win32 applications doesn't mean you "support" all the platforms that allow said Win32 applications to run.

Edge being Chrome based runs on Windows 7 just fine. OS checks on end user applications which run just fine are just stupid shit that anti-malware vendors do to sell overpriced enterprise editions.

Wrong Language

[intertrode]

Anyone else have to refresh the download page several times for the license terms to show in english? First I got german, then spanish several times. Once it was in english I downloaded and it was for Windows instead of MacOS.

Re:

[ctilsie242]

It first wanted macOS, then sent me the Mexican Spanish download, and there wasn't an option to change the language to US English. After uninstalling that and visiting the page again, it finally sent the right one.

Re:

[Stonent1]

I had to go straight here to make it work. https://www.microsoft.com/en-u... [microsoft.com]

Seems like reasonable questions:

[Futurepower(R)]

What lack of privacy and other abuse is built into the new Microsoft Edge?

What abuse will be added later, with new versions?

Those seem like reasonable questions, given years of abuse.

Some of the many, many negative articles about Windows 10:

Windows 10 is possibly the worst spyware ever made. [networkworld.com] "Buried in the service agreement is permission to poke through everything on your PC."

Multiple Problems Reported With New Windows 10 Updates [forbes.com]

Re:Seems like reasonable questions:

[twocows]

Probably approximately the same ones built into Chromium, but with Google connections swapped to MS and maybe some additional telemetry. This is more a stand-in for IE11, if your concern is privacy, there are browsers for just about every level of paranoia out there.

Re:Seems like reasonable questions:

[DesScorp]

What lack of privacy and other abuse is built into the new Microsoft Edge?

Actually, Chredge is winning some fans because Microsoft stripped some of the Google tracking stuff out. It is, thus far, less invasive than Chrome.

Re:

[samwichse]

Yeah, MS can just track you right in the OS, why add all that tracking to just one program???

Re:

[thegarbz]

What lack of privacy and other abuse is built into the new Microsoft Edge?

To be brutally honest, does anyone outside of a few Slashdot users care? I mean this is a browser running on a Windows machine after all. The users have made their choice.

Key Questions.

[jellomizer]

0. What are it privacy features
1. How well will it support HTML5
2. How well will it process JavaScript
3. How will will it support CSS3
4. Is there any feature that Chrome doesn't have that I would consider worth while.

Re:

[AvitarX]

Sounds like the PDF inking is an MS product, just based on the fact they're trying to make it equivalent to Edge Legacy.

Re:Key Questions.

[twocows]

It's basically Microsoft-branded Chromium. That should answer all of your questions at once.

Re:

[bobstreo]

My employer has already announced that FireFox is no longer an approved browser and that Chrome is now the company standard. Not sure what universe Chrome is more secure than FireFox but it's whatever universe they are living in...

It's work, suck it up, could be worse, you could still have to deal with IE for legacy applications the company is too cheap to update.

Re:This is the death of FireFox...

[ctilsie242]

I have seen places do this because Firefox uses its own security store, and will bark if the company is doing MITM stuff with transparent SSL proxies with a root cert pushed from AD. So, to try to hide it, companies block Firefox.

Re:This is the death of FireFox...

[twocows]

I doubt they moved to Chrome because of security, even if they told you it was because of security. Chrome dominates the market with something like 80 or 90% user share. If they run their own services, basing on Chrome means their stuff should definitely be compatible for everyone who uses Chrome and probably compatible for anyone who uses a Chromium-based project. Firefox compatibility would require additional work on their part and they probably judged it to be not a cost-effective use of resources.

I have a lot of issues with the way Mozilla handles Firefox development (maintaining features users like and use seems to be a tertiary goal for them at best whereas inserting new obnoxious features without soliciting adequate feedback seems to be a primary goal), but they're right as far as the importance of their project. Chrome is already at the point where people have to adjust to what Chrome does rather than what the standards say, which is the exact problem we had with Internet Explorer before Firefox existed.

FireFox: Why wacky management? Chrome abuse.

[Futurepower(R)]

Mod parent UP! Quote:

"I have a lot of issues with the way Mozilla handles Firefox development (maintaining features users like and use seems to be a tertiary goal for them at best whereas inserting new obnoxious features without soliciting adequate feedback seems to be a primary goal)..."

Another excellent statement:

"Chrome is already at the point where people have to adjust to what Chrome does rather than what the standards say, which is the exact problem we had with Internet Explorer before Firefo

Re:

[Falconnan]

Well, first, Firefox is trying to be more secure. Security is the enemy of convenience. It is what it is.

That Chrome is too dominant is a fair statement. On the other hand, IE was over the top for a long time and declared the "winner" a long time ago. Things change, and some day Google will fail to adapt to something and fall as well. Probably.

Chromium has won the browser wars

[xack]

With Edgehtml raising the white flag, and Mozilla being kept alive as token opposition, we are now in a Chromium world. Even though Chromium Edge takes some of the bad bits of Chromium away it is still ultimately controlled by Google. Google needs to be anti trusted just like Microsoft was for Internet Explorer. We won't have another "Phoenix" moment in web browsing, Google controls many more keys and can lock you out of recaptcha and Google accounts which is what happened to Linux web browsers. But at leas

Re:

[leonbev]

Great...we've once again returning to a world where malware authors can target just one browser rendering engine to successfully exploit over 80% of the installed worldwide user base. I feel MUCH more secure now.

For now. History has shown the Crown is Temporary

[mykepredko]

In the past 25 years, how many browsers have "Won the browser wars"?

Remember:
- Lynx
- Netscape
- Internet Explorer
- Mozilla
- Chrome

I'm sure over the next few years, we'll see a new and better browser that unseats Chrome.

Re:

[Opportunist]

Considering that it didn't take a better browser but rather a company that wanted to muscle into our computers even more than MS, I shudder at the very thought.

Re:

[mykepredko]

Good point.

Re:

[twocows]

I agree with most of what you said, but at this point interacting with the Google ecosystem as a user is mostly optional. Gmail's dominant, but there are plenty of alternatives, and none of Google's other services dominate the consumer market. reCAPTCHA is probably the one thing you don't have much choice about and the worst I've ever gotten using browsers Google apparently hates is several pages worth of "keep selecting X until no more appear" where the images reload incredibly slowly. A major annoyance bu

Hmm. Can't download without account?

[slashkitty]

Any direct link to download the install? it's sending me to the app store.

Re:

[iONiUM]

I believe it is being rolled out via Windows Update, so you should get it shortly if it isn't there already as per this site [windowscentral.com] and Microsoft's news release [extremetech.com] last year.

Re:

[Your.Master]

For me the first Google result for "edge stable" was a working direct link to the download exe. I was actually a little surprised.

Re:

[klui]

You don't need an account. But if you're interested

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlin... [microsoft.com]

Replace language with your preference.

Re:

[antdude]

Only 1.8 MB?

Re:

[samwichse]

One of those stub installers.

Re:

[antdude]

Are there any official full installers that we can download from?

Re:

[samwichse]

Not that I've seen. Sorry.

Re:

[antdude]

Darn and thanks. :(

Language Madness

[bcolflesh]

How do you even get an English download? I've gotten Spanish and German so far - amazing web development skills I've come to expect from MS contractors.

Thanks but no thanks

[sit1963nz]

Microsoft was very quick to abandon the Mac market, and I am guessing they will do the same again when their new browser does not get a high enough % of Mac users installing it.

And to be honest, there is also no compelling reason to install it.

Re:

[twocows]

I think it has some IE-compatibility stuff baked in, in which case it could be useful for accessing pages that still stubbornly refuse to work on anything else.

As far as Mac support, they're basing on Chromium, so their Mac support is probably coming from that project. It's possible they'd stop supporting it, but I doubt it's requiring them any significant effort to maintain, so I think it's unlikely they'll drop it.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Given that this version is based on an open source cross platform base there's little reason (cost) not to support Mac.

Twice as fast as old, using "slower" engine?

[Falconnan]

Twice as fast as Legacy Edge. But using a supposedly slower engine... And then I realized something...

I rarely got the "faster" results, UNLESS I was on a site owned by Microsoft. Especially Office 365. This makes a lot of sense if they changed how they benchmarked it. Most of the web is optimized for Chrome, so yeah, this would help. I have no evidence other than personal experience, however (which is not technically evidence).

*Yawn*

[RitchCraft]

Is anyone truly excited by another browser offering by Microsoft?

Re:

[rtb61]

In a way, consider it a memoriam of the demise of M$ dominance. Like the one for windows phone or all the rest of tech space, from appliances, to servers, to TVs. They have dominance over a tiny and shrinking area of the market, desktop PCs, oh and they continue to survive on game consoles, Windows the toy operating system. Damn Windows anal probe 10 is killing the company and still they refuse to sell a secure version that will protect your privacy because the message from M$ to it's "customers fuck your p

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[kubajz]

It would be weird if the brand new browser was so much slower than competition built on the same engine. Is it possible that you visited the sites in Edge for the first time so there was no caching, your browser needed to load all the JS libraries, images, frameworks that have been cached a long time ago by your other browser?

Microsoft steals Google's Chromium browser

[notdecnet]

‘Microsoft also claims that Chromium Edge is "twice as fast as legacy Edge."’

Have these people no shame. Let me guess the reason it's "twice as fast as legacy Edge" is Microsoft has moved core functionality into a Windows DLL that gets loaded at boot, thereby giving the false impression that Microsoft Edge is faster. Such functionality being not available to third party developers. It wouldn't be the first time Microsoft was caught using undocumented APIs [sonic.net]

I already ran

[kilodelta]

The patch that says don't update to this. Reason being I already use Chrome so there's no issue. Only real reason I need Edge is when Chrome screws the pooch on security settings.