Perception is reality here.
Right now people get updates to Chrome and ChromeOS from Google. Microsoft is free to fork it. But if Microsoft goes one way and Google another, Google's version is what gets used. And everyone knows it. So anyone who wants to influence the direction of Chromium will talk to Google. Anyone who wants an idea of what is coming, will ask Google. Microsoft is a distinctly second class citizen.
Doubly so since Microsoft's last two attempts at a browser (IE and Edge) are now failed also-rans. If it attempts to fork Chromium, nobody is going to believe that their third try will win.
In its younger days, Microsoft fought hard to avoid being in such positions. For a flavor, read http://gunkies.org/wiki/Gordon_Letwin_OS/2_usenet_post to see how they thought about ownership of standards. But Microsoft has decided to cede this particular battle. At least for now.
No, because Mozilla don't own them, Google does.
The problem is not Google having a browser, open or closed. The problem is all the influence Google has elsewhere.
Do you mean rolling a new protocol in Chrome without warning that magically makes Google faster because they rolled it out on their end as well? This already happened with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPDY.
As long as what they do is technically good and not too heavy-handed, developers won't resist. In fact it is likely to be welcomed. But the effect will constantly leave Google a half-step ahead of everyone else on the upgrade train. After all it isn't hurting developers, it is just leaving Google with a slightly better competitive edge.
Where can users go if they still want YouTube to work well?
The best outcome would be to have some Non-commercial organization funded by Google, Microsoft, Yandex and other big players who benefit from Chromium which would have some kind of independence. But current situation is not that bad.
There are other things than just source code license. May be Google has patents for Chromium sources and could use them to forbid fork? Then it's a bad situation but I didn't heard about that point of view yet.
Consumer brands are not as easy to fork. If Coca-Cola opensourced their recipe and then faced a fork by Examplesucre, I don't think anyone will really be betting against Coke.
Similarly, the longevity of mainline integrity for Linux relies heavily on the fact that it is a trademark and that the trademark holder (Linus) is trusted with it. Fork Linux as much as you please, basically nobody will care.
Google's power over Chromium comes from its power over Chrome. If you don't think that's true, fork it yourself and prove us all wrong.
Last I heard, Android was doing OK…
Similarly, I should think that Microsoft still has considerable clout in what browser Windows users will use by default (although I'm not sure what exact legal restrictions they currently have to observe re: bundling of browsers).
Because a majority of users are using Google Chrome.
You're right, if Microsoft could convince chrome users to switch to Edge, they would have more power. Things can change, but I don't see how this would happen.
I've been hoping they'd come up with for a more shared model for applications in the node/npm ecosystem similar to Adobe's Air. If MS did a good job of such a platform from open-source with tooling to build applications that run everywhere, more power to them.
I keep seeing arguments like this and it doesn't make sense to me. Help me understand. My impression is that since Chromium is open-source Google cannot have a monopolistic wield over it. And now the fact that a bunch of Microsoft engineers will be contributing to Chromium seems to imply that Google and Microsoft will have the same amount of muscle mass to struggle for control. For example if Google tries to make a change in Chromium that will break Microsoft's products Microsoft can quickly respond to this. So why is the argument that Microsoft is ceding the web to Google, rather than trying to wrest back? To me it seems like the latter is at least as plausible as the former.