Microsoft's Chromium-Based Edge Browser Insider Program Is Now Accepting Applications

With this in mind, the Microsoft Insider program will expand to include the newly independent Edge browser, and the Redmond, Washington-based software giant is now accepting applications. Microsoft isn't giving many details on when the program will officially open, but you can at least get your name on the list to be one of the early testers by visiting the following link.

On the landing page, Microsoft says that its adoption of the Chromium open source project for Edge will help to "create better web compatibility for our customers, and less fragmentation of the web for all web developers" and that "we’re determined to be good members of the OSS community."

With that being said, earlier this week a former Microsoft Edge intern claimed that Google was actively attempting to undermine competing web browsers (like Edge) with frequent code changes to popular Google properties. 

"For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our hardware acceleration fast-path to bail," wrote Joshua Bakita. "Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life."

For its part, Google released an official statement refuting those claims: "YouTube does not add code designed to defeat optimizations in other browsers, and works quickly to fix bugs when they’re discovered. We regularly engage with other browser vendors through standards bodies, the Web Platform Tests project, the open-source Chromium project and more to improve browser interoperability."

With Microsoft now joining forces with Google, Mozilla is rightfully worried that the dominance of Chromium-based browsers will mean the end of Firefox (and other competing browsers). "Google’s dominance across search, advertising, smartphones, and data capture creates a vastly tilted playing field that works against the rest of us," wrote Mozilla in a blog post earlier this month.