Here’s how Microsoft contributed to the development of Google Chrome

More than a year ago, Microsoft announced that it had thrown in the towel with its Microsoft Edge browser. Although the browser offered good performance, the integration with Windows 10 and the development of its own engine kept it out of style every now and then. So they decided to take a big step and opt for the remake of a completely new browser based on Chromium, the engine of Google Chrome.

In this way, those of Redmond were betting on an approach similar to that of Opera or Brave. The new Microsoft Edge would have differentiating features, but using the same engine as its main competitor, Google Chrome. The first steps were to restore key functionality of its previous engine: smooth scrolling, accessibility, improvements to battery life, privacy …

Over 1,800 contributions to the Google Chrome engine

The Google Chrome engine is open-source, so its code is free and accessible by any developer, offering the ability to incorporate all necessary improvements. So when Microsoft began perfecting Chromium, these improvements were not only reflected in Microsoft Edge, but also appeared in Google Chrome, Opera, Brave, and other browsers with this engine.

Now in a photo Eric Lawrence, Principal Program Manager of Microsoft’s Web division, shows us the amount of contributions they have made to the Chromium project. In particular, sent 1,835 lists of changes (changes that have been version checked or whose code is under review) for one year only.

Specifically, the changes in 161 Microsoft developers have been targeted at key functions. Mainly, they focused on accessibility, autonomy, HTML controls, playback controls, canvas rendering, font rendering … and many other sections. As we can see, they seem to have taken theirs bet on the Google Chrome engine.

In fact, Google’s browser performance has improved dramatically over the past year. Much of this success is due to Microsoft and all the changes it has proposed to improve Microsoft Edge. However, as part of the open source philosophy, anyone can use these improvements and modernize their software.