I mean, Microsoft tried to build a Chrome killer (Edge) put real money and talent behind it, and failed.

So now Edge is a Chromium fork, which is sad.

> Microsoft tried [...] and failed.

They didn't fail, they quit. You can't build something as enormous and complex as a modern and performant web browser that keeps up with modern standards for only 3.5 years.

They did the same with Windows Phone but worse, since they had to reset development twice or three times and there was a growing ecosystem of third party apps that got tossed around.

That's not trying. Microsoft doesn't try, they make very brief attempts and then give up just as soon as people start paying attention to them.

> They didn't fail, they quit. You can't build something as enormous and complex as a modern and performant web browser that keeps up with modern standards for only 3.5 years.

Not so fast. Edge was more "performant" but Google, specifically YouTube, screwed them.

Microsoft has seen this before from the other side, namely "Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run".

True that. I think a large corp such as Microsoft would gladly sponsor Chromium were Google were to abandon it. It is also suicidal to fork the Linux kernel but you do it if the necessity arises such as Android.

Isn't Android striving to minimize its changes to Linux kernel?