>Microsoft basing Edge on Chromium was a really stupid move on their part for this reason,

It is not true at all. After a long time Microsoft's browser share in increasing. They probably are quite happy about it,.

Also things like teams and skype at least on linux appear to just be electron webapps. Microsoft's safest long-term cash cow I think is still in these corporate contracts that combine all their tools in a confusing giant stew for every employee at those 1,000+ headcount companies.

Having more instrumentation over the platform they're doing it on is probably reasonable and realistically blink is already on every platform with over 1% usage share so that's a much easier road than supporting Trident, EdgeHTML or Chakra - the engine is not their core product - it's the stuff built on top of it.

I've used edge on linux - other than the weird thrill of seeing software that says "Copyright Microsoft" running on linux it's just a typical functional webbrowser -- that's exactly what they need.

I've been gradually switching to Edge and I'm sure Microsoft is happy with people like me who are too scatterbrained to change the default search engine (of course now I've spent more time writing this comment than I would have making the switch)

Plus Google can't intentionally cripple Edge without shooting themselves in the foot.

this. Firefox isn't a competitive threat for Microsoft; Chrome was. So Microsoft did what they're extremely good at: commoditising competitive threat where they were losing on market share. They've done it with Linux too. Whether you love them or hate them, you have to recognise the effectiveness of both strategy and execution.

You’re both right I think: short term needed users so adopt chrome... long term Firefox essential so MS would step in as a supporter (and potentially adopt it too should google become a problem).

Isn't the reason why many applications and libraries use Chromium due to Gecko's too Firefox-centric APIs?

I read a post here on HN a few months (years?) ago where a developer was really trying to use Gecko for their own application and got frustrated so much that they gave up and switched to Chromium.

Gecko is architected to be used as a framework, not a library, which means it tries to dictate a lot of aspects of how your code is supposed to be structured. Whereas Webkit/Blink is the other way around.

It predates KHTML/Webkit by several years so some additional legacy baggage is to be expected.

I've been led to believe that the APIs are mostly undocumented and often changing.

What makes you suspect Microsoft is starting to regret basing Edge off of Chromium?

I've heard that Microsoft doesn't have as solid a position at the standards table as they used to have pre-Chromium.

Do you expect a Google competitor to step in with $400m/year of funding though?

Yahoo outbid Google one year, and Firefox duly changed the default search engine for a while.

FFs market share was a bit higher back then, though.

I see the main asset of firefox as being

a) not google tech

b) mobile browser with ublock

c) tech nerds with tons of custom FF addons, never wanting to switch

So I don't see them go away anytime soon, but I also see nothing to stop the decrease of their marketshare. That means, unless mozilla would focus on their core values again. They lost much trust with quite some shady actions now, over the years.

None of them are a guarantee for it to survive but diversity is important and hard to see a second option disappearing just like how BSD are surviving.

Imagine what kind of HN thread pops up if Firefox is abandoned by Mozilla.

Also Firefox is a single licensed product that is MPL, and for anyone who wants it that way commercially may support it.