Microsoft's Edge to Help Google Improve Tab Management in Chrome

It looks like Microsoft has embraced Chromium not only to enhance the Web browsing experience on Edge but also to help Google intrinsically improve its Chrome browser. Just days after bringing Chromium-based Edge browser for Windows and macOS users, the Redmond company is found to have started helping Google engineers improve Chrome's multi-tab management. The new development is a follow-up of the recent suggestions made by a Microsoft Edge engineer to improve battery usage on Chrome. Microsoft has claimed that it has made over 1,900 contributions to the Chromium project across areas such as accessibility and modern input including touch, speech, and digital inking.

A Chromium Gerrit commit highlights the coordination between Google and Microsoft engineers to enhance multi-tab management of Chrome. Leonard Grey, a software engineer at Google, in the commit showed interest in using a feature from Microsoft Edge to let Chrome users get the ability to move multiple tabs to a new windows.

“If you're still interested in upstreaming this from Edge, we'd be happy to take it,” Grey said.

Justin Gallagher, a Microsoft software engineer, responded to Grey, expressing his agreement to the deployment.

“Sounds great! I'll take ownership of this issue then,” the engineer responded.

The exchange between Google and Microsoft engineers was spotted by a Redditor, as reported by The Verge. Moreover, just two weeks after that conversation, Microsoft is found to have committed code to bring the change to Chromium, enabling support for moving multiple tabs to a new window directly from the tab context menu.

Google would soon bring the latest tab-centric change to a new Canary build of Chrome. Also, this would be one of the first changes that are coming directly from the Microsoft side -- post the long-anticipated Chromium adoption.

Recently, a Chrome engineer revealed that Google was implementing the changes suggested by Microsoft's senior software engineer Shawn Pickett to improve battery usage on Chrome.

Microsoft brought its Edge browser based on Chromium out of preview earlier this month and provided its download package for both Windows and macOS users. The company decided to switch to Chromium in December 2018 -- years after relying on its native EdgeHTML browser engine.